If you’e not a Twitter follower or Facebook friend, you probably don’t know about these:

• A Tale of Two Murders (Word infanticide removed; lauguage used to create imagery also removed. Too incendiary.)
• Yes, There Is a Slippery Slope on Gay Marriage

Hollywood leans left. It’s as certain as taxes and death. But I’m convinced there are enough influential right-leaning folks in Hollywood (Clint Eastwood, Kelsey Grammer, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Jon Voight, Gary “Sirius Black” Oldman, Gary Sinise, and James Woods, to name a few) with the power to push “conservative” projects. In fact, the task might be easier if more Hollywood conservatives came out of the closet.
…
Right-leaning actors and decision-makers do exist, though they’re not as vocal as their liberal counterparts. Perhaps Big Hollywood will encourage conservatives in Tinseltown to talk about their views loud and often. Just shut up and entertain, you say? Like it or not, political ideologies shape the entertainment culture and influence what’s produced in Hollywood.

Read the rest.

Update: Related: A Wall Street Journal article titled, “What Christians Watch.”

The following is an op-ed originally published in 2003:

“Murder may pass unpunish’d for a time, but tardy justice will o’ertake the crime.” – John Dryden, The Cock and the Fox.

Last October, the Metropolitan Washington region was paralyzed with fear, wondering when and where a cold-blooded killer would strike next. Mobilized into action, law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local levels were on the case of the “D.C. sniper” 24-7. With a mass murderer on the loose, the media covered the story round-the-clock. Righteous indignation pumped through the veins of red-blooded Americans. When the murderous pair was caught, the whole country was relieved.

Yet, when it comes to the slaughter of unborn children, the nation tarries. Thirteen people were killed in the sniper attacks; 43 million people–over a million a year–have been killed since Roe v. Wade.

On March 13, 2003, a Republican Senate spoke loudly and clearly against the slaughter by voting to ban partial birth abortion 64-33.

The bill prohibits doctors from committing an “overt act” designed to kill a partially delivered fetus. The bill legally defines a partial birth abortion as any abortion in which a baby is delivered “past the naval…outside the mother’s womb” before being killed. The Senate-passed version of the bill is on its way to the House of Representatives, where it will likely pass. As expected, House Democrats (like the Congressional Black Caucus), protectors of criminals, perverts, animals, trees and rocks, will fight with their very lives against the ban on infanticide. Liberal lunacy notwithstanding, the bill will be signed into law by President Bush.

Meanwhile, day after day, babies in the womb are cut to pieces, torn apart and chemically poisoned to death all for sacred “choice.” Here’s how a group calling itself the Childbirth by Choice Trust describes abortion to teenagers: “To remove the contents of her uterus, the doctor gradually opens the cervix and inserts a small tube. This tube is attached to a machine which gently suctions the inside of the uterus. The doctor then carefully checks the uterus with an instrument, to be sure no tissue (read: human being) remains. The entire procedure takes about 10 minutes.” No sweat.

Partial birth abortions, unlike the inconvenient “gob of tissue” scraped from the womb in early abortions, are gruesome. To avoid being charged under state murder statutes, the abortion “doctors” pull the baby only halfway out of the womb. In Josef Mengele-like fashion, the abortionist jams the tip of surgical scissors into the base of the baby’s skull, suctioning out its brain through a catheter.

Despite such an appalling scene, infanticide supporter Senator Barbara Boxer said that partial birth abortion is a “political” term, not a “medical” one. According to Boxer, the term is “made up” and “very emotional,” implying that supporters of the ban to stop this carnage actually want to evoke sympathy for babies murdered in the womb. Right-wing nuts!

A society that tolerates child killing is a society doomed for judgment. God warned ancient Israel to refrain from worshipping the Ammonite false deity, Molech. First-born children were “passed through the fire” and burned to death as a sacrifice to Molech under the illusion they’d be given prosperity.

Israel disobeyed God’s laws, resulting in generations of moral decline and severe wrath: Famine, plague, cannibalism, invasion and domination by surrounding pagan nations, captivity into slavery, persecution and death.

