In response to ”Censorship only recourse for liberals” by Jeremy Reynalds, 10/5/98,

UNM Daily Lobo.

”But whining and complaining are typical of liberals, who, as a rule, have been unable to compete successfully in

the conservative-dominated talk radio marketplace.”

Jeremy Reynalds raises some interesting issues in his recent column. One of

these is ”why isn’t there any ‘liberal talk radio’?” Could it be that liberals don’t have jobs that let them run the radio all

day? Could it be that liberals aren’t drawn to a ”self-described idiot entertainer”? What is the liberal equivalent of a

”ditto-head” (what Rush Limbaugh’s devout fans call themselves)?

KUNM & Public Radio notwithstanding, liberals aren’t

sitting around waiting for someone to do their thinking for them and aren’t searching for someone to reduce the complex issues to nice,

compact phrases that provoke while saying nothing (”femi-nazi”). Perhaps this is why there is no ”liberal” talk radio.

These days, everyone is shouting & no one is listening. Most people seem to have already made up their minds & they seem only

interested in hearing those they agree with (an important role of talk radio). Discent is despised.

After you’re done nodding your

head to the radio & flinging such labels as ”liberal” and ”conservative”, what are you doing to elevate public discussion

of the issues that seem to be tearing our nation apart?

Thirty years ago, this nation was rocked by liberal kids. Thirty years later,

they’ve become old farts clucking their tongues at the sad state of affairs — and worse, doing everything they can to crush the true

progress begun a generation ago. The pendulum will swing again. mjh

[printed in the UNM Daily Lobo 10/15/98]

PS — yeah, I resurrected this oldie from 6 years ago. Now, we do, in fact, have ”liberal talk radio” (www.airamericaradio.com) online. Perhaps this brings balance; will

it do more?

By the way, I may have been a little hard on my cohort. Did you know that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld worked for

Nixon? So, maybe 30 years haven’t changed things that much afterall. mjh

Big Brother Is Watching By Lance Ulanoff, PCMag.com

A recent Associated Press article about the FBI raiding an Ohio-based chat host company’s offices and confiscating its servers sent

a chill up my spine. The FBI acted on information that someone may have used the service for hacking. It was within its jurisdiction,

obtaining a warrant for the search and seizure. But it’s what they could do with those servers and the information stored on them that

really has me spooked. …

Who gets to draw the line about what the FBI can see? A warrant to confiscate a server is like giving

the FBI a warrant to search every house in the state of Maine. The level and kinds of information that could be on the servers is

certainly as varied as what you could find in a few thousand homes. …

Right now, I’m envisioning a series of frightening

home raids where the FBI confiscates personal computers from anyone they think may have been involved.

This new Big Brother-ish

environment is fueled, to some extent, by the Patriot Act, which is giving federal authorities far more latitude in their pursuit of

cybercriminals. I have no love for jerks that create viruses and attack or take over other people’s PCs, but I worry that the Feds

now have more power than they know what to do with. I believe this is primarily because they don’t understand just how twisted the

thread of cyberterrorism can become and how hard it can be to trace an attack to its correct origin.

All of law

enforcement has such expanded powers these days. This article is one of many showing just how real the threat to us all is. It is sad

that the author’s conclusion is not that we need to re-assert the Bill of Rights and curtail unrestricted policing; instead, he

says stay away from certain Internet resources because you may get implicated in spite of your innocence. mjh

FBI Removes Servers From

Chat Room Company
February 24, 2004

POWELL, Ohio (AP) — Federal agents conducting an Internet crime investigation confiscated

computer equipment and data files from a company that hosts private Internet chat rooms, an FBI spokesman said Tuesday.

GOP Collegians are not claiming ”victim

status.” … These young men and women eager for knowledge are merely seeking a balanced presentation of materials. Classrooms today

do not foster a ”marketplace of ideas” — which is at the very core of an education.

Students are being inundated with

left-wing ideology, without an alternative viewpoint presented in the classroom. — CHARLES MESSIN, Rio Rancho, ABQjournal: Letters to the

Editor

The recent furor over too many Democrats at the University reminds me of Spiro Agnew. Young

Republicans may have to google Agnew to find he was a foul-mouthed petty thug who was forced to resign from the Vice Presidency (yes,

before Dick Nixon, conservative Republican, did the same thing). Before Agnew’s fall, he railed against the liberal media and

universities. So did another great conservative, George Wallace.

Funny that we hear the same crap today, more than 30 years later.

Apparently, conservatives believe they narrowly escaped the fiendish programming of their liberal teachers. Who taught you to read, to

write, to reason, to listen? Must have been all those Republican grade school teachers. It certainly wasn’t Rush Limbaugh, Jerry

Falwell, Pat Robertson, ad nauseum. mjh

Ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering

isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law

and order. — Spiro T. Agnew

[notice it is no longer necessary to append ”ultra-” — just liberalism

is scathing enough.]

