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There is a very straightforward way for John McCain to ensure a success against Obama this fall (beyond all the valid points regarding Obama’s inexperience, his huge mistake on the success in Iraq, his questionable associations, his liberal record). Hillary’s supporters want to go somewhere other than Obama. If McCain selects a stalwart, conservative women VP this election is over before it begins. Obama can’t lose the 50% of Hillary voters who garnered her the most votes for any presidential candidate in the primaries. And if McCain selects a woman VP, I am fairly certain many of those Hillary supporters...

In the long, dreary annals of judicial idiocy, perhaps the stupidest words ever uttered by a black-robed booby were contained in the recent California Supreme Court decision mandating homosexual marriage. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Ronald M. George declared: “In light of these circumstances, we conclude that retention of the traditional definition of marriage (a man and a woman) does not constitute a state interest sufficiently compelling, under the strict scrutiny equal protection standard, to justify withholding that status from same-sex couples.” Curiously, George is saying the government of California lacks any compelling interest in maintaining the integrity of...

There is a lot of bitterness out there. And it’s not coming from rural voters in Appalachia. There are legions of Hillary Clinton supporters -- from Emily List activists to NARAL members to middle aged female fans -- who do not like the impending outcome of the Democratic primary. They are downright angry about some of the language employed by the media to describe Clinton, and at what they see as the media’s undue haste in shoving her out of the race. And they don’t like some of the phrases tossed around by Barack Obama (“Sweetie;” “You’re likable enough, Hillary”)...

WASHINGTON - The Democratic presidential race is heading into a fractious end game as supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton mobilize for a protest Saturday to demand that the party count two outlawed primaries that favored her. Protesters planned to rally outside the Washington hotel where the party’s rules committee will tackle the vexing question of how to punish Michigan and Florida without completely disenfranchising Democratic primary voters from those states. At least several busloads of Clinton supporters were anticipated from Florida and perhaps scores of people from Michigan as well as demonstrators from various parts of the country. Barack Obama’s...

I lived with Montagnard tribes people in 1968 and 1969 in Vietnam, a tough, dark-skinned, primitive, aboriginal race of warriors. Plar was a cute, lovable 8-year old orphan of the Jeh tribe whose parents were both murdered by the Viet Cong. The Vietnamese called Montagnards “Moi” which translates to “Savage” but is synonymous with the “N” word in our language. They had no right to vote, no schools, no medical care, no equal representation in government. I really loved Plar and obtained through channels the paperwork to adopt her, but while I was out in the jungle on an operation...

IS THERE ANYONE who still remembers the folksy winter tableau? Eight Democratic candidates against the picturesque backdrop of Iowa and New Hampshire. It was a feel-good photo-op of diversity. The Democratic Party was black and white and Hispanic, male and female and proud. Our party, its leaders said, looks like America. As for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Yes, there were the predictable magazine cover stories asking whether America was "ready" for an African-American or a woman. But these were not long-shot candidates, a favorite son or daughter running to prove a point. Obama presented himself as the American...

WASHINGTON - Chinese leader Mao Zedong proposed sending 10 million Chinese women to the United States, in talks with top envoy Henry Kissinger in 1973, according to documents released Tuesday. The powerful chairman of the Chinese Communist Party said he believed such emigration could kickstart bilateral trade but could also "harm" the United States with a population explosion similar to China, according to documents released Tuesday by the State Department on US-China ties between 1973 to 1976. In a long conversation that stretched way past midnight at Mao's residence on February 17, 1973, the cigar-chomping Chinese leader referred to the...

Democrats divide by race, gender, classCINCINNATI (Reuters) - It's now common wisdom that Sen. Hillary Clinton attracts older voters, women and the white working class, while Sen. Barack Obama is the go-to guy for youth, African-Americans and the elite. Retired teacher Maggie Lauria, 58, fits the mold. "For us women, our time has come," Lauria said at a rally on Wednesday for Clinton in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. That the Democratic candidates battling to be the party's nominee for the November presidential election became so closely identified with certain voter segments has been chalked up to demographics and campaign tactics --...

As if the divisions between race and gender in the Democratic Party hadn’t been further exposed through Tuesday night’s exit polls — and by a very heated exchange on CNN between Donna Brazile and Paul Begala — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s interview with USA Today on Wednesday is further mining those tense depths. “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in the interview, citing an article by The Associated Press. It “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had...