Molech must be mighty pleased with America. Millions of children are sacrificed every year for similar motives. Approximately 93 percent of all induced abortions are done for elective, non-medical reasons (read: convenience). Although abortion proponents claim the procedure is rare, it’s not rare enough. Partial birth abortions have more than tripled in the past four years to about 2,200 annually.

The U.S. has been facing its own moral decline for some time, but it has yet to suffer the fate of ancient Israel. While abortion proponents continue to euphemistically refer to infanticide as “intrauterine cranial decompression” or “intact dilation and evacuation,” God has promised that the slaying of the innocent will not go unpunished. He says in Jeremiah 19:

“Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods…and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent…I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hand of those who seek their life; and I will give over their carcasses as food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth. I will also make this city a desolation.”

In the aftermath of September 11, it became chic even for liberals to haughtily exclaim, “God bless America!” Perhaps the more appropriate petition would be: God have mercy on America.

(Image from Charles Foster’s Story of the Bible)

My, how you’ve grown…

1997. 2007.

Old sound (so cute – with disco ball!). New sound (yep).

Last week I interviewed drummer Zac Hanson for this album review/short feature…

Mention the band Hanson, and you’ll hear an inevitable snigger. Ten years ago, its syrupy yet infectious confection, “MMMBop,” burned up the airwaves as DJs and VJs spun it hour after hour. The journey from long-haired blond boys to mature men has been exceedingly kind to the brothers, and their recently released album, “The Walk,” is a culmination of who they’ve become.

Guitarist Isaac, 26, keyboardist Taylor, 24, and drummer Zac, 21, are taller, darker and married, but the “blue-eyed soul” brothers are still writing their own songs, playing their own instruments and three-part-harmonizing their own tunes.

Hanson’s story isn’t one you’d expect from a so-called boy band of the ’90s. While groups like the Backstreet Boys were packaged and marketed like widgets, Hanson walked headlong into independence, having won the right to control and own their music.

Disenchanted with former label Island/Def Jam Records, the brothers rebelled against the label’s tunnel-vision quest to produce a hit song at the expense of the band’s artistic integrity. Trying to shed a bubble gum pop image, Hanson didn’t cave to the pressure. After a frustrating three-year ordeal over creative differences, it left and formed its own label, 3CG Records. The group chronicled its battle with Island/Def Jam in a documentary called “Strong Enough To Break,” which premiered at the 2006 Hollywood Film Festival and is available as a free download exclusively on iTunes.

Read the rest.

Check out the print version in PDF (color photo included).

Related Update (9/14): You’re fighting a losing battle, dear. You can’t stop this. It’s too late. Embrace the technology and use it to your advantage.

Related post:

• Hanson “Boys” All Grown Up

Grinding, grinding, grinding…

As long as I live, I will never understand why more blacks aren’t spitting mad about race preferences. In their minds, I suppose, it’s not a preference; it’s “affirmative action.”

The confusion stems from not defining terms. In its purest form, affirmative action is simply taking positive steps toward including more historically excluded people — blacks and women — in a hiring or admissions pool. Their inclusion presumes they’re as qualified as other applicants. But somewhere along the way, affirmative action turned into a quota system, whereby a certain percentage of women or blacks, even the less qualified, had to be hired in order to meet some arbitrary balance.

This, despite what naysayers say, is called a preference. Specifically, when a black person or a woman who is not as qualified is admitted or hired over a non-black person or a man who is more qualified, the black person or woman was given a preference over the more qualified person. From my perspective, too many blacks are satisfied with this practice and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever. The most glaring problem is that blacks who came before us fought to get rid of this kind of thing when it benefited whites.

Consistency is important in debate and discourse. If you believe racial discrimination is objectively wrong, it remains wrong even if your racial group benefits from the discrimination.

To me, there is nothing quite as dignified as knowing I’ve earned something based on my performance or by using whatever talents God gave me, not based on the hue of my skin. It is offensive to me beyond words that any white person, liberal or conservative, believes that I need remedial help or that I cannot be held to the same standards to which they (and employers or admission committees) hold themselves.

