This morning President George Bush nominated Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. Judge Alito is known to be a committed conservative. Scotusblog.com says about Alito:

Liberal observers of the Court immediately pointed to a handful of Judge Alito’s opinions on the Third Circuit as indications of just how conservative they expect him to be. Among those cited, for example, by americanprogress.org were these: 1991, supporting abortion restrictions, in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that later went to the Supreme Court and led to the partial reaffirmation of Roe v. Wade; in 1997, in Bray v. Marriott Hotels, seeming to endorse a limited view of minorities’ job rights; in 1991, in Nathanson v. Medical College, appearing to embrace tougher standard for asserting disability rights; in 2000, in Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, finding that Congress had gone too far in passing the Family and Medical Leave Act; in 2004, in Doe v. Groody, embracing broader police search power, including strip searches; and in 2004, Dia v. Ashcroft and Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, taking a hard line against immigrants’ rights.

Alito has a lengthy resume, filled with strong indications that he is qualified professionally. Those who know him personally, and those who have served with him and appeared before the Third Circuit, have said he is an even-tempered individual. Some expect him to attempt to become a consensus-builder on the Supreme Court, and to be less aggressive in advancing his conservative views than Justice Antonin Scalia is known to be.

The President’s announcement stressed Alito’s lengthy career in the law, and 15 years as an appellate judge, which marked a stark contrast with the thin list of similar accomplishments by Harriet E. Miers, the White House Counsel whose nomination to the Court was withdrawn last week after a severe assault by the President’s most conservative followers.

As expected, Democrats, along with liberal organizations promised a hard fight against Alito’s confirmation. Battle lines will be drawn and the fight will be engaged very soon.

For the President’s announcement and Alito’s remarks, go here.

Blogs for Bush indicates that Harry Reid is not happy with the nomination. Reid remarked:

“I am disappointed in this choice for several reasons. First, unlike previous nominations, this one was not the product of consultation with Senate Democrats. Last Friday, Senator Leahy and I wrote to President Bush urging him to work with us to find a consensus nominee. The President has rejected that approach.

Senator Frist has announced

“If the Democrats are looking for a fight, we’ll be up for the fight. We won’t back down… We’re gonna get an up or down vote on the Senate floor and if the Democrats want a fight, they’ll get one.”

YES!

At a conference in Iran called “The World Without Zionism” we all know that President Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” To find out what isn’t widely reported check out A Daily Briefing on Iran.

It appears that in the short term, Iran’s regime is hoping to start a limited war with the USA that it believes it can survive, since they don’t believe that the West has the will nor the means to occupy Iran at this time.

Read more and check out the graphics that weren’t shown in the MSM.

Los Angeles City Council member Jan Perry needs our support and needs it now. She is opposing ACLU executive director Ramona Ripston being nominated to the LA Homeless Services Authority,

The Committee to Support the Original LA County Seal and the Los Angeles Heritage Coalition join Council member Perry in her effort to keep Ripston off the board.

Please call MS. Perrys office at 213 473-7009 or her field office at 323 846-2651 and voice your support. Send her e-mails at councilmember.Perry@lacity.org or write her at 200 No. Spring St. Rm 420, LA CA 90012.

While you are at it, contact your city council member and voice your opposition to the appointment. Do it now and be sure to attend the LA Council meetings when the appointment comes before the council. We will post the details when they are made available. But act now!

Read her article:

Homeless need help, not ACLU

By Jan Perry, JAN PERRY represents the L.A. City Council’s 9th District, which includes much of downtown Los Angeles.

WHAT WAS Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa thinking last week when he nominated Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority?

This is a city with 91,000 homeless people — the largest homeless population in the nation. Of these, 42% are chronically homeless and have lived on the street for many years. All of these people have complex problems and complicated life stories, ranging from poverty to mental illness and substance abuse. Some have simply cracked under extreme life experiences.

These are people who need practical solutions. They need jobs, shelters, treatment, permanent homes. They don’t need excuses.

But the ACLU has offered them just that.

For instance, the ACLU has litigation pending against the city seeking to prevent police from arresting people who sleep on the streets at night, arguing that the homeless should be “protected” by what they call a “necessity defense” because they don’t have the resources to sleep elsewhere.

But what good does that do? If we leave people on the streets and don’t create ways to bring them in for treatment, the problem will continue. Homeless people don’t need their right to die protected. They need help.

We do have ways of helping them. Creating a system of year-round, emergency homeless shelters, for instance, has provided many with an alternative to life on the street and has helped thousands into better living situations. Public investment of more than $12 million has created 4,000 units of permanent affordable housing for the homeless in downtown L.A., and more is coming on line.