Wealthy Democrats have donated $40 million to conduct a media campaign against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain (Ariz.). The campaign will be led by David Brock, chairman of Progressive Media USA. Brock said “the effort is necessary because the major media have fallen down on the job. A person who relies on TV and newspapers will have the impression that Senator McCain is some sort of war hero. But as Senator Rockefeller (D-W.V.) has pointed out, McCain fought on the wrong side in Vietnam. Thankfully, it turned out to be the losing side.” “There are some key...

Oh, to be a campus activist now that spring is here. “Campus activist” is what the Boston Globe-Democrat calls the students pushing for coed dorm rooms at colleges across the country. Not just coed dorms, floors or even suites. One room, two beds, a boy and a girl. As Dr. Frankenstein said just before he threw the switch, “What could possibly go wrong?” More than 30 colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Clark, Brown, and Brandeis have coed dorm room policies. This is part of the academic Left’s commitment to social justice, the battle against heteronormative bias, and a way for...

The eruption of outrage, shock and fear that is flowing over Barack Obama’s campaign like hot lava because his pastor has preached some strident sermons tells us one thing for certain: Many white people don’t know black people at all. If they did, they would know that Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago is hardly the only black minister who uses the pulpit to rant against racial duplicity and injustice. The black church has always been the place for letting our hair down and speaking our peace -- a safe haven from the criminations outside. It’s how and why the black...

Barack Obama has promised that he will rise above race. After all, his mother was white and his father was from Kenya. Senator Obama is a persuasive orator, and I am inclined to believe he is sincere.  But will the race and gender industry go out of business? There's not a chance in the world. Race and gender splitting is a goldmine that never runs out. Suppose you had four kids, two boys and two girls. One of the girls is blonde, the other a brunette. One of the boys is an athlete, the other a nerd. You're a compassionate...

CHICAGO (AP) - Craigslist should not be held liable for discriminatory housing ads posted on the popular Web site, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a win for San Francisco-based Craigslist, an online network of classified ads and forums on which more than 30 million notices are posted every month, according to the ruling. It is also a triumph for Internet sites that depend on user-generated content and for foes of legal boundaries for the Web, experts said. The ruling means "the soapbox is not liable for what the...

Elections can be about policy, personality or identity.-- snip --This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It's not a pretty picture. Geraldine Ferraro says Obama is where he is only because he's black. Professor Orlando Patterson says the 3 a.m. phone call ad is not about a foreign policy crisis but a subliminal Klan-like appeal to the fear of "black men lurking in the bushes around white society." Good grief. The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of...

Once again the Democrats seem determined to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Consider the possibilities after the Pennsylvania primary. Let us assume that Sen. Hillary Clinton wins it. However, Sen. Barack Obama still has a lead in election delegates and a slim advantage in popular votes. There are two courses the party can take. They can leave the final choice to the so-called "superdelegates" whom the party has chosen to represent office holders -- mayors, governors, senators and such like. Having read the polls and noting that Sen. Clinton consistently loses the general election to almost any Republican...

Greetings from ground zero -- the Philadelphia suburbs where the epic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may be decided in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary on April 22. Current scuttlebutt -- a frail reed in this mercurial race -- is that the multiracial metropolises of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia will go for Obama, while the vast rural and small-town heartland will endorse Clinton, whose family roots are in coal-country Scranton. The cloud of feminist cant about Hillary's struggling candidacy has been noxious. "Media misogyny has reached an all-time high," screeched the National Organization for Women in a press release titled "Ignorance...

What the recent sniping between Hillary and Obama tellingly signifies is that the polyglot glue of victimization, grievance-mongering, entitlement and multiculturalism that has formed the philosophical basis of the modern-day Democratic Party may be starting to come undone. Every attack and counterattack of the Democratic Primary campaign is viewed through the conceptual prism of political correctness run amok. Each candidate has, at one time or another, accused the other of

"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth." -- Michael Kinsley Yesterday, Geraldine Ferraro committed a gaffe by telling the truth about Barack Obama. "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." How can anyone even deny this obvious fact about Barack Obama? The majority of his fan base is made up of black people who are voting...