If, by being held to the same standards, I fall short, so be it. I move on to something else. It’s called life. I’m better at some things than others, and part of my journey in life is to make the most of the talents I have, try to improve them, and constantly learn new things. I see life as a great, though sometimes disappointing, adventure. All I ask is to be treated with dignity and respect. I don’t care if you can’t stand me or think I’m as dumb as a box of hammers. I couldn’t care less about what’s in your mind. Your behavior toward me is my only concern. And you can keep your crummy table scraps, too. I’ll dine on far better fare.

I’ll repeat myself: As long as I live, I will never understand why more blacks aren’t spitting mad about race preferences.

Now, I’ll get to the point of this post. As you may know, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative became Proposal 2, a measure that outlawed the use of preferences in government hiring and admissions in Michigan. Fifty-eight percent of Michigan voters barred their state government from discriminating against people on the basis of race, sex, etc. Last year, a Clinton-appointed federal judge, while ruling in favor of allowing MCRI on the November 2006 ballot, seized the opportunity to smear and accuse the organization behind it of committing fraud to get people to sign the petition.

Judge Arthur Tarnow not only accused MCRI of “systematic voter fraud,” he maligned state courts and agencies in his opinion (PDF). By implication, he believes the current law barring race preferences is somehow tainted because a handful of petition signers claimed they were “misled” about what they were signing. I suppose actually reading something before signing it is too high a standard for certain people.

For more info, check out my latest Townhall column, Judge Tarnow’s Political Axe.

Other sources:

• 6th Circuit court says affirmative action appeal is moot
• Michigan’s Tarnow, 6th Circuit voters have final say
• By Any Means Necessary: A federal judge plays politics in Michigan

Now that states and locals are passing laws in an attempt to alleviate some of the damage of illegal immigration, the feds must do two things: 1) enforce federal immigration laws on the books instead of writing new ones to give amnesty and citizenship to illegal aliens; and 2) end birthright citizenship. See my latest Washington Examiner column, End Birthright Citizenship.

On a Duke case-related note, I must give a big shout-out to Michael Gaynor, lawyer and columnist, for his shout-out to me and for “scolding” Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson for not mentioning me in their new book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.

In his review, he writes:

“The authors’ tribute to Ms. [Jeralyn] Merritt, a white liberal, was deserved, but La Shawn Barber, the astute black conservative woman who surely should not have been ignored, went unmentioned. (As an astute black conservative woman, La Shawn probably will be disappointed, but not shocked, by that glaring omission.)

“The authors, La Shawn and I each independently went public with our views on the Duke case in April 2006, but La Shawn was first and she was great. (The authors began the book by writing at length about Devon Sherwood, the team’s only black player, which was fitting. Their omission of La Shawn is inexplicable to me.)
…
“To the authors: Omitting La Shawn from the definitive book on the Duke case is something for which ‘gentlemen’ will be quick to make amends to the lady whom Michelle Malkin dubbed ‘Sweetheart of the Blogosphere.’ Omitting to report that a blogger (me) had repeatedly reported (a fact, not a fabrication, some found inconvenient) the multiple male DNA months before the defense team reportedly realized and perhaps even suspected it was there to find was a failing, but not giving the righteous lady whom Mr. Nifong learned to rue her due should be grounds for jailing (almost).
…
“La Shawn was passionately and profoundly pounding away about the injustice of the Duke case, to the disgust of the race hustlers and political correctness nuts. Long before blogs Durham-in-Wonderland, Friends of Duke University and LieStoppers were created, La Shawn was on the case, unaffected by color, race or sex, calling a disgrace a disgrace.”

Thanks, Michael, and I hope Stuart and KC take the criticism in stride (because I’m not too disappointed). It’s a great book, and I’m glad to have played a small part in uncovering media bias and exposing Mike Nifong’s mendacity, race baiting, and recklessness.

Addendum: FYI, Stuart Taylor apologized for neglecting to mention me. I appreciated it, but I hope he’s not losing sleep.

Black Talk Radio

I guest-hosted “The Casey Lartigue Shop” on XM satellite radio earlier this year with host and friend Casey Lartigue. I’ve known the former Cato education analyst since 2003. I quoted one of his studies in my one and so-far-only Washington Post clip, and we’ve been pals ever since.