I have worked with the ACLU in the past, and I have witnessed firsthand how the group’s determination and zeal on behalf of the civil rights of the homeless often outweigh its efforts to find real-world solutions to a tragic and growing problem.

Is it truly in the best interest of a person who suffers from mental illness and substance abuse to be given the pseudo-freedom to do harm to himself or to live among people who want to do harm to them?

The highest incidence of crime in skid row is transient-on-transient crime. Is it really in the best interest of the community to allow continued drug dealing and open-air narcotic use in a community where others have recovered and are living a more stable life? Don’t the people who work and live in skid row deserve the same benefits of a healthy and safe community that we all want?

I think the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority should be made up of people with expertise in policy and people with access to funding for housing and services for mental illness. The ACLU — which likes to waste time on symbolic issues such as removing the cross from the L.A. County seal — has no place on this authority.

Agreed.

Update: Stop the ACLU has more to say

The American Thinker has an article by Jonathan D. Strong about what Republicans should do now.

It has been a tough week for President, perhaps one of the most difficult of his Presidency apart from 9-11 and the Iraq War. However, like a true conservative and red blooded American its time to cowboy up, dust off, and get back to business. Liberals often mope around feeling sorry for themselves, but conservatives take responsibility and make things happen.

Winston Churchill said, “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Conservatives have a history of optimism and foreword thinking. No one embodied this more than Ronald Reagan and it is time to follow in his footsteps by making the best of a difficult situation. President Bush is now faced with the opportunity to refocus his administration, take stock of what he has accomplished thus far, and pursue what he hopes to still accomplish in the remaining 3 years of his presidency.

Second terms are always filled with tremendous difficulty for Presidents.

Presidents Wilson, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton all had far more difficult second terms in comparison to their first four years. Sometimes the difficulty is the result of increased scrutiny by the press and the public, other times it is a result of laziness, apathy, pride, carelessness and a lack of focus. The President and all conservatives should keep in mind that throughout the whole Plame affair, the indictment of Mr. Libby was not the original reason for the investigation. There is no evidence right now that Rove, Libby, or anyone else deliberately outed Valerie Wilson to get back at Joe Wilson. The special prosecutor made that quite clear in his press conference last week. That in itself if a victory for the administration.

Read more.

The article concludes:

Conservatives must stand with the President now. Despite his shortcomings, President Bush has achieved much in his Presidency and this is no time to abandon him as he faces further antagonism from the Democrats. If conservatives hope to see a conservative Supreme Court Justice be confirmed, they must stand with President Bush shoulder to shoulder.

Time to cowboy up, there’s 3 years to go.

Jonathan D. Strong, Esq. publishes The Strong Conservative.

Genevieve Peters is passionate about the California she remembers – before Gray Davis and runaway spending; before Enron and the energy scandals; before the huge influx of illegal aliens draining the resources of the State; before the public employee unions became so powerful that they now run the State and call the shots to their Democratic puppets in the State Legislature. Genevieve believes that the Governor’s reform initiatives will help to bring California back to that time.

When she heard that the Speaker of the California State Assembly, Fabian Nunez, was going to be addressing a group of public employee union members from Unite Here about the initiatives on the November 8th ballot, her thought was that the union is lying to its members about the real meaning of Propositions 74 through 77, and, in particular Proposition 75 which requires unions to get the consent of its members before using political action contributions by the members for political activities. She decided to go to the assembly and let her position be known – that it is in the interests of individual union members to support Proposition 75.

This is the United States of America, right? This is the land of the First Amendment where free speech is tolerated no matter what the message, right? Well, not as far as unions are concerned.

Two Los Angeles television stations caught on tape a hyped up mob of union activists intimidating and roughing up Genevieve – who had the courage to speak out in favor of the four reform initiatives.

While $115 million has been spent by public employee unions to oppose the reform initiatives and promote the false message that the voices of their members will be silenced if Prop 75 passes, an angry mob of dues paying union members showed what little respect they have for free speech by physically attacking a woman who spoke out in support of the governor’s reform initiatives.

“A single Schwarzenegger supporter struggles to hold her ground in a rally against the governor’s special election initiatives. Opponents tried to hit her with their signs and some blocked news cameras as she argued her point. The crowd turns quickly, grabbing her signs and tearing them up. Even a woman wearing an orange security vest rips up the “Vote Yes” signs.” (CBS 2 News, October 28, 2005)

If you think that I am exaggerating the thuggery and fascism exhibited by union members, you can view the news coverage for yourself here.

