[This blog was inspired by an excellent comment in Walter Todd Huston's excellent column.]

Originally published with complete transcript at The Minority Report.

The Drive-By Media will not suddenly become critics of President-Elect Barack Obama, like they did with President Jimmy Carter (some of the anti-Southern bigotry was vile), but, they will slowly turn on him due to how he reacts to any semi-tough question from their kind trying to actually do their job.

The most recent case in point was from Ed Henry of CNN, that dared question what “change” is reflected by a bunch of Clinton retreads. Will Ed the Reporter get “plumbed” like Joe the Plumber, the last citizen to dare question the wisdom and veracity of the President-Elect?

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Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Barack Obama was the one, who was waiting for? Was it us, or Al Qaeda in India; Russian missiles near Poland and warships in Venezuela, respectively; and Iran near the bomb?

Suddenly, post-Olympics, post-Election Day and especially post-intelligence briefing, President George W. Bush’s post-911 record doesn’t look so bad. Why else would he make the unprecedented re-hire of his predecessor’s Secretary of Defense?

Obama has sung bass in the liberal Democratic Party Bushlied chorus since his “courageous” 2003 Springfield stand against the Iraq War while his Washington, D.C. primary opponents voted for it. But, now, one of those with such poor judgment is the Vice President-Elect and the other, his presumed Secretary of State.

Ignorance was bliss. Getting real is more than a fist-pump with the First lady in waiting.

Getting real is finding out how much more God-damned are every other nation on Earth than the one, described as such by his former pastor of twenty years, which just elected him. It’s finding out the threat assessment the CIA sends over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue each morning and realizing what a job it will be to match the spotless post-911 record of Bush in your primary job as Commander-in-Chief: protecting the homeland.

Does Obama really think that it would have been less likely that America would have suffered another 911-type attack had Zawahiri and Bin Laden not sent tens of thousands of their well-trained terrorists to die at the hands of the armed forces of the United States and our allies in Iraq? Or that attacks on our homeland would be less likely during his term if we had surrendered in 2006 at his suggestion?

Now that we have won in Iraq, will a Commander-in-Chief be able to resist endearing himself to warriors he wants to re-enlist, not to mention the photo-ops, by welcoming them home as the victorious heroes they are?

We think not.

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Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report and Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

The Foghorn from the Associated Press uncorrected by The Charlotte Observer:

MUMBAI, India

Security forces assaulted a Jewish center in Mumbai where Muslim militants were believed holed up with possible hostages today, with black-clad commandos dropping from a Indian helicopter as sharpshooters opened fire on the five-story building.

The Leghorn:

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Promoted from the diaries by Erick.

Michael Barone reports:

Democrats hope for a disproportionately large turnout of young and black voters, but Barack Obama, busy building an administration with an eye to bipartisan acceptability, seems so far unwilling to deploy the one political asset—personal campaigning by the president-elect—that seems most likely to spark such turnout.

Democrats hope, but Obama’s non-change Clinton cabinet doesn’t extend to the Peach State:

I imagine there’s some behind-the-scenes arguments among Democrats about whether Obama should (pardon the expression) march through Georgia. Bill Clinton’s campaigning for incumbent Wyche Fowler in the 1992 runoff didn’t help Clinton’s prestige but rather signaled something in the way of political weakness, because Republican challenger Paul Coverdell won. I’m guessing that Obama wants to avoid a repeat of this outcome.

Do some Senate Democrats fear the spotlight and accountability of a filibuster-proof majority?

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Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner at The Minority Report

Black Americans are justifiably proud of their country in the wake of the election of Barack Obama as President. In fact, most Americans, including yours truly and other conservatives and Republicans, are proud that the election of a Black man is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that America is not a racist country.

Of this, I am much thankful on this most American of holidays. I have known for decades that America isn’t racist, but do understand, as one African-American columnist put it, that only such an election could convince many blacks that “America loved them back.”

As I wrote on the day after Election Day, we have but one president at a time, and the President-Elect will be my President come Inauguration Day. But we have only one country for all time (if we can keep it), and my patriotic love for it is unrelated to the outcome of elections.

But, not all Americans share this kind of patriotism:

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Who said this was an amorphous enemy; that detainees would be held forever; and that we wouldn’t know when we had won?

Originally published at The Minority Report’s Live Wire by gamecock

From Camp Cropper, Iraq

The U.S. military is rushing to build criminal cases against some 5,000 detainees it deems dangerous - including suspected members of al-Qaeda in Iraq - because the proposed security pact with Iraq would end its right to hold prisoners without charge. But it also calls for control of security matters to shift to Iraqi authorities.

Iraq cares about its own security.