(Also see I’m A Libertarian on Education)

Casey told me a couple of months ago he’d been dumped by his radio station. As he told me his story, I wasn’t surprised. I had a bad experience with that particular channel. During an interview, the black liberal host, who didn’t like me, started yelling at me. On the air. I lost my cool, yelled back, and ended up hanging up on him. I hated that I’d lost control like that. Bad form. Weeks later, a producer called and apologized on behalf of the host, and asked me to return to the show. Not in a 1,000 lifetimes, honey. Casey later told me that for a couple of weeks after that show, the station played a clip (as the show’s intro) of me and the host going at it.

Last month, Casey and I appeared on NPR’s black bloggers roundtable, and he told me afterward he was writing a piece about his firing for the Washington Post. He and co-host Eliot Morgan exposed a conspiracy theory that former President Jimmy Carter issued a memorandum back in the day, which purportedly outlined a strategy to undermine black “leaders” in America and “sow discord with Africans abroad,” as a lie.

Casey and Eliot learned that Carter’s actual memo was “a bland call for a bureaucratic review of U.S. policy toward Central American issues.”

“[I]f you think that was the end of the story, you don’t know the world of black talk radio,” they write. “These are the airwaves in which the first president of the United States was a black man, in which AIDS was cooked up in a government laboratory to decimate the black population and in which major corporations lace their food with chemicals to make black men sterile.”

Check out Talk Radio Can’t Handle the Truth.

Marrying White

Anti-miscegenists will hate it. Black women ready for a change will love it. And everybody else, well…

Featured in an Associated Press article are black women who’ve crossed the color line in the dating and marriage field. The article is about how difficult it can be for black women to find marriage-worthy black men. Black men date and marry outside their race at a higher rate than black women, and some of these women are waking up to the possibility themselves.

Quoted in the article is Evia Moore, creator of Black Female Interracial Marriage. Check it out. I blogged about her blog a few months ago.

Natural Allies

In my latest Townhall column, Blacks and Hispanics Natural Allies?, I outline why these two “oppressed” groups are not “natural allies.” Fighting over limited resources and petty concerns is not conducive to an alliance. But joining together for the common goal of keeping America great, that’s a different story. This is The Economist article I cited in the column.

Related posts:

• Lynwood, CA: Watch and Learn
• Hispanic-on-Black Violence: Protestors, Where Are You?
• Black and Hispanic “Hate” in LA County

Locals, like the rest of the world, love Harry Potter.

In fact, residents of Falls Church [Virginia] love “Harry Potter” so much, they pre-ordered more copies per capita of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows than any other city, topping Amazon.com’s list of top 100 “Harry-est Towns in America.” Amazon donated a $5,000 gift certificate to the Mary Riley Styles Public Library Foundation Trust of Falls Church.

Northern Virginia’s Fairfax and Vienna made the list at third and fourth, respectively, and the District [of Columbia] topped the 50 states as “Harry-est” jurisdiction.

Why are the books so successful? [J.K.] Rowling combined the British boarding school fiction genre with the classic “hero’s journey” tradition, mythology and orthodox Christian themes to create a compelling series that reminds many of the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. “Harry Potter” is thus a compelling series that will entertain and delight readers for generations.

Read the rest at Washington Examiner (no spoilers).

If you want to read more Christians-and-Harry-Potter news stories, follow this link (spoilers).

Warning: This review contains MAJOR spoilers.

J.K. Rowling’s epic tale about an orphan boy who discovers he’s a wizard at age 11 comes to an end in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The seventh and final book in the series sold a reported 11 million copies in the first 24 hours on sale, which broke the record for fastest-selling book. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince held the previous record at nine million.

The seven-book series has sold more than 325 million copies worldwide. The first five books have been made into top-grossing movies, and Rowling has been named one of the richest people in the world.

Not bad for a former divorced welfare mother who nursed cold cups of coffee in a café while writing the first book.

Read the rest at Townhall.com.

Update (7/31): When a religion reporter called Deathly Hallows “unambiguously Christian,” he was referring to the “Christian” concept of substitutionary sacrifice. I’m going to take a semi-educated guess and say that Christianity is unique in this regard: a sinless Savior who sacrifices himself to pay for the sins of others.

