Gregory Kane

Gregory Kane: Can Maryland elect a qualified governor? Probably not

Towson University professor Richard Vatz was having a hard time suppressing the dickens within him. "Is there a compelling argument," Vatz asked the guest speaker addressing his persuasion class, "against your running for governor in 2010?" Vatz put that question to a man who's already been governor of Maryland: Republican Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who in 2002 was elected the state's first GOP chief executive in 36 years. And, as if to prove he's not a long-winded guy, Ehrlich made his answer exquisitely brief. "Yes," he answered. It was a typical Ehrlich visit to Vatz's persuasion class, a tradition that goes back about 17 years. In previous talks, Ehrlich...

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Gregory Kane: When innocence is anything but

Is there a homicide so heinous that it can still shock residents of a city notoriously nicknamed "Bodymore, Murderland"? The typical Baltimore murder victim is a young black man who has a criminal record and has dropped out of school. The typical Baltimore murderer fits the same profile. But that profile didn't apply to the young black male victim in the heinous homicide mentioned above. It happened last week. The victim was 15-year-old Jason Madison Jr. Baltimore police say his murderer gagged him with a pillow case and then stabbed him repeatedly in the head and throat with a box cutter. That was after sexually assaulting and sodomizing the boy. The suspect is Dante Parrish. He...

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Gregory Kane: Where was Fort Hood's security?

After the assorted forces of the FBI, the House Intelligence Committee, and the Department of Homeland Security have sorted out what went wrong with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, maybe somebody will ask the most pertinent question. Hasan is the suspect accused of slaughtering 13 people and wounding 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, last week. He is a psychiatrist and a Muslim, but in today's political climate it's Hasan's religion, not his profession, that has become the issue. Indeed, there are clues his interpretation of Islam should be an issue. Already news reports have surfaced about a 2007 medical presentation he made at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Among his revealing comments,...

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Gregory Kane: Gregory Kane: Justice Thomas deserves civility, too

George E. Curry is absolutely right: I did make a boo-boo in my column about Rush Limbaugh's attempt to buy part ownership of a National Football League franchise. I mentioned Curry, editor of the now-defunct Emerge magazine, briefly in the column, but not in a kind way. And he was quick to point that out. He was just as quick to point out my error in the column. First, a little back story. Emerge was a magazine that, like its competitors Ebony and Essence, targeted a black audience. But Emerge was better-written, much better-edited and had superior and more compelling journalism. Curry was editor of Emerge. In a seven-year span, the magazine ran two notorious covers of Supreme Court...

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Gregory Kane: Justice for John Allen Muhammad

Kill him next week or kill him some time thereafter, but John Allen Muhammad has to die, no matter what his lawyers say. Muhammad was convicted in Virginia for the murder of Dean Meyers in October of 2002. Meyers' death was part of a four-state, one-city (the District of Columbia) killing spree. Lee Boyd Malvo, who was then in his teens and is now serving a life sentence for the crime, was the triggerman in the murderous rampage that left 10 dead. But Muhammad was the mastermind pulling the strings. And if we can't execute a guy responsible for 10 murders, then what good is the death penalty? Opponents of capital punishment would answer with a resounding "none!" of course, and as...

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Gregory Kane: Hypocrisy reigns in NFL's Limbaugh rebuff

OK, so I get why National Football League (NFL) honchos derailed Rush Limbaugh's bid to become part owner of the St. Louis Rams. And then again, I don't. Limbaugh, on his web site, indicated he didn't succeed because of remarks he made about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, the media and the NFL several years ago. Others have said that Limbaugh's bid was denied because of other "racist" remarks. Columnist George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of the now-defunct "Emerge" magazine, wrote a recent piece taking to task Fox network commentator Juan Williams and National Black Republican Association chairwoman Frances Rice for defending Limbaugh against charges of racism....

