I told a slight fib in my profile on this website.  I said that John Quincy Adams is my hero (or role model).  Actually, that's not true.  My real hero and role model died yesterday, at 8:25 PM.  He was my father, and he was doubtless the finest man I have ever met in my 51 years.  I don't expect to meet a better in whatever years I have left.

I deliberately chose the word "fine" instead of "great", because I believe that Dad would have rejected the word "great".  Nonetheless, he lived and died the hero of all three of his sons, and leaves behind a fairly large and entirely despondent family who now has to figure out how to get along without our wise and beloved leader.  Most of all, he leaves behind a loving wife and the greatest love story his offspring have ever known.  (Their granddaughter Michelle said someone should make a movie about them. She's right.)

My father didn't give up life easily.  It took one heart attack and four different cancers to do him in, and even then he made it to 83.  He looked like a lovable father and grandpa, which he was, but anyone who thought of him as just that and no more was badly deceived.  He had steel in his spine, and had a very sharp and brutally honest mind.  He never deceived himself, which is a species of honesty not often encountered.  It's one that I have labored at for years, but have yet to master.

I want desperately to write something to try to explain to a reader who doesn't already know Papa how great he was.  (Wow, it hurts to even write of him in the past tense.)  I know that I'm not equal to the challenge, but I owe it to the Old Man (a term of great respect in my family).  I guess I'll have to settle for jotting down notes about who he was and what we've lost.

Next time:  Lessons My Father Taught Me (Sometimes Intentionally)

Yesterday the Post also carried on its website, though apparently not in the paper, a piece by one David Cole, "legal affairs correspondent" for The Nation, a hard-left magazine, titled "The Conservative Constitution of the United States." It begins:

We, the Real Americans, in order to form a more God-Fearing Union, establish Justice as we see it, Defeat Health-Care Reform, and Preserve and Protect our Property, our Guns and our Right Not to Pay Taxes, do ordain and establish this Conservative Constitution for the United States of Real America.

From James Taranto's Best of the Web Today (My comments in bold):

 

Zero-Tolerance Watch
"A former Florida high school student scored what her attorneys call a victory for the First Amendment last week with the end of her two-year legal battle over her Facebook comments about a teacher," reports the McClatchy-Tribune news service:

Katherine "Katie" Evans' three-day suspension from Pembroke Pines Charter High School for the comments will be wiped from her school record as part of a settlement agreement reached in her federal lawsuit against her high school principal. In addition, she will receive $15,000 in legal fees and $1 in nominal damages, her attorneys said.

Evans was suspended in November 2007 after her principal, Peter Bayer, learned she had created a Facebook group describing her Advanced Placement English teacher as "the worst teacher I've ever met." Bayer deemed the honor student's actions as "cyberbullying/harassment (of) a staff member" and placed her in a less rigorous English class, according to Evans' federal lawsuit.

It's a sad day when our teachers are "cyber-harassed" and "bullied" by being called lousy.  We used to do that all of the time in school, in places like the hallway and the cafeteria.  Teachers weren't whiners in my day.  Just what lesson is a student to draw from such hypersensitivety?  It's sure not a lesson in becoming an adult.

Then again, that analogy doesn't quite work, for in a school setting the teacher is supposed to be providing a service to the student rather than the other way around. In this analogy Evans is like an unhappy customer rather than a disgruntled employee.

My home received a robocall touting the DREAM Act as a mere act of justice that will offer young illegal immigrants who crossed the border illegally "through no fault of their own" a chance to make a future in our country.  The reality is rather different.  I offer this, from an e-mail I received from Eagle Forum:

Supporters of the Dream Act tout it as an innocent plan that would allow “children” brought into the U.S. illegally to obtain legal status and a path to citizenship, if they complete educational requirements or a specified length of military service.  This simplistic and misleading explanation fails to reveal the true nature of the legislation.  In truth, the Dream Act is fraught with serious problems, as it will

• Allow illegal aliens to apply for amnesty even if they are in their 30s when the bill is enacted.  Two versions of the bill require that an applicant be under 35 years of age when the bill is enacted; and the third version requires that an applicant be less than 30 years of age.

• Not require illegal aliens to obtain any degree or serve in the military to be granted amnesty.  The bill’s educational requirement is so squishy that even high school dropouts would qualify, as long as they obtain their GED and complete a mere 2 years at “an institution of higher education,” including a community college or a vocational school.

The “military service” requirement is also a pretense, since it would allow illegal aliens to obtain amnesty for enlistment in the “uniformed services,” which would include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Public Health Service.

Worst of all, an illegal alien who is unable to complete either the educational or the military service requirement can still be granted amnesty, if he shows that his removal would result in a hardship to himself or his U.S. citizen or Legal Permanent Resident spouse, child, or parent.

• Provide a “safe harbor” for any alien who has a pending application for conditional status.  This restriction on the Secretary of Homeland Security’s ability to remove an illegal alien would lead to fraud and abuse, as illegal aliens attempting to delay their removal would inevitably apply for conditional status, regardless of their eligibility.

Such fraudulent applications would increase the financial burden on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who are tasked with processing such applications.  Fraudulent applications would also delay processing for aliens who are actually trying to enter America in a legal manner.

• Allow amnestied aliens to apply for citizenship and petition to bring family members — including their parents who brought them here illegally — to the U.S. as soon as they become citizens.

• Grant in-state tuition to amnestied aliens, even as U.S. citizens and legally present aliens attending school across their state lines are denied the same tuition rates.

• Allow amnestied aliens to qualify for other federal student assistance, including federal student loans, federal work-study programs, and other federal educational services.  American taxpayers already foot the bill for these programs.  Since an estimated 1.3-2.1 million illegal aliens will qualify for amnesty under the Dream Act, taxpayers can expect the cost of providing these benefits to skyrocket!