If passed, the deal would mean U.S. troops could no longer hold people without charge as they have since the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Beginning Jan. 1, all detentions would have to be based on evidence, and the U.S. would have to prosecute prisoners in Iraqi courts or let them go.

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Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

After the most liberal state in the nation rejected same-sex marriage at the ballot box for the second time this decade, protests rallies were held across the nation, including here in Charlotte.

Some gay rights activists point to the defeat of same-sex marriage with the passage of Proposition 8 in California and similar bans approved in Arizona and Florida on this past Election Day as evidence of hate:

“We need a movement in this country,” said Joanie Beasley of Gastonia. “It is time we said no to all bigotry and hate. It is time we demanded our civil rights.”

Bigotry and hate?

Merely to favor maintaining the 5000 year old definition of the institution of marriage, is now considered “hate”?

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Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

One of the factors restraining investors since 2006 and even before the Fannie Mae housing/credit crunch bubble burst, has been their knowledge that income from any investments would be subject to higher tax rates after 2010.

Hear the breathless, panting Drive-By media:

Obama is said to be reconsidering one key campaign pledge – his proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Several people familiar with the discussions told The New York Times that he instead might let those tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011, effectively delaying any tax increase while he gives his stimulus plan a chance to work.

So we are supposed to jump up and down that the same Democrat policy that helped gring the economy to a halt since they took power in 2007 will continue?

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That especially includes those of the illegal enemy combatant variety held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in theater in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com and at The Minority Report

The holding of captured enemy forces so they cannot return to the battlefield to kill one’s own soldiers is elemental. But, the millennia-old common sense practice has its critics, including our Examiner.com civil rights column dueling partner, J.D. Tuccille:

Indefinite detention until the war ends? Given that war has never been declared, and that we face a rather amorphous enemy with no clear chain of command, the end of the war may be hard to recognize — and a long time coming.

No war declared?

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We start on two fronts today.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The first is the Eastern Front, or, more precisely, the Middle Eastern Front, where conclusive evidence of total victory by the Armed Forces of the United States emerged this week with the approval of a security agreement endorsed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush that would have U.S. combat forces out of Iraqi cities in 2009 and out of the country by 2001. A separate agreement would establish an alliance against terrorism between the U.S. and Iraq in the heart of the Middle East.

We the People rule in America and whether or not President Bush, President-Elect Obama or the Drive-by media will declare the obvious and honor one of the greatest achievements by the United States military in history, we must.

Mission Accomplished! Job well done. Twenty-five million purple-fingered citizens freed by the United States and allies in the War on Terror while the United States has suffered no more attacks on the homeland since September 11, 2001.

We heed Finrod’s call: Henceforth, November 22, 2008 shall be Victory in Iraq Day!

The second front is the Western Front, or, more precisely, the Domestic Front of western Civilization.

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And Republicans they should do it quickly before the Democrats get in the frontseat.

Originally published by Mike DeVine as legal editor for The Minority Report on its Live Wire:

This is a brilliant idea, even if The One did think of it. It is what used to be called political victory for a more savvy GOP. Republican office holders, radio talk show hosts and columnists have been all over TV, radio and the Web advocating bankruptcy for bankrupt companies and rightly decrying any bailout that keeps union contracts in tact and that lets Reid, Pelosi, Franks and Dodd (The Three Horsemen and National Velvet of the American economic Apocalypse) run the auto industry like they run Amtrak and Fannie Mae.

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Paint it Blue! North Carolina may Now and only now, be “declared” for the President-Elect.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

Incompetence or subterfuge by the Associated Press in their “reporting” on the counting of the presidential election votes in North Carolina?

It’s obvious to this former trial lawyer that a competent cross-examination would find then guilty of venality and in a fetal position whining in a corner if ever they had to answer under oath for their “symbolic” declarations of Obama electoral success and bad “new” math in the Tar Heel State before yesterday. For only yesterday were all the votes counted.

But Charlotte’s law and civil rights examiner reveres the First Amendment as applied to AP and us, and so, will now exercise his.

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Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

A conservative republican senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma (right), wants to prevent a Republican President’s Secretary of the Treasury from spending $350 billion absent approval of a Democratic Party congressional majorities.

Thomas Freidman, a liberal Obama-supporting columnist with the New York Times opposes Democrats in congress that want to come to the rescue of their UAW union constituents at General Motors:

It was necessary to stabilize the banking system, but a crucial “bailout” distinction must be made. Charles Krauthammer acknowledges that:

The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

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Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com and as legal editor for The Minority Report

Exit polls from Election Day 2008 showed that a majority of voters trusted democrats more than republicans to cut taxes, despite nearly all of world history.

There is no excuse for this or course, especially since Proposition 13 in California more than 25 years ago, but one thing I too often notice in conservative blogs is the failure of the author to identify the villainous democrat political actor as being member of the Democratic Party early in the story or not at all.