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Gregory Kane: Here's what Obama should have told Terrence Scott

Ah, out of the mouths of babes -- and, sometimes, 9-year-olds. Terrence Scott is a fourth-grader who lives in New Orleans. He recently got his 15 minutes of fame -- actually, it was a lot closer to 15 seconds -- when he asked President Obama a "tough" question during the chief executive's visit to the Crescent City. "Why people hate you?" Terrence asked. "They supposed to love you, and God is love." In my never-ending quest to prove that, while I was born at night, it wasn't last night, I have to 'fess up that the kid sounded like a plant. But even if he was, Obama gave a fairly good answer. "Well now, first of all, I did get elected president, so not everybody hates me," Obama...

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Gregory Kane: No public funding for a private act

There's no better place to get a healthy dose of what I call "Lib-think" than an American college campus. "Lib-think" is what I call the reasoning - if it can be classified as such - liberals use to justify some things they have no darned business trying to justify. Take, for example, public funding of abortions for poor women. When liberals supported the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, they championed the "right to privacy" the Supreme Court supposedly upheld. So-called "pro-choice" advocates hadn't thought up the term "a woman's right to choose" just yet. Then they found themselves in a quandary: Poor women couldn't afford abortions. How then, could they exercise the "right to...

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Gregory Kane: 'Stop snitches' campaign could be fatal for enablers

America's "Stop Snitching" crusaders -- and their plethora of clueless enablers -- can chalk up another victim: 15-year-old Michael Brewer. Last Monday, five juveniles doused Brewer with rubbing alcohol in Deerfield Beach, Fla., and set the youth ablaze. At least one of Brewer's attackers yelled, "He's a snitch! He's a snitch!" shortly before Brewer was torched, according to news reports. What precipitated this horrific and pathetic incident was a $40 debt: Brewer borrowed that amount from one of the suspects and didn't pay it back. (Some news accounts say Brewer owed the suspect $40 for a video game.) The suspect and some others then tried to steal a bicycle belonging to Brewer's...

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Gregory Kane: Hollywood and the F-bomb

Robert Mitchum, arguably the coolest actor to ever hit Hollywood, probably had the place pegged correctly, if this particular story is true. It seems the late actor was quite the marijuana smoker early in his career. In the late 1940s, he was arrested for possessing the dreaded weed and did a stint in jail. Upon his release, a reporter asked him to give his assessment of what jail was like. "Kind of like Hollywood," Mitchum answered, "only with a better class of people." If that tale isn't true, it ought to be. With the recent arrest of on-the-lam director Roman Polanski in Switzerland, we have some idea of what the current class of people in Hollywood is like. They...

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Gregory Kane: No surprise in this Nobel

Last week President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, eight months into a presidency in which he's done virtually nothing about world peace. Surprised? You shouldn't be. The truth is, you should have seen this travesty coming from light-years away, for at least two reasons. Reason No. 1: The Nobel Peace Prize isn't what it used to be. It was worth something when Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson won it during their administrations. Roosevelt successfully negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Wilson helped found the League of Nations after World War I. Even the black Americans who won the Nobel Peace Prize before Obama had some solid achievements on their...

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Gregory Kane: Who is laughing now, Mr. Letterman?

Well, it's not the renowned and, as it turns out, downright horny host of CBS' "Late Night With David Letterman" show. It's probably Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, former vice-presidential candidate and current full-time mom who, back in June, showed Letterman the wrath of an angry mom. Letterman, who probably needs better joke writers as well as some kind of male chastity belt, wisecracked that New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez "knocked up" Palin's daughter during a seventh-inning stretch. Palin went ballistic, figuring Letterman was referring to her 14-year-old daughter Willow. Letterman countered by saying he was referring to her 18-year-old...