Spiro Agnew – Wikipedia

On October 10, 1973, Agnew became the

second Vice President to resign the office. Unlike John C. Calhoun, who resigned to take a seat in the Senate, Agnew resigned after

pleading nolo contendere (no contest) to a criminal charge of tax evasion, part of a scheme where he allegedly accepted $29,500 in

bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Agnew was fined $10,000 and put on three years’ probation.

Online NewsHour:

Remembering Spiro Agnew — September 18, 1996

Right’s right: His domestic failings aside, the

president is focused on this basic truth: We’re a nation at war by Jeff Gardner, Albuquerque Tribune Online

[The Left]

disingenuously raged about ”W’s rush to war” or deceitfully claimed W ”lied” about weapons.

Well, let me say this about that….[I]f the president believed the weapons were there, he wasn’t lying…. [Duhbya] is dead right about

the most important thing: We’re at war.

It’s so frustrating to read right-wing columnists like Jeff

Gardner. First, conservatives act as if they don’t run everything: the House, the Senate, and the White House (ie, all of the Executive

and Legislative Branches). As for the Judiciary, the radical right rails against ”activist judges” while doing their best to stack

the bench their way (while using the Legislature to curtail numerous rights). With a tight grip on all three branches of government,

arch-conservatives turn their ire on the media, the supposed liberal media that puts someone like Gardner on the front of the section and

may, just may, print someone like me a few pages back.

If Bush wasn’t lying about WMD (or tax cuts or the Patriot Act, ad nauseum),

then he is ill-informed, even ignorant and incurious (widely acknowledged). Why is that so much better in a President?

For at least 20

years, conservatives have framed and determined every aspect of public discourse. Everything must be expressed in their terms, by their

rules. We are at war because they say we are. Gardner uses two standard reactionary tactics: put words in your opponents’ mouths

(ridicule them for things they never said — reread his column to note all the little digs and jibes) and repeat exactly what other

conservatives say (stay on target, consistent and loyal). These are powerful techniques that the radical right uses to stifle discussion.

You’re with them or you’re against them.

Bush’s presidency is the crowning achievement of the radical Christian fundamentalist

right — our Taliban. And still they feel the need to berate, belittle and bully the Left. Real nice folks. It’s a shame they can’t

enjoy their near-total victory (and all the spoils). Better get what you can before the pendulum swings again, as we all know it will —

maybe even in November. mjh

It is despicable that someone defaced posters advertising a

speech by the Radical Right’s Ann Coulter, who lauds Joe McCarthy, American Fascist, as a hero. We should all speak out against the

childish vandalizing of these posters. In fact, the Democratic Party should pay Coulter to speak — she scares the hell out of some

conservatives, too.

However, we should all also speak out against lying in order to infiltrate, spy on and denounce your classmates,

as a young Republican did on campus after this incident (and as police everywhere do today, with John Ashcroft’s blessing). This kid

will go far in the Bush administration.

As to the Republican students’ ”study” indicating there are few Republicans on the

faculty, let’s put aside their spying and efforts at intimidation and bullying and ask, if this is true, why? Maybe being a teacher

isn’t the best route to riches, fame or power? Maybe being a teacher requires real compassion, not pretend. Maybe a campus is not the

best place to be if you need everyone to agree with you and ask no questions, or if you’re just ”incurious”. Better the White

House. mjh

[printed in the Daily Lobo 3/12/04]
Read the background stories …
Continue reading Campus Radicals →

Speaker asks religions to unite –

Daily Lobo – News

[Sheikh Yusuf Estes, a former Christian minister] advised believers to unite against secular culture.

[Christians and Muslims] ”today know what the truth is, but we’re all standing by silently while those who don’t believe in

God, don’t believe in any scripture and don’t believe in any prophet are trying to take the world away from the believers, and

sell us down the toilet like a bunch of trash,” he said shouting.

After speaking of the brotherhood of Christians and

Muslims (but not Jews), the Sheikh explains the source of the world’s problems: non-believers. Wow — that’s just like

Republicans saying Democrats want big government and fiscal irresponsibility. It’s a simple lie, a tactic for arousing the passions

of the zealots. Now that all pretense of religious neutrality is gone from America (formerly called “separation of church and

state”), it’s the non-believers who should be afraid. We are one election away from a “Christian Republic”. Can’t happen here? It IS

happening daily. Christian Fascism is going to make “A Handmaid’s Tale” look unimaginative. Get your burkas now,

ladies.mjh

printed in the Daily Lobo 3-3-04

”As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight, when everything remains

seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become

unwitting victims of the darkness.” — Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas