How about the Biden administration, those Abraham Accords, Netanyahu, and Iran?

The New Neo Posted on by

I detest the Biden administration’s unraveling of so many of the accomplishments of the Trump administration. I only hope that a lot of the positives of the last four years will survive nevertheless, or at least that people watching the Biden administration will finally perceive how pernicious the Democrats’ policies have become, before it’s too late to reverse the damage done.

Case in point:

…[A]s the theme of “election interference” should make clear (the UAE doesn’t have elections), and as has been substantiated by Israeli reporting, the source of the upset isn’t in Abu Dhabi but in Washington. In other words, the Biden administration is interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by strong-arming the Emiratis into publicly distancing themselves from Bibi.

Next week Israel will hold its fourth election in a little more than two years, so in effect Netanyahu has been campaigning for more than 24 months—including in August when he and MBZ signed the agreement. Should the Emiratis have shunned the deal since Netanyahu, like any Israeli prime minister, would invariably present his accomplishment to voters? What about sending an ambassador to Israel, as it did at the beginning of March? What about investing $10 billion, as MBZ told Netanyahu he would? So how does a photo op with the prime minister glad-handing the crown prince of Abu Dhabi on his home turf cross the line?

Plainly, the Obama-Biden team doesn’t care about interfering in Israeli elections or else Barack Obama’s State Department wouldn’t have funneled money to an NGO that campaigned against Netanyahu in 2015…

But there’s a bigger play here than interfering in Israeli politics by denying Bibi a preelection photo op with Israel’s peace partners in the Gulf. Their larger goal is to weaken or dismantle the Abraham Accords, which by assembling a treaty structure that binds Israel together with the Gulf states structurally interferes with the administration’s stated goal of realigning the United States with Iran—and therefore against Israel and the Gulf—by reentering Obama’s nuclear deal…

…For the Middle East hands in the Biden administration, what matters most is completing the project many of these Obama alumni helped initiate while serving under Biden’s former boss—realignment with Iran.

Trump didn’t just withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which undergirded Obama’s realignment strategy, he also designed a strategic architecture to counter Iranian influence—the Abraham Accords.

It gets a bit tiresome to keep saying it, but this was all very very predictable in any Biden administration. They still consider the Iran deal of the Obama years their crowning glory, and they can’t wait to go right back to it or something similar – or even worse. If many Americans didn’t realize that, then they haven’t been paying attention.

[NOTE: I notice that I keep forgetting to click on the “Biden” category when I do many of these posts about policies of the present administration. I think that’s because I don’t think he’s completely in charge, although I do think that in most cases Biden supports the program with whatever powers he still retains. He certainly appeared to support them during the Obama years, when he was supposedly in full posession of his faculties.]

Just another reason they hate Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

He makes the Democrats and the MSM look foolish when they predict disaster and his policies are successful, and then he points out their own failures in a way that’s clear and direct enough for nearly anyone to understand. They don’t mind lying, and they do it regularly, but he makes them reach so far down into the preposterous with their lies that I bet it makes at least some of them just a tad bit worried about how stupid and transparent their lies have to be.

Although of course there’s strength in numbers. If they lie together, and if they block the truth when anyone tries to tell it, then they have a better chance at success in their propaganda efforts. They’ve certainly been successful beyond what I would have thought possible in America just twenty short years ago.

An example of Trump’s latest is his take on the Biden administration’s border efforts vs. his own:

We proudly handed the Biden Administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden Administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast,” the former president declared.

“The pathetic, clueless performance of Secretary Mayorkas on the Sunday Shows today was a national disgrace,” Trump argued. “His self-satisfied presentation—in the middle of the massive crisis he helped engineer—is yet more proof he is incapable of leading DHS. Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens then the whole world will come.”

Trump claimed that Mayorkas had issued a “gag order” on America’s “heroic border agents and ICE officers.” He argued that the Biden administration is “engaged in a huge cover-up to hide just how bad things truly are.” He urged Congress to investigate the situation.

If you’re wondering about the “pathetic, clueless, self-satisfied” performance of Mayorkas, have a look here. And here are some leaked photos of the situation at the border – although I wonder how many people other than those on the right have seen them.

[NOTE: Trump is planning to return to social media on his own platform. Should be interesting.]

“The City of New Orleans”

The New Neo Posted on by

Most of you probably are familiar with the rousing and elegiac Americana classic “City of New Orleans.” It was a big hit for Arlo Guthrie in 1972, and has been covered by a great many people. It’s one of those songs that sound like they’ve always been around (or should have been) even though they haven’t.

