George Rebane

Conservative intellect and commentator Dinesh D’Souza was convicted of a campaign violation that is laughably minor compared to ones that have been committed more numerously by liberals in similar circumstances.  Predictably, the liberals have had their wrists slapped and continued with business as usual.  D’Souza instead faced jail time and was sentenced to eight months supervised detention and five years’ probation.  During the day he was free to travel anywhere with permission as long as he was back in San Diego by the end of the day.  This is how he continued making speeches (his prime income), and performed community service tutoring.

However, a trip to do an interview with Fox News Megyn Kelly – all accomplished in one day – raised the ire of liberal power brokers who demanded that the judge ‘clarify’ D’Souza’s sentence so as to restrict his movements to San Diego County with no more media interviews or speeches or tutoring save by explicit permission of the judge.  So as in the case of the liberals' assault of conservative organizations in Wisconsin, D'Souze also has effectively been muffled above and beyond the constraints of his original sentence (more here) by the Left's cynical use of our judicial system.

This again demonstrates how the judiciary has become politicized by the Left who are now able to go back and have re-sentencing imposed when the original sentence no longer suits them.  The factors that led to D’Souza’s indictment and conviction are another matter that has been well covered over the last year, we won’t repeat it.  But I do want to draw the attention of readers to our steady march toward an autocratic cum tyrannical state.  More here.

Obama administration’s mismanagement of the Ebola epidemic has now reached new depths of incompetence.  The governors of New York and New Jersey have overridden the ineffective federal security procedures to impose their own executive orders quarantining travelers from Africa’s Ebola hotzone.  It is literally incomprehensible that our federal government has not done ANYTHING to slow the flow of Ebola carriers into the country.

With this week’s arrival of Dr Craig from West Africa, who immediately became symptomatic and admitted himself to a Manhattan hospital, we have clear evidence that the government’s management of this crisis is carried out by hacks and imbeciles whose only concern is how the day-to-day ‘optics’ will play out on the Democrats’ performance in the upcoming election.

Can you imagine that today it is just as easy for anyone to replicate the entry of Mr Thomas Duncan, patient one who died of Ebola in Texas over a month ago.  And Dr Spencer's passage through this screening gap confirms this conclusion.  As I stated before, the media has been complicit in this because there is yet a journalist with the wits to ask the direct and most important question –

‘Have any security procedures been put in place that would prevent another infected Ebola carrier like Mr Duncan to pass through airports and proceed on into the countryside?’

Instead, the questions are of such obtuse and fuzzy nature about diseased people getting in that Obama’s mouthpiece Josh Earnest can tell us that “there is no gap in our security procedures” because people are being “screened in Africa and again screened when they arrive”.  That is a patent lie or the man is dumber than a 2×4.  The incubation period and progress of the disease is known well enough that no passenger temperature readings would close any conceivable 'gap' through which Ebola carriers can daily enter by the tens if not hundreds.  And this is just one of now uncountable number of areas and issues roiling the country in which the administration has shown itself to have totally failed in carrying out its constitutional mandates.

Let’s see how they quietly eat/deny their words as the feds attempt to play catch-up to follow the lead of states’ governors forced to take matters into their own hands.

[27oct14 update]  Administrivia –Longtime reader and commenter Steve Frisch has threatened to sue for me for libel over an RR comment thread that he alleged has harmed him.  Apparently there has been an ongoing comment thread between Mr Frisch and other readers that makes reference to a ’13-year-old girl’.   Mr Frisch demands that I remove all comments in that thread.  My first instinct was to fight the threatened suit since RR is an open forum about which Mr Frisch has been aware for years.  As the record shows, Mr Frisch himself has also seriously libeled me and, possibly other commenters.   But upon consultation and reflection I could not find an acceptable outcome to such a pissing match given all else that is going on in my life.  So I have searched the comment streams under my recent posts, and have deleted all the claimed offending comments that I could find (would appreciate a heads up for any that I’ve missed).  In the future you will be able to enjoy the wit and wisdom of Mr Frisch on other blogs more suitable for expressing his thoughts, and perhaps even through some sock puppets which periodically visit RR.  We shall see.

But this experience adds to the growing string of unpleasant episodes that I have had with RR and my attempt to keep it an open and un-moderated forum that accepts the widest range of ideas and critiques from all sides of the ideological spectrum which may be expressed in an equally wide range of manners and modes.  I maintain this blog for sharing and testing my own views, and as a service to the readers who regularly visit these pages.  Fortunately my life is full but my years are limited.  I have been advised by other readers that they very much enjoy the treatment and play of ideas on RR, but are put off by the mudslinging that too often goes on among certain commenters.  I, like probably most other readers, do my best to skip over the mudballs.  With the passage of time I have concluded that perhaps I have been too tolerant – occasionally reading but mostly trying to step over those cow pies is not fun.  We live, we adapt – nuff said.