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What happens to women who have shunned men and consequently shot themselves in the... not foot... well... let's just say they don't get any love. Man haters have cooked their own gooses. But they don't cook either. Oops. Hmmmm. Man haters have cleaned their own clocks. Oh Darn. They don't clean. Okay. Let's try again. Apparently the housekeeping analogies don't work with this subject. Man haters have shot their... nope. That doesn't work. Let's just say that man hating women are S. O. L. Does that work? Man hating women have created so much inner hated for the traditional and...

I agree with J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s (does he have a shorter name ?) recent column that progressives are left with an embarrassment of riches—two credible, serious candidates, either of whom would be a good choice for president. We are in a win-win position having two Democrats running for office against an opponent, John McCain, who has little or nothing compelling, professionally or personally, that would make someone vote for him besides his service in Vietnam. What might derail a Democratic victory would be unfair and untrue attacks on the part of the candidates and the unspoken competition that exists between...

With Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's decision to stay in the Democratic race to the bitter end, she has signaled a delegate fight all the way to the party's convention in Denver this August. Both candidates appear in something of a stalemate. Political strategists have concluded that Clinton cannot overcome Sen. Barack Obama's pledged delegate lead by winning additional primaries. And despite his lead in electoral and delegate wins, Obama cannot seal his nomination without the support of the party's superdelegates. Clinton's decision, after winning in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island this week that she would not capitulate has opened up...

...Hillary Clinton's lead in the Democratic contest has been boosted by her extraordinary strength among women. About 60 percent of Democrats are women, while Republicans and independents tilt in the male direction. Women have been voting in substantial numbers in Democratic primaries all year, regularly casting more than 55 percent of the ballots. On Super Tuesday, women were 57 percent of the electorate and they voted for Clinton by a 10-point margin.... ...The gender gap is now a permanent feature of our politics. Women lean consistently toward Democratic presidential candidates, and men to Republican ones. Even though other gaps in...

Hillary Clinton ceased to be the Democratic front-runner weeks ago, humiliatingly enough for her formerly inevitable campaign. But it was only after her drubbing in the Wisconsin primary that she became an inconvenience, the superfluous woman of Democratic politics. Among elected Democrats and the press, there is a palpable impatience with Hillary’s continued presence in the race: Won’t this lady ever leave so we can consummate our love affair with Barack Obama? Hillary’s bulwark was to be the Democratic establishment, but here was the party’s immediate past presidential nominee, John Kerry, an Obama supporter, shooing her off the stage. On...

Boys And Girls Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear BiologicalNew research shows that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks. (Credit: iStockphoto/Rich Legg) ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences. For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from Northwestern University and...

Rarely have I read a newspaper column that shocks me for its sheer breadth of nonsense, but today’s effort by Charlotte Allen in the Washington Post provides one of those I-can’t-believe-she-wrote-that moment. She starts off by scolding the women who faint at Barack Obama rallies, a phenomenon that deserves all the ridicule it gets. Allen runs off the rails, though, when she extrapolates the silliness of five women into supposedly inherent traits that come when two X chromosomes meet (via Memeorandum): I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women...

Afflicted once again with Multiple Personality Disorder, Hillary has reverted to playing the gender card. We saw the beginnings of this ploy during the debate when she protested that she always seems to get the first questions at the debates (Mind you, she doesn’t object to fielding the first question, but she wanted to point this out to everybody). Feminist Subtext: Why does Hillary always get the first question? Because she is a WOMAN!!!! The debate moderators for the most part have been men who, even though they are unaware, are engaging in a subtle

In an interview with ABC News' Cynthia McFadden to air on this evening's "Nightline," Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., says it's tougher for her to run as a woman than it is for her male opponent. Asked why she thinks so many women may be feeling sorry for her, Clinton said, "I think a lot of women project their own feelings and their lives onto me, and they see how hard this is. It's hard. It's hard being a woman out there. It is obviously challenging with some of the things that are said that are not even personal to me...

Next time you hear a starling sing, stop and listen hard. It may well be warning of a peril that endangers the whole world of nature - and the very future of the human race itself. For scientists have found that gender-bender chemicals - increasingly contaminating the environment, our food, our water and our bodies - are having a bizarre effect on common birds, causing the males to give voice to longer and more complex songs. This is only the latest in a long series of increasingly urgent alarms being sounded by wildlife against an insidious but devastating danger that...