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Gregory Kane: Unlikely duo to reform public schools

I don't know whether to laugh myself silly or quake in my boots: former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton getting together to promote education reform? That's exactly what this Tom-and-Jerry duo is planning. They'll be touring the nation, talking about the need to reform public schools. Sharpton was on television a week ago promoting the tour on ... ... the World Wrestling Entertainment show "Raw"? I wish I were making a bad joke, but there Sharpton was, acting as the guest celebrity "general manager" for the show. Some knocked WWE honchos for selecting Sharpton (full disclosure: I was one of them), but others might point out that Sharpton made a perfect choice....

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Gregory Kane: Time for Conyers, Kilpatrick to go

Is there hope for the American electorate? According to one news report, Michigan Rep. John Conyers - you know, the congressman who doesn't read the bills he votes on - may not get re-elected in 2010. The story was on the BlackAmericaWeb.com Web site (Full disclosure: I've written a weekly opinion column there since 2003.), with an intriguing title: "The word missing from CBC circles: Scandal." The CBC stands for Congressional Black Caucus, a collection of the black members of Congress who formed the group to better serve, at least in theory, the needs of America's black citizens. I've noted in the past, and will continuingly note, that the late Harlem Rep. Adam Clayton Powell,...

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Gregory Kane: GOP should have held its fire in Jones affair

Boy, did Republicans and conservatives blow it in the Van Jones affair. A brief recap might be in order. Until early September, Jones held the job of special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation in President Obama's administration. Jones also served on the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That was before he was "outed" by several sources as some kind of left-wing nut job who signed a petition all but accusing officials in the administration of former President Bush of not only having advance knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but also of allowing them to happen. And speaking to a crowd in Berkeley some years back, Jones called Republicans --...

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Gregory Kane: Get a handgun, save a life

With one swift slash from a samurai sword, John Pontolillo made a convincing case for ... private ownership of handguns? Oh, you betcha. Pontolillo is an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. Before Sept. 15, that's all he was: One of the many JHU students who have to bust their humps studying so they can graduate from one of the most challenging and academically competitive campuses in the country. But nine days ago, Pontolillo went from being a simple college guy to being in the center of the maelstrom that developed after he slashed a burglar in the backyard of a house he shared with fellow JHU students. Pontolillo used a samurai sword to defend himself after the burglar...

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Gregory Kane: Rep. Wilson is my kind of guy

Leave it to our esteemed House of Representatives to get it backward in the matter of South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. Last week the House officially "admonished" Wilson for shouting "You lie!" during President Obama's address to Congress about health care reform. By a vote of 240-179, the lawmakers, using the high-falutin' lingo that's their specialty, huffed that Wilson was guilty of "a breach of decorum that degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House. Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson." With that statement, our representatives, far from...

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Gregory Kane: ACORN's loose principles in helping others

I love it when liberals shoot down their own principles. That means, of course, I absolutely adore the organization known as ACORN. For the past week various media have been filled with stories about how a man posing as a pimp and a woman posing as a prostitute went to ACORN offices in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. While there, the "pimp" and the "prostitute" managed to get ACORN workers to advise them on how to cheat on their taxes. The duo met with no disapproval when they told ACORN workers of their plans to bring underage girls to America from El Salvador to engage in prostitution. If this episode doesn't teach ACORN - a liberal organization, judging from the...

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Gregory Kane: More money will not fix Detroit's failing schools

For a brief second, I thought I'd been teleported into an alternate universe. The guide on my DirecTV system showed I was tuned to the Black Entertainment Television network Saturday night, but clearly there was some mistake. Could this have been a serious, probing, intelligently made documentary about public education in Detroit I was watching? Indeed it was. Entitled "Heart of the City: Dropped Out in Detroit," the hour-long documentary painted a sobering picture of Detroit schools. It was quite a departure for a network with a reputation for showing a plethora of music videos with a bevy of scandalous, nearly butt-naked hoochies shaking their rumps. That reputation was well...