Is substitutionary sacrifice a major (or minor) feature of other religions? Discuss here.

Last month, President George W. Bush’s amnesty-for-illegal-aliens bill died a deserved death in the U.S. Senate.

Had the bill become law, it would have paved the way for millions of illegal immigrants — lawbreakers — to become U.S. citizens, jumping ahead of those who’ve spent years legally waiting their turn.

Some say the bill was defeated because angry and concerned citizens called and faxed their senators’ offices, urging them to vote against amnesty. Others, like The Wall Street Journal, credit conservative bloggers with “playing a central role” in helping defeat the bill by “endlessly picking through the evolving immigration legislation” and educating voters.

That’s all very ego-gratifying for us conservative bloggers, but there still is much work ahead. Now that amnesty is dead, state and local governments must aggressively fight illegal immigration and do what the federal government so far has been reluctant to do: focus on individuals and businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

Read the rest of my latest Washington Examiner column.

Report employers that hire illegal aliens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement at 1-866-DHS-2ICE (ReportIllegals.com can do it for you) and embarrass them by sending their info to WeHireAliens.com, preferably with photos.

Update: Michelle’s blogging Arizona. As I mentioned in my column, Democratic governor Janet Napolitano just signed into law the nation’s “toughest” sanctions against cheapskates who hire illegal aliens.

Update II: Keep turning up the heat.

***Scroll down for clarification***

Last week the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, could not use race as a tiebreaker when assigning students.

Although Justice Clarence Thomas is vilified by black liberals, he has a keener understanding of “black pride” than they have. Unlike white liberals, Justice Thomas believes black children can excel in predominantly black schools and don’t need to mix with whites in order to learn. So-called progressive blacks have bought into the white supremacist notion that black children must share classrooms with white children to be educated. They completely miss the irony of their own self-loathing, practically begging whites to allow their children to sit alongside theirs.

The true meaning of “black pride” has been lost.

I’m always — always — embarrassed whenever I hear a black person convinced of his own “high” intelligence arguing that the government should force whites to live around blacks, send their kids to school with blacks, and hire underqualified blacks. It’s as though the civil rights, “black pride” movement never happened. People fought and died, bled and cried to dismantle a government system that forced racial segregation. Decades later, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are fighting and crying to keep in place a government system that forces racial integration because we poor black folks can’t do a thing for ourselves without white folks around.

If blacks like Clarence Thomas and myself were pushing that line of crap, the slurs “Uncle Tom” and “Aunt Jemima” would be apt. But we’re saying the opposite. Black liberals are the ones begging white people to “accept” them. At the same time, black liberals are the ones raising their kids to believe this country, the greatest on the planet, is a cesspool of white racism and that white people are bound and determined to keep them down. Why the heck would you want to be around people you think are trying to keep you down?

Contrary to what some of you have been taught, Americans have a right to live wherever they want and avoid whomever they want for whatever reason. Private businesses have a right to hire whomever they want and avoid hiring whomever they want for whatever reason. It’s shocking to some people and might hurt black people’s feelings, but it is not illegal to want to be with certain people based on race or to avoid certain people based on race. We have the freedom to self-segregate, and the government does not have the authority, constitutionally or otherwise, to order people around to achieve some arbitrary racial balance (or imbalance, as was the case with Jim Crow). It didn’t have that authority in the days of Plessy v. Ferguson, and it doesn’t have that authority now.

For a lesson in true — as opposed to phony — black pride, read Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District et al (PDF).

For a standard recitation of white liberal paternalism, read Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent. “The White Man’s Burden,” indeed.

Update: In case anyone has trouble spotting the issue in this post, allow me to be explicit: I’m not demeaning the idea of “black pride” in itself; I’m demeaning black liberals’ idea of black pride. Those are two very different things.

Monday, July 2 @ 9:00 a.m.: Check out my latest Townhall column, Black Pride, White Paternalism.

Juan Williams, author of Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It (I reviewed his book here), has an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education.”

An excerpt:

“In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation…Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?”

Justice Marshall’s answer is surprising.