Here’s a clip of Arlo Guthrie telling the story of how he came to know the song, and then singing a great version. I’d heard it before and liked it. Hard not to sing along (the story is good, but the music begins at 1:05):

Willie Nelson had a wonderful version of it, too. He’s got that authentic-sounding voice, and the music has a bit more of the train rhythm than Guthrie’s version.

So there we have it, right? Great song, and especially poignant to hear in 2021.

But no, we’re not quite finished with it yet, because – due to the magic of YouTube – there’s also a clip of Steve Goodman (the man who wrote the song) performing it live in 1976. I only heard of Goodman recently, through a commenter on this blog, and had no idea he wrote the song and certainly had never heard his version at all.

Goodman was ill with leukemia for his entire adult life and died at the age of 36, but he put out some glorious music while he was here. By all accounts, he was a great and unique guy, and I think you can see that in his performances. He looks a bit like a cross between a young Paul Simon and a young Cat Stevens, with a slow curving smile as though secretly mildly amused at the vagaries of life.

In contrast to the multi-instrument and personnel arrangements of “City of New Orleans” in those clips of Guthrie and Nelson, Goodman stands alone and just plays an acoustic guitar when he sings it. He was a diminutive guy – I read that he stood about five feet tall – but he’s a giant on that instrument. I think he gets more sound – more dynamics, more feeling – out of that single guitar than the more lushly-instrumented versions do, and he gets it while singing. And how he sings! His voice has a bit of Pete Seeger, a smidgeon of Phil Ochs, some John Denver, and a whole huge bunch of Steve Goodman, otherwise known as “Chicago Shorty”.

For all those reasons and more, I find Goodman’s version the most mesmerizing as well as the most exuberant. His liveliness, his head-shaking when he’s intent on doing something especially forceful on his guitar, his bouncing with the rhythm of the guitar-simulated train, and his transcendent delight in the whole enterprise is something to behold. When Goodman gets to the line “Mothers with their babes asleep/Are rockin’ with the gentle beat…” it’s sung with such tenderness and love, along with the guitar simulating the chugging of the train and Goodman’s body doing the same – that for me the song enters the territory of the transcendent and never leaves that realm.

Have you ever ridden a long-distance train? I have, many times, though not in many years. I once made a train trip from Boston to Pittsburgh, then to Chicago, then Denver, and then LA, briefly visiting friends with each stop. And that wasn’t the only long train ride I took, all by myself when in my college years and early twenties.

Even back then the rails were a dying throwback, but very evocative. In my childhood my family had taken a train from New York to Chicago (which is Goodman’s native city) – the Twentieth Century Limited – and I slept in a berth way up with my face just inches from the ceiling. I still remember the lulling, rocking feeling, and the mystery – as well as a little fold-out toilet that came with the room.

RIP Steve Goodman, man of music.

[NOTE: I found the following online in some YouTube comments to one of the renditions of the song. It’s a poem supposedly written by singer/songwriter Tom Paxton soon after Steve Goodman’s 1984 death:

Chicago Shorty would write you a song,
Then he’d play the damned thing all night long,
Make you coffee, fry you an egg,
Tickle your funnybone, pull your leg,
Talk your head off, laugh at your jokes,
Kiss your sister and charm your folks,
Lend you his house, lend you his car,
Give you the strings from his last guitar.
Stevie’d let you name the place,
Meet your plane and carry your case.
Chicago Shorty loved his life,
Loved his children, loved his wife.
He was a joy for me to know,
And I miss the little bastard so.]

A look at New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 2021

The New Neo Posted on by

When I first learned about Sullivan back in law school aeons ago, I remember being disturbed by the case. It’s not that I had a better solution. But it was easy to see the problem: how best to balance the need to have a free press with the need to protect people, even people in public life who are written about a great deal, from libel?

Sullivan‘s solution – to raise the bar for libel exceptionally high and to make actual malice (“meaning that the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether or not it was true”) necessary for a defamation finding against the press when a public person is the one maligned – presents the dangers of lies going unchecked and running rampant. But muzzling the press unduly isn’t good either.

Back in 1964, when the case was decided, the situation was exceedingly different than it is today. Now we have a press that has no regard for truth, is almost wholly partisan and firmly on the left, and willing to do almost anything to help its side win.

As with so many other things, none other than Donald Trump recognized the problem, since he has been the target of it. Even back during his 2016 campaign he was critical of the ruling, for obvious reasons:

One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we’re certainly leading. I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected,” Trump said.

I’m not sure how he thought he might do that, but at any rate it didn’t happen, and things have only gotten worse with the shameless and naked partisanship of the press plus the power of social media.