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Gregory Kane: Bad court decisions have lasting consequences

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell has been referred to, disparagingly, as a "culture warrior." Here's why that's a good thing. Please forgive this use of a second-hand anecdote to drive home my point, but I have no doubt that the incident one of my former students told me about is absolutely true, social conditions in Baltimore being what they are. She was 21. Her parents emigrated to the United States from Pakistan. She came from a strict Muslim family, and in the strict Islamic tradition, as it is in the similar Judeo-Christian tradition, pre-marital sex is a no-no. So it was with perfect innocence that she told about four middle-school girls she...

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Gregory Kane: Chucky the Lip has struck again, but this time it's a good thing

You know Chucky the Lip better as Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. Rangel is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and he's also a well-known hatchet man and race baiter for the Democratic Party. Chucky the Lip's latest race-baiting salvo came last week when he spoke at a health care forum in the Washington Heights section of New York City. Those opposed to President Obama's health care plan are motivated, sayeth The Lip, by "bias" and "prejudice." Translation from Lip-ese into standard English: They have a problem with a black man sitting in the Oval Office. In case that wasn't clear enough, Rangel added this: "Some Americans have not gotten over the fact that Obama is...

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Gregory Kane: Conclusion first, money second, facts last

Today's lesson in "Fleecing The Taxpayer" comes to us from the state of New York, where the legislature recently awarded a grant to study the racial impact of legislation. The award of $10,000 will go to the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, which is part of the City University of New York's Medgar Evers College. CNUS, according to its Web site, is the "first and only public policy, research, training, advocacy and academic center....designed and developed by formerly incarcerated professionals." I'm sure Washington Examiner readers are astute enough to translate the phrase "formerly incarcerated professionals" into the simpler, more common and...

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Gregory Kane: Parents should demand public school refunds

And now, from the tortured and twisted logic department, comes this little tidbit from an activist opposed to vouchers being used to send D.C. students to private schools. Last week, about 100 supporters of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program held a rally outside the U.S. Department of Education headquarters. According to news reports, about 200 students were awarded vouchers this past spring. Then our federal government double crossed the kiddies and yanked the vouchers. The voucher program gives parents who are unable to afford to send their children to private schools the same choice the ones who can do, and that's why Robert Vinson Brannum, the activist in question, opposes...

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Gregory Kane: Snoop Dogg is a Crip

You aim for the palace and get drowned in the sewer, Mark Twain once wittily wrote. But what can we do with people who consciously aim for the sewer, especially when American values are concerned? The nation's entertainment industry seems determined to flush whatever is left of America's values and standards of morality straight down the nearest sewer. What's the latest example? The appearance of one Calvin Broadus as the "celebrity guest" on ABC's television show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Broadus is better known as rapper Snoop Dogg. Make that gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg, and Broadus doesn't bother to deny that title. He embraces it; he revels in it. A careful...

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Gregory Kane: No, Mr. Conyers, we expect you to read the bills

If it weren't for the Great Health-Care Debate of 2009, would we all know what a sorry excuse for a congressman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan really is? We have that debate to thank for Conyers 'fessing up that he doesn't read congressional bills. Well, not the long ones, anyway. Here's his quote about why he didn't bother to read the health-care bill: "I love these members that get up and say 'Read the bill.' What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you've read the bill." For those not in the know, this was vintage, indeed classic, Conyers. I wasn't at all surprised by his remarks. I'd...

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Let's dial the town hall antics back a notch or two

Can we ratchet down the rancor in the debate about health care reform? It's one thing for angry citizens concerned about the federal government getting involved in health care to attend town hall meetings and give hell to elected officials. Giving hell to elected officials is something Americans need to do more often, although I'd prefer to see them turn incumbents out of office and elect candidates from parties that don't begin with the letters "D" or "R." But it's quite another to accuse President Barack Obama of wanting to snuff our grandmamas. Or -- as one inspired but, I suspect, somewhat demented soul actually did -- hold up a sign of Obama with an Adolf...

