United Liberty

We’re learning more about what did and didn’t happened during the attack on the consulate in Benghazi that claimed the lives of four American citizens, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. According to a military special operator who spoke to Fox News, military support could have been on the ground at the consulate before the second attack.

“I know for a fact that C-110 CIF was doing a training exercise in the region of Northern Africa but in Europe. They had the ability to react and respond,” the unidentified special operator turned whistleblower told Fox News. “They would have been there before the second attack. They would have been there at a minimum to provide a quick reaction force that could facilitate their exfil out of the problem situation. Nobody knew how it was going to develop, and you hear a whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of advisors say hey, we wouldn’t have sent them there because the security was unknown situation.”

“If it’s an unknown situation, at a minimum you send forces there to facilitate the exfil or medical injuries,” he added. “We could have sent a C-130 to Benghazi to provide medical evacuation for the injured.”

My good friend Chris Barron, co-founder of GOProud and a contributor here at United Liberty, appeared on Red Eye early Tuesday morning to discuss interesting topics in the news, including the returning “Piss Christ” controversy and the NHL lockout, for which he is growing a beard in protest:

Yes, there does appear to be a media bias.  I see it all the time, just like you probably do.  Part of the reason Fox News does as well as it does is because he simply presents a different media bias than what it’s watchers see elsewhere.  They’ve presented something new, and are being rewarded for it.

However, many people don’t believe in media bias.  They just don’t think it exists.  Well, let’s take a quick lesson in media bias, and some of the reasons for it.  For the record, I am the publisher of The Albany Journal, what was once a weekly newspaper in Albany, Georgia but is now an online news website.  I’m not telling you this to try and make it out like my vast newspaper experience gives me some insight (I only bought the paper last October after all), but so some stories later on will make some sense.

When talking about media bias, there are some things that happen.  I’m guilty of it as much as the next newspaper editor/publisher/news director.  Some stories cross my desk, and my natural reaction is to not devote space to them.  Even if they don’t cross my desk, I sometimes read articles on other sites and think “I wouldn’t run that”.  Sometimes, it’s well founded.  An eatery half way across the state that says it is going to start making their own bread just isn’t news for Albany.

Sometimes though, my subconscious makes the decision for me.  For example, a story about how laws regarding junk food in schools may be helping reduce childhood obesity.  Now, this as an AP story, and I don’t get to run AP stories, but this is a case of one I would probably not have run.  Consciously, I would probably argue to myself that I just don’t think my readers would find it interesting, but is that really the reason?

Michelle Fields was born in Los Angeles and received her degree in Political Science from Pepperdine University in 2011. She contributed video work for Reason TV and joined the Daily Caller in mid 2011. The Daily Caller, a 24-hour conservative news and commentary website funded by Foster Friess, was founded by Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel.

In between breaking stories at the Daily Caller and kicking liberal butt on Fox News, she tweets @MichelleFields.

Matt Naugle: How did you become a libertarian?

Michelle Fields: My older brother, Michael, is a libertarian and introduced me to Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State & Utopia.”

MN: You became a viral internet celebrity clashing with Matt Damon over tenured teachers. Did his harsh reaction surprise you?

MF: It did surprise me. I thought that I had asked a fair question. I understand where he was coming from, there are a lot of teachers out there who joined the profession out of a love for teaching. However, I don’t think that all teachers are impervious to economic incentives

MN: You have also recorded educational videos for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. In your experience, do most people have a firm grasp of economics?

Fox News analyst and best-selling author, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, released a new book Tuesday October 18th entitled, It Is Dangerous To Be Right When The Government Is Wrong: The Case For Personal Freedom. I have not read any of Judge Napolitano’s prior books, yet I have watched his television show on Fox Business, Freedom Watch, and I find myself agreeing with nearly everything that he says.

Many of you know that I am a Libertarian (card-carrying, candidate-supporting Big “L” Libertarian), so it should come as no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the latest work by Judge Napolitano. While most libertarians or Libertarians use the Constitution as their basis for political philosophy, the Judge goes beyond the Constitution to its roots as a protection of natural rights and Natural Law for all people. As someone who believes that the Constitution serves as our protection from the government trampling on our natural rights, I found this book aligns nearly identical to my political philosophy, as well as my sense of morality. Do not let that alignment keep you from reading what I found to be one of the best cases for personal liberty and the responsibility that an individual pays for such liberty.

…and in breaking news, the sky is blue!  President Obama, speaking to the US Chamber of Commerce, tried to put forth the idea that regulations are a good thing.

From the Fox News report:

Speaking on matters that concern the business community with which the president has had a rocky relationship, Obama said, “The perils of too much regulation are matched by the dangers of too little.”

But, he said, regulations also serve a purpose.

“Already we’re dramatically cutting down on the paperwork that saddles businesses with huge administrative costs,” he said. “But ultimately, winning the future is not just about what the government can do to help you succeed. It’s about what you can do to help America succeed.”