Even as early as 1985, one of the justices who voted for Sullivan expressed regret:

[I]n a 1985 case that helped refine how the Sullivan ruling applied in when a plaintiff was neither a public official nor a public figure, Justice Byron White expressed regret for the “actual malice” test that he had agreed with in Sullivan. “I have,” he wrote, “ … become convinced that the Court struck an improvident balance in the New York Times case between the public’s interest in being fully informed about public officials and public affairs and the competing interest of those who have been defamed in vindicating their reputation.” Chief Justice Warren Burger, who joined the court four years after Sullivan was decided but presided over the several of the cases that refined the Sullivan standard, agreed with White in his own concurring opinion.

Justice White’s description of the competing interests as he saw them is quite interesting. He sees on one side “the public’s interest in being fully informed about public officials and public affairs” and the other side as “the competing interest of those who have been defamed in vindicating their reputation.” Public versus individual interest – I believe that’s the traditional view. But what of the public’s interest in being informed of the truth rather than falsehoods? Do we not all have an interest in that? However, who determines what’s true and what’s false? After all, the MSM and social media gatekeepers and the left (redundant, I know) keep saying it’s they who tell the truth and those on the right who lie.

Justice Clarence Thomas also critiqued Sullivan back in 2019, saying that it and subsequent allied rulings “were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”

And yesterday Judge Laurence Silberman, a Reagan-appointed judge on the DC Circuit Court, issued a scathing dissent in a defamation case that’s gotten some attention:

The New York Times and The Washington Post are “virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” while the news section of the Wall Street Journal “leans in the same direction,” U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman said. He said the major television outlets and Silicon Valley giants were similarly biased.

“One-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” Silberman wrote. He exempted from his criticism of “Democratic ideological control” Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. But he lamented that these outlets are “controlled by a single man and his son,” a reference to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and questioned how long they could hold out.

Here’s a sample of the actual wording of the dissent:

After observing my colleagues’ efforts to stretch the actual malice rule like a rubber band, I am prompted to urge the overruling of New York Times v. Sullivan. Justice Thomas has already persuasively demonstrated that New York Times was a policy-driven decision masquerading as constitutional law. See McKee v. Cosby, 139 S. Ct. 675 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring in denial of certiorari). The holding has no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution, and it baldly constitutionalized an area of law refined over centuries of common law adjudication. See also Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 380–88 (1974) (White, J., dissenting). As with the rest of the opinion, the actual malice requirement was simply cut from whole cloth. New York Times should be overruled on these grounds alone. …

One can understand, if not approve, the Supreme Court’s policy-driven decision. There can be no doubt that the New York Times case has increased the power of the media. Although the institutional press, it could be argued, needed that protection to cover the civil rights movement, that power is now abused. In light of today’s very different challenges, I doubt the Court would invent the same rule.

As the case has subsequently been interpreted, it allows the press to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity. It would be one thing if this were a two-sided phenomenon. Cf. New York Times, 376 U.S. at 305 (Goldberg, J., concurring) (reasoning that the press will publish the responses of public officials to reports or accusations). But see Suzanne Garment, The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics 74–75, 81–82 (1992) (noting that the press more often manufactures scandals involving political conservatives). The increased power of the press is so dangerous today because we are very close to one-party control of these institutions. Our court was once concerned about the institutional consolidation of the press leading to a “bland and homogenous” marketplace of ideas. See Hale v. FCC, 425 F.2d 556, 562 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (Tamm, J., concurring). It turns out that ideological consolidation of the press (helped along by economic consolidation) is the far greater threat.

Much much more at the link. At the end of the article there, you can find links to a whole bunch of pieces reacting to Silberman, many of them – of course – from the leftist press.

I’m with Silberman, and have been from even before my political change. However, the problem of the proper standards remains – and of course, it’s not just the press that is biased to the left at this point. A great deal of the judiciary is as well. So I’m not sure the remedy lies in the judicial system at all.

In closing I’m going to include a quote offered this morning by commenter John Tyler, something William Shirer wrote as part of his reporting from Nazi Germany in the 30s:

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for the truth, said they were.

OCD symptoms post-COVID: easy to start, hard to end

The New Neo Posted on by

It doesn’t affect everyone, of course, but there are a lot of people who become susceptible to OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) symptoms in a situation in which anxiety is heightened and there’s a set of behaviors to focus on that make them feel safer. As soon as the COVID pandemic began, and the health care directives started coming out – stay distant from others, wash your hands (and even groceries) over and over, wear or don’t wear masks and all the rest – I said to some friends that all of America was going to have OCD before this was through, and that it would be quite the boon for therapists.