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Gregory Kane: No doubt about the meaning of the Second Amendment

My son-in-law thought the liberals were making some kind of joke. Someone - a person no doubt trying to torment him, he figured - sent him a story fromthehuffingtonpost.com. The topic? Someone at a New Hampshire rally President Obama attended to promote health-care legislation was carrying a handgun. Then he used his computer to play the commentary anews crew had of the "incident." There was speculation about who the guy was, why he had the gun, the potential harm he might do to the president, especially this historic president. And especially now, with folks all riled up and volatile about the health-care issue. The commentators didn't say as much, but the implication...

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Gregory Kane: Memo to the whining Left

Memo to the whining Left By Gregory Kane How do we deal with people like those of the Whining Left who, even after Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, are still complaining? So there they were, as late as Wednesday of last week, grousing that their woman was abused during the confirmation hearings, and that “right-wing” radio talk-show hosts were saying horrible things about her. I was a guest on a local radio show in Baltimore – the station is located on a college campus, so that means the viewpoint is left-wing, not right-wing – and apparently one of the complaints is that one of the senators said to Sotomayor that...

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Gregory Kane: The ugly truth behind 'structural inequality'

He's 17 and has a juvenile offender record that runs back to when he was 10 years old; she's 16 and the mother of his 8-month-old daughter. His name is Lamont Harris. Marylanders in the Baltimore-Washington area first learned of this hopeless cretin in early July, when he was charged with firing the shot on a street in south Baltimore that left 5-year-old Raven Wyatt struggling for her life with a head wound. Harris' arrest in the Raven Wyatt shooting was his 15th in seven years. Her name is Dynashaya Hall. We first met her when she, with no trace of shame, consented to give a television interview about where Harris was when Baltimore cops finally caught up to him. Her comment should...

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Gregory Kane: Perry critics ignore Hip-Hop-crisy in Gangsta Rap

Thank heavens for modern technology, satellite television, to be specific. I missed Tyler Perry’s “Madea Goes To Jail” when it was in theaters. Between writing for several publications, teaching a college course and humoring two of my six grandchildren who made it their mission to spend darn near every weekend with Granddad, I just didn’t find the time. I was finally able to catch Perry’s latest film through the magic of DIRECTV’s pay-per-view menu. I’d heard there was controversy about racial stereotypes in “Madea Goes To Jail” and wondered what all the fuss was about. And having finally seen the movie, I’m still...

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Gregory Kane: Four 'teachable moments' from Cambridge Cops Caper

When President Obama meets with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department for beers today, I wonder if our chief executive will use it as the "teachable moment" he referred to. Maybe Crowley and Gates will learn to ratchet down their egos a bit, which, I suspect, is what got them into their predicament in the first place. And perhaps Obama has learned a lesson as well: that the nation's chief executive should dummy up about local matters he admits he knows nothing about. Is there anything the rest of us can learn from this "teachable moment"? Oh, a few. - Our president, in spite of his 2004 speech at the...

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Gregory Kane: Maryland taxpayers taken for a ride on juvenile justice

Congratulations, Maryland taxpayers. You've just been sucker punched. The poor saps who regularly get hosed for taxes in the Free State put up about $1 million of their hard-earned money for GPS trackers, which are used to monitor juvenile offenders who are allowed to roam around free. This applies to the simply mischievous ones and the truly dangerous ones. You see, the folks who run what should be jokingly called our "juvenile justice system" make no distinction between the two. So here was the idea: Last year Gov. Martin O'Malley -- call him the lead sucker puncher in this saga -- set aside the $1 million for the tracking units. One is an anklet that is attached to the...

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Gregory Kane: When, exactly, did the NAACP become anti-cop?

Leaders of the nation's oldest civil rights organization - which celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding at its annual convention in New York City last week - will probably be incensed by that claim. But here's one instance where they shouldn't kill the messenger. Their problem is with the somebody or somebodies who write the things found on the NAACP Web site. Take, for example, this quote from a link called "Talking Points: Excessive Use of Force": "The NAACP is committed to a proactive approach to police shootings and ALL OTHER FORMS OF POLICE BRUTALITY." The emphasis on the last six words of that sentence is all mine. It shows the mentality of the people now running...