Behind the School Safety Movement by: Bethany Stotts, February 27, 2008 Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) organizations believe that promoting school safety is essential to their organization’s mission. Ally Action, the Anti-Defamation League, Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Out for Equity, Safe Schools Coalition, and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation all consider fostering safe gay-accepting schools a high priority.... The SSC’s “Guidelines on Bias” (pdf) eschews the term “minority” for “non-majority” and considers language labeling minorities as disadvantaged or needy “patronizing” and biased. In an ideal situation, “The right of non-majority people to decide what is...

A few months ago, Barack Obama rightly accused fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton of "hiding behind her gender." Of course, she can now argue that Mr. Obama is similarly hiding behind his race. Had they and their advocates practiced half the equality they preach, their bad-faith arguments might have been as quickly abandoned by them as they were immediately scorned by us.

PC WC by: Deborah Lambert, January 29, 2008 If you think the level of academic conferences can’t sink any lower, read on. Last fall, New York University offered a day-long seminar titled “Sex, Gender and the Public Toilet: Outing the Water Closet.” Cultural commentator/author Roger Kimball reported that it took four departments to tackle this weighty topic: the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Department of Media, Culture and Communication, the Center for Religion and Media, and the Council on Media and Culture. Kimball noted that the gathering “brought together pioneering scholars of sex and gender with...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be competing in the South Carolina Democratic Primary Saturday, but they're also vying for the top prize in another contest: The Oppression Sweepstakes. That's how Michael Jelani Cobb, an African-American historian, describes the surge of venom that recently erupted between the Clinton and Obama camps. The sweepstakes kicks in when two excluded groups find themselves competing for the same prize. He says that took place in the 19th century when the abolitionist, Frederick Douglass and his ally, women's rights' activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, argued over what group should first be...

"When he turned 18, Michael B. Elgin Jr. was a homeless father of a toddler, trying to get himself through high school while living with friends, relatives and, sometimes, in his car. Elgin did not know at the time, his lawyer says, but by failing to register for selective military service within 30 days of his 18th birthday, he broke the law."Last year, Elgin's employer of 18 years, the Internal Revenue Service, fired him, citing a ban on federal employment of men who have not registered, despite his exemplary record and appeals from his supervisors and co-workers. Last week, Elgin,...

Reportedly, Christopher Hitchens has just given up smoking. Apparently, this has had no effect on his curmudgeonly tone, but then again, Hitchens could hardly get more pointed in his criticisms. Today he rightly sets his sights on identity politics and exposes it as a trade for one bigotry over another: People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of "race" or "gender" alone, then by the exact same token I would...

Susan Vincent reached into the cage and pulled out a small yellow bird, saying, “This is Kiwi. He loved us, but he was lonely.” It is a lovely spring day in Spanish Harlem on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Vincent, a former children’s clothing designer turned award-winning high-school science teacher, is explaining some facts about the facts of life. “We had to get Kiwi a mate. It was a perfect way for the girls to learn something about nature, about birds, about”—she smiles, holding little Kiwi up—“about the birds and the bees.” It was, as they say in...

When Josie was 2, I wrote a column about my bafflement at her girly-girlness. How could I, a person unburdened by mascara or a blowdryer, have spawned someone who so loved nail polish, frills and Hello Kitty hair accessories? At the time, I expressed shock. Today, older, wiser, and most importantly, the mother of two girls instead of one, I have more insight into Josie’s condition. (Call it Polyprincesstic Ovary Syndrome.) At 6, Josie’s favorite color is still pink; she’s obsessed with ponies, princesses, unicorns and fairies. But Maxine, spawn of the same parents, loves trucks, trains, the subway system....

By MICHAEL DUFFY 1 hour, 52 minutes ago Whenever longtime Democrats gather to note how the chemistry and calculus of the 2008 campaign seem to favor their party this year, one or another will always add some version of the following: "Yeah, but we could screw this up before it's over." ADVERTISEMENT After the past few days, the pertinent question to ask is, is the crack-up happening already? Far-fetched as it would have seemed a month ago, the seeds of self-destruction are being planted in the war of coded words about race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The bickering...