• Tie DHS’s hands in removing illegal aliens whose applications for amnesty are denied.  The Dream Act prohibits DHS from using information from an illegal alien’s amnesty application to initiate a removal proceeding, or to investigate fraud that has occurred in the application process.  As a result, applicants who intentionally try to commit fraud against the system will effectively be safe from prosecution.  The Dream Act unacceptably puts DHS in a more difficult position than an illegal alien, as it requires DHS to “prove a negative” (that is, prove it did not use information obtained from an unsuccessful amnesty application) before it can even begin investigating and prosecuting abusers.

Call your representatives and tell them no DREAM Act and no amnesty!

You just have to laugh at Joe Scarborough, the long-ago (1995-2001) Republican congressman turned MSNBC morning host. We don't mean because his show, which we never watch, is funny. If it were (OK, to be fair, if it is), we'd be laughing with him. Rather, because, as the Puffington Host's Howard Fineman reports, he plans to "help headline the launch next month of a new national group dedicated to restoring civility in politics."

Scarborough, a Republican, former Florida congressman and host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, will participate in the debut event of "No Labels" on December 13 at Columbia University in New York.

The slogan of the nolabelists: "Put the Labels Aside. Do What's Best for America."

The Hermit Crab is really crabby tonight.  I not only had to spend hours of time and lots of money I can't afford, because a married man is practically required to do so, but I did it against a high tide of interference from the person I shop for, and she wasn't even in the house!!!  Next time I shut off the phone!

Since a rage is a terrible thing to waste, I'm going to type up some notes I've accumulated.  No mercy will be shown.

Democratic Congressman Heath Shuler ran for Minority Leader in the House of Reprehensibles against Nazi Pelosi, and got flattened 150-43.  He declared that he had run against Pelosi "with no plan for winning".  Sounds rather like his NFL career.  Seems that 1st round draft choice Shuler was too dim to become an NFL quarterback, which made a political career in the Democratic Party an obvious 2nd choice.



Does anyone but me find it amusing that the Democrats have created a new post called House Assistant MINORITY Leader for James Clyburn?  Kudos to the House Democrats for leaving the word "token" out of the title.



The term "Blue Dogs" for supposedly "conservative" Democrats was never so fitting as this year.  First of all, there are no conservative Democrats, just as there are no blue dogs.  (Using dye doesn't count.)  Secondly, blue dogs being rabid politicians, they are apt to turn on their masters, the voters.  What do you do with a rabid "blue dog"?  You put them down!



Some of the dimmer leftists have been saying that the Republican victories in the fall happened because Americans just don't like having a black President.  Of course, the prospect of having a black President didn't stop those same bigoted SOBs from voting this American Mugabe into office to begin with.  This reminds me of my brief, inglorious stretch as a convenience store manager.  I hired a young black man named Derrick.  I soon was forced to fire him, when I caught him trying to steal $100 from the store.  (I won't bore you with the details.)  When I told him I was firing him, he said "I don't know if this is happening because I was black."

My response?  "Weren't you black when I hired you?"



Veteran hippie-dip folk singer Joan Baez, 69, fell from a treehouse recently, but was not seriously injured.  I'm assuming she fell on her head.  I also note that she said she likes to sleep in the treehouse because she likes to sleep with the birds.  At least I think that's what she said.  I read a transcript of her remarks, but remember, she's a 60s refugee.  Maybe she said The Byrds.



Thanks largely to the one-child policy in communist China, the country is looking at a large disparity in their proportions of males and females in their future population.  (Since Chinese culture values male children more than female, the poor baby girls often fall victim to sex-selection abortions.)  Will unmarried Chinese men turn to piracy or coast-raiding to carry off females from other lands, a la the Vikings of legend?  Sounds like a Monty Python skit...



Oh, well.  I'm out of time.  I feel a little better, anyway.  How are you?

From National Review Online's Bench Memos (note highlighted sentence):

Tribe to Obama: Sotomayor Is “Not Nearly As Smart As She Seems To Think She Is”

I’ve obtained a copy of an interesting letter that Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote to his protégé, President Barack Obama, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Souter’s announcement of his decision to retire from the Court. I will post a PDF of the letter shortly. [Update:  Here’s the letter.] In the meantime, I’ll call attention, in this post and two or three others, to some of its highlights.

The express purpose of Tribe’s letter is to urge that Obama nominate Elena Kagan to the Souter vacancy. But before making his affirmative case for Kagan, Tribe argues strongly against the alternative of nominating Sonia Sotomayor:

Bluntly put, she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is, and her reputation for being something of a bully could well make her liberal impulses backfire and simply add to the fire power of the Roberts/Alito/Scalia/Thomas wing of the Court on issues like those involved in the voting rights case argued last week and the Title VII case of the New Haven firefighters argued earlier, issues on which Kennedy will probably vote with Roberts despite Souter’s influence but on which I don’t regard Kennedy as a lost cause for the decade or so that he is likely to remain on the Court.

Tribe then discusses possible candidates for a future Stevens vacancy and pointedly doesn’t mention Sotomayor even for that vacancy.

Readers of this  clever, perceptive (if sporadically updated) website have known this for a long time now.  Justice Somediocre is an intellectual nullity, a poster child for repealing all affirmative action laws, and was appointed to the Supreme Court (in my opinion) to discredit that great American institution.  Of course, it doesn't really deserve the credit that it retained before this embarrassing choice, but this sure didn't help.  It's a pity no-one in the major media told us this before her confirmation.

And don't get me started on Elena Kagan...