Free Republic

Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Flashback to last summer: Ill. Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed Sister Claudette Muhammad, the minister of protocol for Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, to the Governor's Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes. Her membership in the group only became widely known when she invited her fellow panel members to Louis Farrakhan's annual "Saviour's Day" speech in February. Calypso Louie was in top-form that day, as this snippet from that speech shows: "These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in...

Although it's a struggle to find any university recognition of it, Todd Beamer, the passenger on doomed Flight 93 who yelled out the call, "Let's roll," was a DePaul University alumnus. DePaul paid Ward Churchill, who called the World Trade Center victims "Little Eichmanns," an estimated $5,000 to speak there last fall. DePaul's complete acknoledgement of Beamer's sacrifice, as far as I know, consisted of his picture being placed in a 2002 DePaul graduation program. Strange priorities at DePaul.

Earlier today Robert Creamer, the husband of Cong. Jan Schakowsky, (D-IL), was sentenced to five months in prison and 11 months house arrest for his role in a 1990s check-kiting scheme while he was the head of defunct Illinois Public Action Council, a consumer advocacy group. Schakowsky has not been implicated in the scheme. Jan Schakowsky is one of the most liberal members of Congress. She is a member of the far-left Progressive Caucus. Other members of the caucus include such "stars" as Cynthia McKinney, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott (Baghdad Jim), Bernie Sanders, and Lynn Woolsey. Schakowsky made...

Well, Fr. Dennis Holtschneider, DePaul University's president, is making snide comments about conservatives again. Last month some creep used a permanent marker to write racist graffiti inside a DePaul dorm on the school's Lincoln Park campus. Although the DePaul public relations department denies it, in the far-left group-think at DePaul, the vile incident seems inexorably tied to the mock affirmative action bake sale held by the DePaul Conservative Alliance in January. From UPI on March 9: DePaul University spokesperson Denise Mattson told WBBM Radio the incident was an assault on the university's values. Mattson said the campus has been politically...

How low will the forces of political correctness stoop? Well, all the way down to the basement of Chicago's Adler Planetarium, that's for certain. I took Litte Marathon Pundit there Tuesday afternoon. She's on spring break from school this week, and her third grade class is spending a lot of time discussing astronomy. The planetarium underwent a major expansion in the 1990s, I hadn't been there since the project was completed. My daughter liked our day-trip a lot, and that was enough for me. Almost. My probing eye picked up some frightening political-correctness in the astrolobe section of the planetarium....

The Chicago media has been extensively covering the tragic killings last week of two girls from the impoverished Englewood neighborhood. In separate incidents, the girls were killed while inside their homes by stray bullets that came from alleged street gang crossfire. On Saturday, there was a neighborhood march in Englewood calling for an end to the violence. Mayor Richard Daley and Governor Rod Blagojevich participated in the march. Two days later, Daley's law department got a scolding from U.S District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan because of the City's attempt to seize the Beth-El All Nations Church for unpaid taxes. The tax...

Yesterday, someone found some racist graffiti at a dormitory at DePaul's Lincoln Park campus. There were swastikas found, the 'n' word, the usual hateful stuff that mental midgets scrawl. The Chicago Police are investigating the incident as a possible hate crime. So far so good. But leave it to DePaul further muck up the waters. Denise Mattson, DePaul's Assistant Vice President for Public Relations, is alluding that, surprise, conservatives, specifically, the DePaul Conservative Alliance contributed to the incident. From UPI: DePaul University spokesperson Denise Mattson told WBBM Radio the incident was an assault on the university's values. Mattson said the...

The Rev. Willie Barrow is the chair or the Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes. That's the group, with little fanfare, which saw Nation of Islam Minister of Protocol Claudette Marie Muhammad join its ranks last August. Since her prominent role in Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam--an organization that can rightly be referred to as a hate group--became public, four Jewish members have resigned the hate crimes panel. This morning, the Reverend Willie Barrow, the chair of the commission, spoke publicly for the first time on what is the top news story in the Land of Lincoln. In a CBS...