I was making a joke – kind of. But I was somewhat serious as well, because once such habits are formed it’s harder than one might think to break them, at least for many people. And there are children who probably can’t even remember another way at this point. I’ve had friends who say their grandchildren have become a lot more anxious. As we know, mental and emotional problems have increased in the year since this all began – although one thing I didn’t foresee from the start was that so many of the restrictions would last a year, but that trend became clear, too, after a few months.

So all of that brings us to this sort of thing. The author’s “us” certainly doesn’t include everyone, but I think it includes a lot of people, particularly among Democrats who have followed every command:

Public transit makes us sweat. The prospect of crowded restaurants and bars is thrilling but unfamiliar. People thirsting for daily interaction now worry they’ve lost the ease with which they once socialized. For so long we’ve been looking toward a world that gathers and touches, a world where smiles are unobscured and conversations unmuffled, but the longer we’ve been denied it, the more stressful its return has become.

“COVID definitely has shifted our experience, our perception of what’s considered normal,” said Lynn Bufka, senior director of practice transformation and quality at the American Psychological Association. “We should expect that there’s going to be some period of time when how we respond to the world around us is going to be different, where we’re going to potentially feel like this is … awkward. But what can be helpful is to recognize that everyone likely feels that way to some extent. Now we’re trying to figure out what normal is again.”

Ah, yeah – that “new normal” thing the left keeps talking about and hoping to shape.

More:

Nearly half of Americans say they feel uneasy thinking about in-person interaction once the pandemic ends, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2021 Stress in America report. Adults who received a COVID-19 vaccine were just as likely as those who haven’t been vaccinated to express unease.

That’s because, for the people more inclined to anxiety, these things tend to be irrational. The way it works is that, if they’ve weathered the storm safely, many people tend to have a gut feeling that it was all those precautions that kept them safe, and as a consequence they feel a sense of vague danger at dropping them. And yet it’s necessary to drop them (I’ve always washed my hands when coming home, and I plan to keep doing that). And our health mentors and blue state governors, as well as the Biden administration, aren’t saying much to guide people in the direction of normalcy. Why would they be eager to give up any of their newfound power?

The MSM and the Atlanta massage parlor murders

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew Sullivan gets this story mostly right:

We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in [the killer’s] history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.

And yet. Well, you know what’s coming. Accompanying one original piece on the known facts, the NYT ran nine — nine! — separate stories about the incident as part of the narrative that this was an anti-Asian hate crime, fueled by white supremacy and/or misogyny. Not to be outdone, the WaPo ran sixteen separate stories on the incident as an anti-Asian white supremacist hate crime. Sixteen! One story for the facts; sixteen stories on how critical race theory would interpret the event regardless of the facts. For good measure, one of their columnists denounced reporting of law enforcement’s version of events in the newspaper, because it distracted attention from the “real” motives. Today, the NYT ran yet another full-on critical theory piece disguised as news on how these murders are proof of structural racism and sexism — because some activists say they are…

This mass murderer in Atlanta actually denied any such motive, and, to repeat myself, there is no evidence for it — and that has been true from the very start. And yet, a friend forwarded me the note swiftly sent to students and faculty at Harvard, which sums up the instant view of our elite:

“Many of us woke up yesterday to the horrific news of the vicious and deadly attack in Atlanta, the latest in a wave of increasing violence targeting the Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander community … This violence has a history. From Chinese Exclusion to the nativist rhetoric amplified during the pandemic, anti-Asian hostility has deep roots in American culture.”

And on and on. It was almost as if they had a pre-existing script to read, whatever the facts of the case!

Almost? I assume Sullivan is being sarcastic here. But actually, they don’t need a script anymore. They know the playbook by heart.

Much more at the link, most of it good. One predictable flaw is that Sullivan thinks that Trump’s “China virus” statements have contributed to anti-Asian bias here (I’ve not seen any evidence for that; Trump was talking about China proper, not Asian-Americans), although Sullivan doesn’t go so far as to link these murders to it, and Sullivan also blames elite academia for its anti-Asian bias.

What can Republicans do to fight Biden’s border policy?

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes I think that people on the right are more fond of bashing the Republicans in Congress than they are of bashing the Democrats. I understand and share some of that impulse – the lack of fight and/or of conservative principles in certain members of the GOPe can be extremely infuriating.

But I think that some of the most fervent criticism of the GOP stems from the right’s frustrated and impotent rage towards the left, redirected at the GOP for not having saved us somehow from the terrible things that have already happened and that threaten to happen in the future.