He added, “We cannot go back to the kind of economy — and culture — we saw in the years leading up to the recession, where growth and gains in productivity just didn’t translate into rising incomes and opportunity for the middle class.”

The president took the opportunity to defend two of his primary legislative achievements — a Wall Street banking bill and health insurance reform.

“I know you have concerns about this law,” he said of the health law. “But the nonpartisan congressional watchdogs at the CBO estimate that health care tax credits will be worth nearly $40 billion for small businesses over the next decade.”

Of course, he neglects to point out that the “nonpartisan congressional watchdogs at the CBO” are hamstrung in how they can figure up their numbers, so you can trust what they say about as much as you can trust Paris Hilton to score perfect on the SAT.

Juan Williams had been a correspondent at NPR since 1999.  All of that came to a screeching halt when he confessed to Bill O’Reilly that he got nervous when he saw people dressed in Muslim attire boarding an airplane.  NPR argues that Williams’ comments were “inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR.”

Williams expressed a sentiment that, while not exactly politically correct, is shared by millions of Americans.  The events of 9-11 seemed to give the nation such severe PTSD that Muslims are hard to distinguish between the bad guys.  Of course, when it comes to political correctness, Williams seems to understand that.  He said:

Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality. I mean, look Bill [O’Reilly], I’m not a bigot, you know the kind of books I’ve written on the civil rights movement in this country, but when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous. Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts. But I think there are people who want to somehow remind us all as President Bush did after 9/11, it’s not a war against Islam

I was not going to post about this anymore because I’m tired of hearing about it. But last night, Jon Stewart gave a great monologue on the uproar over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque and it needs to be shared.

Like Stewart, I get the reason people are upset about the mosque. But the push back against the mosque has reached a point where it’s not about placing a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, the rhetoric has reached a point where most of the opposition are condemning an entire religion. They are placing the blame for what happened on 9/11 on an entire religion instead of 19 radical Islamists.

Around three minutes in, Stewarts shows video of Eric Bolling, who was appearing on Fox and Friends, laying out the alleged ties that Feisal Abdul Rauf has to various groups, including Hamas and Perdana. Bolling also speculates on whether or not Iran may be funding Park51, formerly the Cordoba House.

Stewart then uses the same logic to connect Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to the Bin Laden family and Wahhabist Muslims, a form of Islam followed by al-Qaeda.

For perspective, Stewart shows a clip of Charlton Heston speaking at the NRA convention in 1999, just after the Columbine tragedy. In case you don’t remember, there was an uproar that wanted the NRA to hold their convention somewhere else.

During his speech to the convention, Heston said:

Tragedy always has been and always will be with us. Somewhere right now evil people are evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything thing we can do to prevent it, but each horrible act can’t become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us.

Stewart admits he was part of the uproar, but he also admits that he was wrong:

A friend of mine, who is staff for a prominent modern West Coast Republican congressman, told me that on April 29, a plethora of voters called in opposition to the Puerto Rico Democracy Act. An ocean of misinformation had engulfed these voters and caused them to drown out their rationality.

When experiencing one of these angry (white) voters that day, the emotion and hate was on full display. Getting red in the face as he talked, one conservative screamed at me, “This is a push by the Democrats to make Puerto Rico a state so they can have a filibuster proof majority!”

When I told him that he apparently knew absolutely nothing about the bill, he replied, “I know that the Obama administration cares nothing about the American people or the American people.” When I pointed out that the current status of Puerto Rico, as little more than a territory that is not fully included in our country yet not a country of their own, is a relic of a colonial past, he said, “They need to learn english! If they don’t learn english, they’ll just be second class citizens.” I told him that he was obviously looking at things he didn’t comprehend with little more than his prior prejudices, to which he said, “It’s not prejudice! It’s principle.” I pointed out to him that he was confusing his prejudices with “principles.”

Recently, the TEA Party movement celebrated its first anniversary. At first the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party activists were dismissed as a few grumpy right-wingers upset that America elected a black president. They were given little credence beyond being an amusing political side show. That soon changed. On April 15th hundreds of thousands of average Americans showed up at protest rallies across the nation, outraged at the “stimulus” package of goodies doled out to special interests, liberal activism organizations and Democrat pet projects. CNN reported that a few thousand people showed up at the rally in Atlanta, but I was there and can assure you that it was close to ten-fold that amount. It was shoulder-to-shoulder for about four blocks in one direction, not counting the people on the side streets.

Once they could no longer be dismissed as a fringe element, TEA Party activists were labeled as “Astro-turf” (fake grass roots), accused of being flunkies of Big Corporate America, mindlessly doing the bidding of their masters. They were accused of being a fabrication of FOX News and the Republican Party. They were accused of being everything except what they are…average Americans, generally with traditional conservative values, who were fed up over 20 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush politics, two political parties who paid only lip service to the people they claimed to serve while engaging in a bacchanalian orgy of political perks, who had finally been pushed over the edge by a pork-laden spending bill of almost $800 billion. They were saying “Enough is enough!”, and they were going to make their voices be heard.