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Gregory Kane: Don't ignore hate crimes against whites

Marty Marshall must be wondering what he's got to do to get a little love from a U.S. senator. This is a tale of two stories. Both are about race. It's a tale of how we perceive and define hate crimes, and of how the media cover matters of race. On June 27, only two days after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told members of Congress how hate crimes "victimize entire communities," Marshall and his family were victimized in a hate crime themselves. It might be at this point that you're wondering why you've never heard of this story. It's because Marshall and his family are white, of course, and their victimizers are black. Marshall and his family live in Akron, Ohio. They...

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Enforce the hate crime laws we have now, Mr. Holder

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder couldn't wait to go before Congress and ask for expanded federal hate-crimes legislation after a neo-Nazi white supremacist fatally wounded a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum.__Specifically, Holder told the legislators that federal hate crimes laws need to be expanded to include crimes based on sexual orientation, gender and disability. So Holder wins, hands down, the 2009 award for the "Most Despicable Display of Using a Genuine Tragedy To Advance Your Personal Political Agenda."__Lordy, where did President Obama GET this guy? Holder must have dragged the deepest, dankest depths of the Potomac to dredge up this kind of...

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Gregory Kane on praise for D.C.'s 'big, whomping Democrat'

Muriel Bowser describes herself as "a big, whomping Democrat." Normally, I'd consider that an admission of some kind of guilt. But if I lived in Bowser's Ward 4, I'd have voted for her back in 2007. Bowser is the Washington, D.C. city council representative from Ward 4. She stumbled on to my radar in early June, when one of her aides e-mailed me a Bowser press release about an escape from the New Beginnings Youth Development Center in Laurel. On May 29, the facility - which houses D.C.'s juvenile offenders - opened. One day later, a youth escaped by scaling a fence he wasn't supposed to be able to climb. That didn't sit well with the "big, whomping Democrat" from...

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What does Sotomayor have against white males?

I'm betting Judge Sonia Sotomayor, that wise Latina female, isn't feeling too wise these days. Or maybe she is. After all, four current Supreme Court justices feel exactly as Sotomayor does: that it's perfectly fine to discriminate against white males. Justices John Paul Stevens, the now-retired David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were in the minority who concluded that the city of New Haven didn't discriminate against 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic. Here, in the plain, simpler language those justices tried to avoid, is what they really mean: it's OK to discriminate against white males. Sotomayor and her two cohorts on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of...

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What a piece of anti-Semitic work is Rev. Jeremiah Wright

That’s the phrase retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright used when he was asked if he’d talked with a certain former parishioner of his since the latter had become president of the United States. Here’s what Wright said about his lack of conversation with President Obama since Jan. 20: “Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck or in eight years when he’s out of office. They will not let him talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. I said that from the beginning. He’s a politician; I’m a pastor. He’s got to do what politicians...

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Dispatch from Bodymore, Murderland

Whitey, don’t let the sun set on you in Bodymore, Murderland. That’s neither an official or unofficial slogan for Baltimore yet, but it’s not because some of our more dysfunctional citizens aren’t trying to make it so. Bodymore, Murderland IS the unofficial city nickname. It comes to us courtesy of those who appeared in the first “Stop Snitching” DVD, and they should know: They’re responsible for many of the dead bodies and the murders. The overwhelming majority of those bodies are black ones, dispatched by black perps. But the few white bodies may end up giving Baltimore a notorious reputation as a city where whites just aren’t...

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Sonia Sotomayor: White-male basher

President Obama’s first nominee to the Supreme Court has been called much more than that – racist is the term being bandied about by some – but can’t we agree that, at the very least, she’s a white-male basher? And should we be surprised that Obama would select one for the high court? Here’s the quote, which you’re probably reading for the umpteenth time, but it still deserves repeating: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Sotomayor said that in 2001, at the University of California...