Gender Profiling by: Don Irvine, January 14, 2008 A new update to a the Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal Study shows that overall women continue to make great strides on the college level, but fall short of what women hoped to achieve under Title IX. The study which has now been produced for 31 years is the product of research by Linda Jean Carpenter and R. Vivian Acosta, both professors emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. In the latest update that was just released the authors note that since Title IX was enacted in...

Last Oct. 12, California’s Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a controversial Democratic-authored measure, SB 777, that subtly redefines how sexuality and gender may be taught and dealt with in public schools. This law had been held in abeyance until this month while conservatives were given 90 days to collect signatures to qualify a June ballot referendum that would let voters approve or overturn it. On Thursday, the referendum deadline, activists acknowledged that they had fallen short, gathering only 350,000 of the 433,971 signatures required. With the new law in effect, said referendum supporter Karen England, executive director of...

I want Fred Thompson to win the Republican nomination. (Did you hear he's surging in South Carolina?) And it's not just that the other candidates stink for various and sundry reasons--which I'll run through momentarily--or that he's the best of the worst or something. I want Fred for his own reasons. Let's run through the problems with the other guys: John McCain: He marches to his own little drummer who doesn't know the conservative rhythm. Of course there's McCain-Feingold that nifty little piece of legislation who's chief beneficiary was George Soros, but there's this other little thing: his only consistent...

January 04, 2008 Iowa: Romney's Women Trouble and More [Margie Omero is President of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm based in Washington, DC.] Gender played a huge role in the Iowa caucuses yesterday...on the Republican side. Mike Huckabee's sizable lead over Mitt Romney came largely from women. According to exit polls from both the Democratic and Republican caucuses, 40% of women voted for Huckabee and 24% for Romney. Among men, Huckabee and Romney are nearly tied (29% and 26%, respectively). ... In the Democratic caucus, the pattern is far less dramatic. Yes, Clinton does fare better with women than...

"What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?" Deconstructionist professors have been trying for years to convince us that gender is a social construct. Now, it seems, politicians and even employers are doing their best to put this theory into practice--2007 may go down in history as the year of the transgendered person. Take the announcement in October that, under a state law that takes effect in January, schools in California not only can't discriminate by sex but also can't take into account "a person's gender identity and gender related...

Schools told to encourage boys to play netball and dance to 'balance gender'By BETH HALE - More by this author » Last updated at 17:37pm on 27th December 2007Schools have been told to encourage boys to play netball and take dancing lessons in a bid to promote "gender equality". The move which sees boys moving on to the traditionally female netball court is part of a Government drive to ensure that school children are more 'gender balanced'. Every local authority in the country had to publish a "gender equality scheme" earlier this year to meet new anti-discrimination legislation. Scroll...

It has been more than a year since the first group of Democratic hopefuls announced their candidacy for President of the United States. Seventeen debates or forums have been staged, and more than $150 million has been spent on advertising, polling and other campaign expenses. Pundits have pronounced their conventional wisdom, so easily reversed, on who is most "electable," "presidential" or "inevitable." Celebrities and surrogates have rung their appeals, and the deforming machinery of electoral money and math has whirled into place. And yet despite all this, something remarkable, almost magical in its resilience, will take place on January 3....

Huckabee’s opinion on gay marriage is out there, but we should also be publicizing Huckabee’s opinions on heterosexual marriage. Specifically, what he believes about a women’s role in a marriage. In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: “I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention.” What was in the family statement from the SBC? “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” Read on… The...

The problem for Hillary Clinton that arises from the incident in which a disturbed man invaded her Rochester, New Hampshire, campaign headquarters is not any kind of physical threat. Clinton is the most carefully-managed and thoroughly-secured presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, who when he began to show the first signs of the dementia was placed in a sort of protective custody during the 1984 campaign. Clinton is is no greater danger now than she has been in since the start of her campaign; and neither, thankfully, were her New Hampshire supporters, who exited the headquarters without injury. The problem for...

They had this interesting article in this morning's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation. The dozen or so Spelman College women had come together in a basement classroom, after hours, to hash over a choice unimaginable just a few generations back. Fliers posted across campus summed up the thrust of their conversation: "Should you vote for Barack Obama because of your race, or should you vote for Hillary Clinton because you are a woman?" OK. Let me post this question: Should I vote for Fred Thompson because he's a white man? Hmmmmm. That sounds racist and sexist doesn't it? Spelman is a...

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