Union bosses in California have way too much power. The unions are fascist organizations not permitting dissent or opposing opinions. For union thugs to turn on a single defenseless woman who was only expressing her political opinion – a right guaranteed to her by the Constitution – is typical of their willingness to physically punish anyone who has a dissenting opinion.

Most disappointing is the fact that Speaker Nunez did nothing to stop the violence and attack on Genevieve. At the very least, Nunez – a former union organizer himself – has a duty to issue a public apology to this woman on behalf of the union bosses who control him. That is, unless the Speaker believes that violence and thuggery are acceptable forms of public expression.

I hope that Speaker Nunez will send his apologies forthwith to Genevieve. I think it is too much to ask that the union leaders do the same. I am sure they don’t think there is anything wrong with intimidating a woman with violence if she opposes their point of view.

My friend, Larry Sand, a Los Angeles school teacher, along with Lillian Perry, a Fontana school teacher sent a letter to 90,000 school teachers in California who are members of the CTA (California Teachers Union) as described in this post.

Larry just wrote in an email:

Greetings,

About a week ago Lillian Perry and I, along with the “Yes on 75” team, sent an email to 90,000 teachers in CA. The letter addressed the fact that the California Teachers Assn. is spending many millions to defeat several initiatives, which will be on the ballot here in November. CTA chief, Barbara Kerr, flapped her wings, smeared us and threatened us, but never did deal with the substance of what we wrote.

This past Thursday a second email (attached) went to the same teachers. We have yet to hear from Ms. Kerr.

This is the second email he sent to the California teachers:

From the Desk of:Lillian Perry, Fontana Teacher
From the Desk of: Larry Sand, Los Angeles Teacher

——————————————————————————–

October 20, 2005
Dear Colleagues:

In every public school in California, we teach our students about our right to freedom of speech. We teach them the value of being able to disagree, but still respect the opinions of those you disagree with. Apparently, freedom of speech is not something our union, the California Teachers Association (CTA) supports.

We wrote to you last week because we strongly disagreed with the political and financial decisions being made by the leadership of the CTA. The purpose of our email was to express a legitimate opinion and to inform our colleagues of our concerns.

Never in our wildest imagination did we believe that the CTA would threaten us with jail time for exercising free speech! Two days after we sent our email, the CTA announced that it was seeking to press criminal charges against us. This is what was reported in the Sacramento Bee:

“CTA Chief Counsel Beverly Tucker sent letters Friday asking the district attorneys of Sacramento, Alameda and Los Angeles counties to investigate the e-mails and ‘take appropriate action including filing criminal charges.’” (10/15/05)

This is what happens when you challenge the political agenda of our union’s leadership.

They do not tolerate a different point of view and instead threaten us with criminal charges because we dare disagree with them. We will never stop speaking out on what we believe and no amount of threat or intimidation will deter us.

We can only assume CTA leadership reacted this way because we are telling you information they don’t want you to know. For example, did you know that the CTA has already spent over $60 million THIS YEAR ALONE on political consultants and television ads? They have spent so much money on politics that they are seeking a $40 million loan just to keep providing basic services to teachers. According to a sworn affidavit by CTA Controller Carlos Moreno, an inability to get this loan would “cause great financial harm to CTA and affect CTA’s ability to continue to deliver its current level of services to members over the long term.”

How is it that our current leadership allowed our union to spend so much money on politics that it must now put itself even deeper in debt in order to provide actual services for teachers? Did you know that our leadership had a private meeting in June where they voted to raise our dues by $180 in order to cover the debt created by all of this political spending?

Our union leadership has grown quite adept at wasting our money on politics. In the past few years alone the CTA has spent over $100 million on political consultants and television ads supporting ballot measures that have NOTHING TO DO WITH EDUCATION!

Here are just a few examples, and you decide for yourself if you agree or disagree with how our leadership spends OUR MONEY. Did you know that CTA:

*Spent $10,000 fighting AGAINST the Three Strikes Law?
*Spent more than $2 million this year on ballot measures dealing with prescription drugs, state energy policy and an abandoned effort to regulate the way people buy cars?! (WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH TEACHING???!!!)
*Spent more than $2 million in 2004 in support of a losing ballot measure that would have made it easier to raise taxes?!
*Spent close to $3 million last year in a botched effort to roll back Prop. 13 and raise property taxes?! Then tried to do it again this year, spending more than $2 million, and botched that one too! (AN UTTER WASTE OF YOUR MONEY!)

Now what on EARTH does state energy policy, and shopping for cars, have to do with education? And what does it get us, as teachers in the classroom? Not a thing.

The millions they wasted on things like that abandoned car shopping campaign sure could come in handy in my classroom. Or yours.