For example, commenter “John Tyler” writes:

And the republicans in Congress? What is their response to [the Biden-induced border crisis], aside from some weak words?
Does the USA have immigration laws?
Cannot the Republicans in Congress file a lawsuit with the SCOTUS to demand the executive branch follow the law?
Where is the Constitutional authority for a president to literally overturn existing laws based upon an EO?
Why do the republicans do zero??

I could be wrong about my answer, and if someone knowledgeable about the law on this has some relevant information, let me know. But I am pretty sure that Republicans in Congress have no standing in the courts to challenge Biden’s orders on this. They are not considered to have sustained harm and therefore have no cause of action. If that seems ridiculous to you, then I suggest you take note of Dickens’ character Mr. Bumble’s observation that “the law is a ass — a idiot.”

But people keep demanding that the GOP would magically do something and in particular something effective. But aside from this lawsuit I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be allowed to file, what would it be? They control neither legislative body right now. Presidents usually are considered to have plenary power over immigration with just a few exceptions. The GOP Congress members do speak out (and probably tweet too, if they’re not blocked), but the MSM gives their statements short shrift and/or unfairly characterizes them.

Here’s McConnell’s statement on Biden’s immigration policies. I agree with John Tyler that statements don’t accomplish much, but what else can the Congressional GOP members do? That’s a real question from me, not just a rhetorical one.

Their statements:

On the state level, however there are legal challenges being mounted. For example, see this from March 10:

The Attorneys General of Arizona and Montana filed an amended a joint lawsuit Monday alleging that the Biden administration has violated immigration and administrative law. The Attorney General of Florida filed a similar lawsuit on Tuesday. All three complaints allege that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has disregarded its responsibilities and that changes in policy have put people in Arizona, Montana and Florida at risk.

The allegations arise from changes to policies governing the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants…

The DHS policy was announced in a memorandum and affects the DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services. The policy was part of a department-wide review of policies and practices. Shortly after the release of the memorandum, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought a restraining order to delay implementation. A federal appeals court granted the order, but limited it to 14 days. According to the Arizona/Montana complaint, the court in the Texas case concluded that some of the arguments against the policy could have merit. Some of those arguments are raised again in the Arizona/Montana complaint.

There may have been even more state filings since then.

The reason this is happening on the state level is that the allegations of damage to the citizens of those particular states (two of which are border states, and all of which – except Arizona – are red states) are the bases on which the argument in favor of standing lies. All of these states have Republican governors and Republican attorneys general. So Republicans are filing the lawsuits in the venues in which they have the greatest possibility of success for the cases to be heard.

I criticize the GOP when it’s at fault, and I share John Tyler’s wish that the would do more and do it with more flair and vigor that can be perceived by the public. But for over a decade I’ve been in disagreement with the reflexive bashing of the Party for doing nothing when it has done something, and sometimes when it has done all that is possible with the deck so stacked against it. Turning on all Republicans because of people like Romney (who really has turned into a viper) is short-sighted and destructive, in my opinion.

I’d like to see more fight in the GOP, and effective fight at that. I’d also like to see them praised where credit is due, condemned where opprobrium is due, attention paid to what seems possible and what does not, and awareness of what has actually been attempted by some GOP members.

Discus dumps Frontpage…

The New Neo Posted on by

…on the say-so of ye olde Southern Poverty Law Center:

As of today, Disqus is de-platforming us. They have refused to respond to inquiries seeking further explanation. Disqus has taken on faith the libelous accusations of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a widely-discredited, partisan group that frequently characterizes mainstream conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

As loyal and dedicated readers of FrontPageMag.com, you know how vital the comments section is to a website…

Rest assured, we will still have comments flowing soon. We are switching to a new service…

That new service is apparently now in place there.

More:

In just the past couple of years, MasterCard temporality shut us down, one of our local banks closed our account due to our “controversial positions on issues,” and a brokerage firm closed our account for “unknown reasons.” Amazon will not allow the Freedom Center, a 501 c3 IRS designated nonprofit, to participate in their Amazon Smiles charity campaign because of the SPLC’s designation of the Center has a “hate group” and now Disqus, the largest networked community platform on the Internet, has canceled our service.

The SPLC has a lot of power, doesn’t it?

I don’t use Disqus. I’ve never liked it, and I prefer to monitor my own comments. That takes time and effort, but so far it’s been worth it. Of course, I don’t have the traffic of Frontpage, so I assume they get more comments than I do and therefore the task of monitoring them would be greater, and so they delegate the chore.