Monday, July 2 @ 7:49 p.m.: Although I understand what Juan Williams is trying to say in this article — that racial integration in government schools might not be all it’s cracked up to be — the principle behind it is very much alive and should remain so: the government should not mandate or sanction segregation/discrimination by race in government schools. In other words, even if certain schools end up primarily black or primarily white because of residential patterns, the government should not have the power discriminate against people based on race or prefer certain races to “balance” schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA) was supposed to put an end to that power. It states in part (emphases added):

“Desegregation” means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but “desegregation” shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.

That is the principle of Brown v. Board of Education embodied in the CRA. How much clearer can it be?

If private individuals want to create racially exclusive schools (or hire certain people based on race), that’s their right as private business owners. We have freedom of association in this country, and that freedom includes (or should include) providing services to whomever we want to provide services. But the government must stay out of the skin color business.

Tuesday, July 3: Or to put it another way: “What [Brown] ordered was the removal of laws and policies prohibiting racially mixed schools. The principle it upheld was nondiscrimination — which would often (but not always) lead to racial integration.
…
“The real educational problems faced by minority kids today are not lack of white students to sit by but inadequate choice, lack of order, a shortage of good teachers and families who don’t make a priority of learning. Most parents, given a choice between racially balanced schools and safe, sound schools, would unhesitatingly choose the latter.”

Related posts:

• Juan Williams, Scared Leftists, Etc.
• Juan Williams, White Minority at UC, Etc.
• Education, the Global Economy, and You
• Super Post for Super Tuesday of Equality
• Dred Scott and the “Legacy of Slavery”
• Repeating History

And op-eds:

• Supreme Court hears race-based school assignment arguments
• Race preferences defeated in Michigan
• White Student Sues For Racial Discrimination
• Corrupt black leadership and culture of failure impede black progress

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution is reminding me of what our government was conceived to be.

What law students learn as “constitutional law” is merely a series of Supreme Court (which effectively usurped power from the states and blurred the line separating powers) decisions and little or no review of English and colonial forerunners to our Constitution or the ratification debates (crucial for understanding original intent).

The original understanding has been lost, even to so-called “originalist” conservative justices. Homosexual “marriage,” abortion, state-sponsored school prayer — all of these issues and more fall within the purview of the states, not the federal government.

More later. In the meantime, check out State-Sponsored School Prayer and the Constitution.

Tuesday, June 19: Mike Nifong is a true idiot. After being disbarred, he had the nerve to announce he’d remain in office for another four weeks (to collect more money and build up his pension)! The man has been stripped of his license to practice law! He’s a disgrace. Fortunately not everyone is disgraceful. The judge said, “Get out now.” Today, the sheriff served the suspension order and took his badge and office keys.

Monday, June 18: As you know, it’s not over for Nifong. He could face criminal contempt charges and civil lawsuits. The reason things have gotten this bad for Nifong is that he pushed forward a case in which he couldn’t place the accused men at the scene of the so-called crime (in fact, there was no evidence a crime even occurred), hadn’t spoken to the accuser until months after the indictments, intentionally misrepresented evidence, intentionally withheld evidence, and used the case to campaign for office. If he was inexperienced and overwhelmed trying a felony case of this magnitude, he should have asked for help, guidance, something.

Nifong merely is reaping what he’s sown for the past year, and it’s no one’s fault but his own. Check out my Townhall column, Nifong’s Swan Song.

I forgot to mention this yesterday. I believe all three former Duke lacrosse players testified at Nifong’s hearing last week. I read an account of Reade Seligmann’s testimony. He was the only white student in an “African American” studies course. After the accusations, his study partner gave him the cold shoulder and wrote an article about how the sexual assault of a black woman by white men signifies the return of the Jim Crow south, or some such BS. This kind of ignorance flourishes when admissions standards are lowered.

Add these books to your reading list:

• Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case
• It’s Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case and the Lives It Shattered

Update (3:03 p.m): Just caught this. Reade Seligmann, the formerly indicted-for-rape lacrosse player with the alibi, says he, Collin Finnerty, and Dave Evans plan to sue Nifong. Good move. File suit against Duke University while you’re at it…

Later…Ha! Just found out via KC Johnson that Duke U has settled with Seligmann, Finnerty, and Evans. Hmmm…how much?