As we mentioned, the CTA leadership is seeking criminal charges against us for sending you these emails. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with our view of the union leadership, we hope you will at least support our right of free speech to voice our opinion.

Please feel free to write to us directly and make your voice heard as well. We can be reached at teachers@organizenotpolitics.com.

Here is the problem. The public employee’s unions, particularly the CTA, have assessed their union members large amounts of money for political activities. They have done this whether the union member agreed with the position of the union or not. This has provided the unions with vast amounts of their members’ money for political purposes and given the unions great political clout in California. The unions are in great fear of losing this source of funding. So much so that they will threaten two teachers who expressed their opposing opinion by sending emails to other California teachers, presumably in violation of a rule that says that the email list can’t be used without permission of the union. They will try and cut off opposing voices by whatever means they can.

The problem here is that a substantial number of union members do not agree with the political positions of the unions. They should not have to contribute to political causes which they don’t support. Proposition 75, on the November ballot in California will require the unions to get the consent of each member before assessing him for political action funds. I think that is fair. Each member should be able to choose whether he wishes to contribute. Proposition 75 should be supported, and so should Larry Sand and Lillian Perry.

Melanie Phillips reports on what happens when multi-culturism and “diversity” are allowed to run rampant in a society (U.K.).

Pagan priests will be allowed to use wine and wands during ceremonies in jails under instructions issued to every prison governor. Inmates practising paganism will be allowed a hoodless robe, incense and a piece of religious jewellery among their personal possessions. They will also be allowed to have Tarot cards but are forbidden from using them to tell the fortunes of other prisoners. The guidance, issued by Michael Spurr, the director of operations of the Prison Service, makes it clear that Skyclad (naked pagan worship) will not be permitted. Prison staff have been told that pagan artefacts should be treated with respect…

Read more.

Friends, this is nuts! We have to get back to some semblance of sanity with respect to multiculturism. This is America. People in this country should “Americanize.” It is ok if people want to celebrate their differences with their ethnic group or family, but they have to assimilate into this country, as people have for hundreds of years. We have to have an American culture – the proverbial “melting pot,” not a group of different ethnicities and cultures each vying for their independence and cultural differences. What has made America great has been its unique culture and values. People have to respect that and fit themselves into that America.

The Supreme Court of the State of Oregon has ruled (5 to 1)that live sex shows are permitted in that state. The ACLU was the major proponent of the right to have live sex shows and filed briefs in support of the ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there are limits to free expression. There have to be certain boundaries, or you have chaos. You can’t have sex on your front lawn, for example, even though its free expression on private property. The Supremes have ruled that community standards and public safety trump freedom of expression.

The ACLU does not believe that. The organization has moved so far left, that now anything goes.

• Item: The ACLU is defending the North American Man Boy Love Association, saying that although the organization champions the criminal rape of children, it has a right to do that under free expression.

• Item: The ACLU endorses virtual child pornography and has defended the right of people to obtain real child porn.

• Item: the ACLU opposed the Minutemen protests at the border, obviously, a legitimate form of expression.

The ACLU simply wants a different country, a nation where conduct it approves of, public sexual displays, child molestation literature is allowed. But the ACLU wants to inhibit conduct it disagrees with, like protecting the border and celebrating the birth of Jesus.

The ACLU wants to impose a radical secular progressive agenda on a country that has traditionally voted on public policy issues. If the live sex act initiative was put on the Oregon ballot, it’d be voted down big. Remember, Oregonians voted against gay marriage.

The ACLU is one of the most anti-American subversive organizations in this country. They must be stopped.

Linked to Sunday Trackbacks at Stop the ACLU

The California Teachers Union is spending $100 Million this year to oppose initiatives that will allow its members to choose whether they want to contribute to the Union’s political causes. That is right – $100 Million, which they take from their members without their consent. David Horowitz has an excellent essay about this on his FrontPage Magazine site:

Perhaps you didn’t notice, but the biggest special interests thwarting and distorting the democratic election process are government unions. As you will see in the letter below in California alone, the teachers union alone is putting $100 million into an election campaign to defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger’s initiatives.

The teachers union is an exploiter of California school children and the biggest obstacle to needed reform in the California school system. Let me put that more clearly. The California teachers union is a racist organization that is destroying the life chances of millions of poor black and Hispanic children whom its members every year fail to teach the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, denying them a shot at the American dream.

In Los Angeles County alone there are more than 300,000 poor black and Hispanic children in K-12 schools who are failing to pass whatever grade they are in. In other words they are being taught nothing. But they are being formally passed because the school system promotes them anyway — thus committing two evils at the same time: first we don’t teach you anything; then we lie to you and your parents and pretend we do. Efforts to hold teachers accountable for their failures (and reward teachers who are successful at raising their students’ test scores) have been relentlessly thwarted over many generations by the teacher unions who represent their members at the expense of the children.