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Too bad Obama missed basic training

For many of us media types, President Obama’s commencement speech at the U.S. Naval Academy on Friday was mainly about two things: values and diversity. If those media types were more of the liberal persuasion, then certain quotes must have left them swooning. Like this one: “…(I)n a world when so many forces and voices seek to divide us, it is inspiring that this class came together and succeeded together, from every state and every corner of the world. By building an institution that is more diverse than ever – more women, more Hispanics, more African Americans – the Naval Academy has reaffirmed a fundamental American truth: That out of many, we are...

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What were Notre Dame officials thinking?

You mean some folks at a Catholic university would actually object to a “pro-choice” president of the United States giving a commencement speech? Boy, who would have thunk. I found out about President Obama’s commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. the way I get most of my information about his administration: Through an e-mail sent from the White House press office. Obama would deliver commencement addresses, I learned, at Arizona State University, the University of Notre Dame and the U.S. Naval Academy. I get the first one and the last one; the middle one still boggles my mind. And apparently I’m not alone. According to Washington...

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Liberal bigotry seen in the Prejean attacks

Carrie Prejean recently became the most famous or infamous 21-year-old in America, depending on your definition of what a bigot is or is not. When she was competing for the Miss USA title as Miss California, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton asked Prejean how she felt about gay marriage. Prejean gave her honest opinion: that it should be between a man and a woman. That, she added, is what she was raised to believe. Inevitably, perhaps, the charges of bigotry followed. A student in my writing class at Johns Hopkins University dismissed Prejean as a “prejudiced woman,” except her second word wasn’t “woman,” but rather a well-known pejorative that begins with...

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Don't start nothing, won't be nothing

Here’s why I don’t care that al-Qaeda operatives Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded after Sept. 11, 2001: I remember where I was the day before. Every American who recalls that day can probably remember where he or she was when those jets hit the World Trade Center. I do too. But I remember where I was on Sept. 10, 2001, at about the same time. In the lowest level of the World Trade Center, getting off a commuter train from Jersey City, N.J. I had an appointment in midtown-Manhattan and had to take a subway train from the WTC. Had I done that a day later, I’d have arrived at the WTC at just about the time the first or second jet hit. But...

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How did Maryland legislators manage to sneak this law through?

As of 2009 in Maryland, “insurance companies wishing to do business…must disclose any policies they or their predecessor firms provided to slave owners until 1865...” You read that correctly. The quote comes from The Daily Record of April 14. Gov. Martin O’Malley signed this meaningless, do-nothing bill into law on April 12. It was sponsored by Baltimore state Sen. Lisa Gladden. As a result of this latest display of “Democrats Gone Wild,” insurance company executives now have to become historians. To quote directly from The Daily Record story: “The law, formerly Senate Bill 751, requires insurance companies to disclose to the state’s...

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Maryland lawmakers disrespect the law

For former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, the debate about illegal immigrants and drivers’ licenses that comply with the federal Real ID Act comes down to four words: respect for the law. Or, in the case of Maryland’s Legislature, that would be DISRESPECT for the law. The day after our poltroonish legislators defied federal law by passing a “compromise” bill that allows Maryland’s estimated 350,000 illegal immigrants with drivers’ licenses to renew them, Ehrlich was in Richard Vatz’s persuasion class on the campus of Towson University in Baltimore County. The ex-governor asked students to give their arguments on three topics: the death penalty,...

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A poet and the Black Power movement

Arizona Sen. John McCain is a neo-fascist. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, should be jailed for the editorial cartoon depicting a chimp that many critics felt represented President Obama. The blacks who served on the jury that convicted Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin – better known as 1960s Black Power advocate H. Rap Brown – of murdering a deputy sheriff in Atlanta in 2000 are all “Negroes” whose names are known. No, those thoughts aren’t mine. They came from Amiri Baraka, poet, playwright, activist and full-time Marxist who was, at one time, the Poet Laureate of New Jersey. It’s where Baraka made his comments that’s significant:...