Even later…And criminal charges, too? Better put Nifong on suicide watch…

—————————————————————————————————————-

The thing is done. It’s almost anti-climactic.

Former Durham County District Attorney Michael B. Nifong has been stripped of his law license. After a week-long trial and a tearful non-apology apology, Nifong saw his legal career go up in proverbial flames.

Yesterday afternoon, a three-member disciplinary panel found Nifong guilty of lying, misrepresenting evidence, and making inflammatory statements to the media, and they disbarred him.

History professor and blogger KC Johnson blogged from the week-long ethics hearing last week. (Johnson is the co-author of Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.)

On Friday, Nifong offered a tepid apology: “To the extent that I made judgments that ultimately proved to be incorrect, I apologize to the three students that were wrongly accused” and resigned as DA: “My community has suffered enough… It has become apparent, during the course of this week, in some ways that it might not have been before, that my presence as the district attorney in Durham is not furthering the cause of justice.”

From the Raleigh News and Observer:

At the end of the five-day hearing, Williamson struggled to explain the self-destruction of Nifong, who has spent his 28-year legal career as a Durham prosecutor.

“Why, why did we get to the place we got?” Williamson asked. “At the root of it is self-deception arising out of self-interest. … His self-interest collided with a very volatile mix of race, sex and class, a situation which if it were a plot in a John Grisham novel would be considered to be too contrived.”

According to [Disciplinary Hearing Commission Chairman] Williamson, Nifong grabbed hold of the case in the middle of a hotly contested election campaign. Escort service dancer Crystal Gail Mangum said she was raped by three men at a lacrosse team party. Nifong immediately went on a media blitz without reading police reports, talking with Mangum or waiting for DNA tests. Nifong asserted a racially-motivated assault occurred and labeled players “hooligans.”

The case crumbled, but Nifong continued to press on.

Nifong, desperate to win election in a heavily black city, used the only ammunition at his disposal: a phony, high profile gang rape case bubbling over with race and class tension.

If I were Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and Dave Evans, I’d sue Duke University, the Durham Police Department, and Mike Nifong.

News round-up at The Johnsville News.

Update: I’m getting e-mail from people taking me to task for calling homosexuality a lifestyle choice. Whether or not someone is born homosexual — and I believe biology plays a role — is not the point.

Homosexuality may be natural for some people, but it doesn’t mean one is compelled to act on those inclinations. To be precise, I should have written in the column that homosexual behavior (including “marrying” someone of the same sex) is a lifestyle choice, whether or not a person is “born” homosexual. (I’ll be clearer next time!)

In that regard, homosexual behavior is in no way comparable to race. I’m black; I have no choice in the matter, no say at all. A homosexual may have no choice in being a homosexual, but he can choose not to engage in homosexual behavior.
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Forty years ago — a little over a month after I was born — the U.S. Supreme Court declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional. See Loving v. Virginia.

Extremists on one side say interracial marriage has opened the door to deviant unions. Extremists on the other side say that Loving v. Virginia and the civil rights movement of the 1960s bolster their arguments for homosexual “marriage.”

Is interracial marriage a slippery slope? (The question is rhetorical, of course.)

I believe that changing the definition of marriage to include the union of two men and two women opens the door to legalizing increasingly deviant unions.

Non-rhetorical question: If we extend marriage to same-sex couples, on what grounds can we deny the same to three people? Or 10? Or close relatives? Or adults and children?

Related posts:

• Loving v. Virginia: Legalizing Interracial Marriage
• Black Women/White Men

Last week I blogged about what I hope will become law in every state: death sentences for people who rape children.

I did a little research and fleshed out the topic for my latest Townhall column, Death to Child Rapists.

Unrelated Update: Just finished taping a segment for The Savage Nation, one of my favorite talk radio shows. Topics were illegal “immigration” in general and this column. The producer said the segment will run either tonight or tomorrow in the 7 p.m. EDT or 8 p.m. EDT hour.

I was interviewed on the show back in 2004. A producer found me on my old Blogger.com blog and asked me to come on the show that night. I inadvertently deleted the post, but here’s the cache version. The post generated lots of comments when it was on the old blog. When I imported the Blogger posts (July 2004), there was no WP feature to import comments at the time.