And they do all their political damage — $100 million worth this year — without the consent of their members. There are a lot of good teachers out there. But the union supports a system where good teachers get paid the same as the bad teachers who should be fired, but who have lifetime jobs that no one can remove them from.

The teacher union taxes its members without their consent. It elects the school board that pays its salaries. It forces the school board to collect its dues right out of the teachers’ paychecks. It is a mini-totalitarian state that is run by rabid leftists whose last interest is the chlidren and whose first interest is themselves.

Schwarzenegger has roused the ire of the union radicals by proposing to force them to get approval from their members for the political taxes it lifts from their pockets ($300 a head). He has further angered them by asking that teachers not have lifetime jobs after a two-year trial period (where no one is watching them anyway). Arnold’s proposal is modest. Wait five years and then get tenure. But why should they get tenure at all?

Why do teachers have lifetime jobs? Lifetime jobs for teachers (and guaranteed salary raises no matter how badly they teach, no matter how lazy they are) is an outrage. Of course you’ll never read this in the LA Times or any metropolitan newspaper in America.) Because the teacher unions are the dominant force in the Democratic Party and thus part of the power structure in all major inner cities in America. They control the school boards that preside over the corrupt, failing school systems that are destroying the life chances of millions of poor black and Hispanic children every single day. They are the principal special interest electing the Democratic city councils in every major inner city in America today. Everything that is wrong with the inner cities of America that policy can affect, Democrats, leftists and organizations like the teacher unions are responsible for. They have their boot heels on the necks of the powerless, and the poor, and the most vulnerable minorities.

In California, Governor Schwarzenegger has given citizens of the state a chance to oppose these exploiters and oppressors of our minority youth in the November election. Don’t miss the opportunity to do a good deed.

The union is running misleading ads that distort the truth about Proposition 75. Proposition 75 is needed so that members of the teachers’ union can make their own choices about how their political action contributions, amounting to $300.00 per year are spent. Proposition 74 means teachers have to work for five years instead of two years before they have tenure. Not unreasonable. Who gets a guaranteed job after two years besides teachers? Both Proposition 74 and Proposition 75 must be passed this November in the California Special Election.
Here is a letter that went out to 90,000 members of the Teachers union by two teachers, Lillian Perry of Fontana and Larry Sand of Los Angeles:

From the Desk of: Lillian Perry, Fontana Teacher
From the Desk of: Larry Sand, Los Angeles Teacher

——————————————————————————–
October 12, 2005
Dear California Teacher:

We are also California teachers and are writing to you because we’re concerned about what the leaders of our union, the California Teachers Association (CTA), are doing to our union and with our hard earned dollars that we send to them in Sacramento every month.

Here’s the bottom line: Our current leadership is on the verge of bankrupting the CTA to fund a political agenda that many of us do not support.

Every year, union leaders in Sacramento take more than $100 million dollars from California teachers’ paychecks. This is approximately $300 per teacher per year . Much of this is used to fund a political agenda over which individual teachers have little control. Even worse, this is taken from our paychecks without our permission.

Earlier this year, the CTA leadership decided it still didn’t have enough money to spend on politics, so the union leadership decided to take an additional $60 each year from our paychecks for the next three years . This forced assessment gave the union leaders an additional $50 million or more of our money for their political agenda.

According to court documents filed last week, the CTA has at least $34 million in outstanding loans. Now, these same union leaders are trying to borrow ANOTHER $40 million through a line of credit.

When will enough be enough? Where has the money gone?

To dozens of consultants and political firms (getting paid millions of dollars), pollsters, television and radio advertising, direct mail firms and the list goes on and on.

Much of this “Sacramento slush fund” has been used to oppose Prop. 75 – a very simple measure that says the CTA must ask our permission before political campaign funds are taken from our paychecks.

Why would CTA be so opposed, and spend tens of millions of dollars, to having to ask our permission?

Could it be that union leadership is concerned that we might not agree with their political agenda – like spending millions to qualify a measure that would have raised property taxes and millions more for measures that have nothing to do with education ?

Proposition 75 will give teachers a choice, a voice and a say. It will bring accountability to the CTA. Please read the measure for your self. If you agree with us, please join us in voting “YES” on Proposition 75.

Prop. 75 is about union democracy, a voice for teachers and guaranteeing us the right to choose how our money is spent. Visit http://www.organizenotpolitics.org to learn more.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Let’s support these teachers and vote “Yes” on Proposition 74 and “Yes” on Proposition 75.