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Don't turn College Park into Porn U

Let’s cut straight to the chase: “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge” is probably no “Last Tango in Paris.” “Pirates” is the $10 million, triple-X “blockbuster” of a porn film that was supposed to be shown at the Stamp Student Union building on the University of Maryland College Park campus Saturday night. That was before Maryland legislators got wind of the showing and, I’m sure civil liberties absolutists will claim, went all jackboot and arm twisted university officials into yanking the film. “Last Tango” is a 1973 Bernardo Bertolucci film that, while featuring some raunchy sex scenes and dialogue, still...

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Maryland should approve Proof of Lawful Presence Act

Will the Maryland Legislature pass the Proof of Lawful Presence Act of 2009, or will the Free State’s legislators chump out? My money is on them chumping out. Even though Baltimore County Sen. Norman Stone, a Democrat, sponsored Senate Bill 369, which requires immigrants to be in our country legally before they can get a driver’s license, I still expect his fellow Dems to chump out. All someone opposed to the bill has to do is dredge up the dreaded “r” word and most Democrats in the House of Delegates and the Senate will go weak in the knees and vote against the Proof of Lawful Presence Act (PLPA). That “r” word would, of course, be...

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D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty may be a latent Republican

For a week I’ve been reading news accounts of how Fenty went all GOP and bucked his party – that would be the Democrats – on the issue of school vouchers. The story goes like this: The District has something called the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides roughly $12 million for 1,700 public school students. Democrats in the House of Representatives don’t want to fund the program after the 2009-2010 school year. Fenty recently proclaimed that he’s in favor of the program continuing. He’s on the same page with President Obama, who also wants the OSP to be funded beyond 2010. What I’m hoping to hear is a public pronouncement from...

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Commentary: Obama is the radical feminist in the White House

First came his presidential proclamation extolling the 36th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Now we have President Obama’s remarks last week after signing an executive order about stem cell research. With both acts, Barack Obama has established himself as America’s chief EOTF. Those letters stand for “Enemy Of The Fetus,” for those of you not following my train of thought. Not that I like the word “fetus.” It’s thrown around by so-called pro-choicers – who should more accurately be known as “pro-abortionists” or, better yet, the “suck ‘em down the tube crowd” – uncomfy with the...

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Instead of fighting with Rush, Steele should nail Democrats

Did you catch the movie that played last week? You know, the one starring Rush Limbaugh as Herman Boone and Michael Steele as Gerry Bertier? In case you’re not up to snuff on the characters from “Remember the Titans,” Boone was the head football coach of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. The film tells the story of Boone’s struggle to field an integrated football team at a newly integrated high school during a time of racial turmoil. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Bertier, a white player, walks up to Boone and orders him to reserve half the positions on offense and special teams for white players. “We...

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No more NAACP double standards on racism

True story: Way back in those ancient days known as the 1990s, I was a columnist for The Baltimore Sun. I had just done a piece about Dennis Rodman, the incomparable and, in some ways, indescribable forward for the Chicago Bulls. As indescribable as some of Rodman’s on and off-court antics were, I decided to take a shot at describing them. “Monkey shines” is the term I came up with. I’d no sooner sent the column to a line editor than a black female editor pulled me aside. Calmly and nicely, she expressed her doubts about whether I should use the term “monkey shines” to describe the actions of Rodman, a black man. “You may or may not have...

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Will Holder discuss these five racial issues?

Attorney General Eric Holder, that esteemed expert on poltroonish Americans, hit the nail on the head in his speech last week about race relations. He was absolutely right. But not for the reasons he thinks. And for all his chiding that, “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race,” there is some talk about race that Holder, in particular, and liberals, in general, don’t want to hear. In defense of Holder, his speech didn’t single out white Americans as members of the “nation of cowards” when it comes to race. Holder repeatedly used the words “we” and “Americans.” Those who made the kneejerk...

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