Gamecock never fails to do so. In fact, I consider identifying the Democratic Party as the morally and intellectually bankrupt party much more important than identifying the name of the particular Democrat.

Given the massive straight ticket voting for the jack-ass party two weeks ago, I hope this fact concentrates your minds.

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Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Part one of our Election 2008 post-mortem, rejected the notion of a “secular American majority”. I agree with Dave Sage that culture drives politics; that America has been growing more secular; and that America desperately needs a new Great Awakening outside of politics. However, Republicans are not yet Daniel in a pagan Lions Den. Part two builds on that theme, as well as how we can win back republicans that bolted the party or sat out this election; as well as win over conservative democrats and many secular voters.]

I knew McCain was going to lose when I received an “Obama saves the GOP” e-mail on the Saturday before Election Day from my friend Don Scoggins, the leader of the Frederick Douglass (pictured below) Society, and one of my personal conservative heroes. Don, a conservative black Republican, helped shape my post-2000 conversion to the GOP and has been an inspiration to me, especially as regards my efforts to reach out to minorities with the conservative message.

In explaining his decision to vote for the Democrat, Don expressed an understandable pride in Obama’s skills and symbolic value in affirming a culmination of the Civil Rights Movement. But primarily, Scoggins was voting against a McCain and a GOP that had lost their way.

At first I was shocked, but a week after the election I started to understand how Obama could save us.

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By Mike “gamecock” DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

The Left now controls all levers of national power in Washington and has no more need for triangulators that delayed the vesting of their birthright.

The worshippers wanting to bring back ‘68 have hated Bill Clinton since the 1995 State of the Union that declared the “Era of Big Government” over. Most were no longer enamored of Hillary, either, since her 2003 hawkish Iraq War votes either, but she was, after all, a female feminist icon.

Compared to the cold, hot star of Obama, Hillary is lukewarm and, so, scheduled to be spued out of the Left’s mouth.

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The reason: No “secular American majority” exists. The vast majority of Americans still believe in God.

By Mike “gamecock” DeVine, Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

In his brilliant A Republican Party for a Secular America, David Sage correctly cites the 2008 rejection of the GOP “in its current form” by the American people at the ballot box, but then attributes that rejection to Republican mimicking of Reagan’s social conservative agenda, while agreeing that “conservatism” sells.

David’s sagacity measures 67% on the Gamecock meter. Let me work backwards.

Given Americans’ aversion to granting three consecutive terms to the same party in the White House and their penchant for throwing out the party in said House during economic hard times, even unabashed and unapologetic marketing of conservatism might not have sold this year.

We will never know, because we didn’t even try to sell conservatism before Palin was chosen. And when McCain said me too to President Bush and Senator Obama to the very non-conservative Paulson panic prevention plan, conservative sales went down the drain.

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Originally published by our, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

Barack Obama’s election to lead America’s largest institution, its government, by a 75% Caucasian electorate, should eliminate further civil rights claims not based on actual racist acts by identifiable flesh and blood racists.

When a self-identified African-American receives more votes for president (both actual and as a percentage of the majority group) than a blue blood white guy from Massachusetts, it is time to “no-bill” racism indictments against its institutions.

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Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine, in Examiner.com

Last August, Osama bin Laden’s former driver was sentenced to just five and a half years in prison for providing material support for Al Qaeda in the first trial of a terror suspect by a Special Military Commission (SMC) at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Salim Hamdan, who could have received 30 years to life, appeared healthy in his open trial (see artist’s depiction). Instead, he was acquitted of conspiracy by the six military officers that served as the jury, even though he chauffeured OBL after learning AQ was involved in terrorism.

Given the above, I was a bit surprised that J.C. Tuccille’s “Courts torn over Guantanamo torture” suggests that the first military tribunals convened since World War II lack credibility.

The Examiner.com column cites three legal rulings, two of which were resolved in favor of Gitmo detainees and an ACLU Freedom of Information Act fishing expedition as justification for concern.

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Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

What is the big hurry in “declaring” the winner of North Carolina’s electoral votes in the presidential election? Especially since the outcome will not slow down the transition of President-Elect Barack Obama?

The day after the election, AP reported:

“In the unofficial returns, Obama led Republican John McCain by 13,746 votes. Gary Bartlett, the state elections director, said Obama should be considered the unofficial victor. Bartlett said an estimated 40,000 provisional ballots still must be counted, but based on experience, the outcome is not likely to change when the State Board of Elections certifies the results on Nov. 25.”

Electors don’t meet until December 15th, the Joint Session of Congress to count the votes isn’t until January 6th and Inauguration Day isn’t until January 20th.

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