Last month I had a couple of blog posts about the contest sponsored by the North Dakota National Guard that is offering 540 free trips (10 from each state and US territory), to North Dakota. Yes, FREE trips. In mid-February, only about 30 entries for this contest were received. The deadline to enter was February 28, but that has been extended to April 2. Medora, which is adjacent to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, is one of the destinations for winners of the contest; the contest is open to students who will be high school juniors or seniors in the upcoming...

I use blogspot, and nothing for the last week from my blog is showing up in Technorati. I checked....double checked...my blog settings. Same with Technorati tags. Nothing.

I've been sent an Adobe PDF file that I can't figure out how to post it on Yahoo. It's a good document, which I want to post on my blog, Marathon Pundit, http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com HELP!

...and according to AP, only 28 people have entered, 12 of them from North Dakota. Okay, let the jokes fly, but I've been to the Peace Garden State, and it's a great place. That's me below in 2004 running in the North Dakota Badlands near Medora, one of the places the winners--and their chaperones--will visit this summer. Anyone who knows any high schoolers who will be juniors or seniors next year should tell them about the North Dakota National Guard essay contest. From AP: A National Guard essay contest is offering 10 selected high school students from every state and...

I posted here Tuesday night that Cindy Sheehan is coming to speak at Chicago's St. Xavier University in mid-February. Here is the entire press release, courtesy of St. Xavier's web site: U.S. peace activist Cindy Sheehan will give a lecture titled "One Person Can Make a Difference, Not One More" at Saint Xavier University’s Shannon Center at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16. This will mark Sheehan’s first lecture on a college campus and in Illinois. Sheehan won nationwide attention with an anti-war vigil outside President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch after her son, Army Specialist Casey A. Sheehan, was...

Man, it's getting hard to keep up with all the developments at DePaul. From NPR last week: DePaul University in Chicago -- the largest Catholic university in the United States -- is launching a "queer studies" program that looks at issues of homosexuality. DePaul will be the first Catholic university to offer a minor in the topic, and could face the wrath of the Vatican. Jason DeRose of Chicago Public Radio reports. Will DePaul offer a minor in "conservative studies?" Or even "libertarian studies?"

DePaul University is rapidly becoming ground zero in the battle to reform academia’s corrupted political culture. For the third time in less than a year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has publicly rebuked the university for its politically motivated abridgment of free speech, this time for shutting down an anti-affirmative action bake sale and threatening to punish one of the organizers for violation of a newly instituted anti-discrimination policy. The DePaul Conservative Alliance set up a table in the Student Center where they were selling cookies and suggesting differing prices based on race, ethnicity and gender. It...

Fresh from a trip to the World Social Forum in Venezuela--where she met with President Hugo Chavez, "Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan has a visit to Chicago's Southwest Side coming up, the Daily Southtown reports.St. Xavier University will host Cindy Sheehan on February 16 at 7:30pm at the school's Shannon Center. Expect a lot of Code Pink activists and their ilk prowling around St. Xavier that night.

A picture similar to the one below attracted to me to an op-ed by Jon Margolis, who used to write about politics regularly for the Chicago Tribune. Jon's moved on and out-- he lives in Vermont. An author, he wrote this book, The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964 : The Beginning of the "Sixties." Yes, another book about "the Sixties." If it wasn't for a picture of Republican rocker Ted Nugent, would've skipped the article, Tribal America defends right to ignore facts. Free registration may be required. It's a typical, "Man, most Americans (but not me) are dumb" piece....

My representative in the House is Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, IL, pictured below. Earlier today, Jan was probably at the Democratic Party of Evanston's slatemaking session. But rather pondering just who is the most qualified to gain the local party's endorsement for Cook County Water Reclamation District Commissioner, this Robert Novak column in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times probably dominated her thoughts. From that column: House Republicans, wounded by lobbyist scandals, have called on the House Ethics Committee to investigate more than 10 Democratic members headed by Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Nydia Velazquez of New York. Schakowsky's husband, consumer advocate Robert...

Earlier this month, Chicago's DePaul University, pressured by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), agreed to drop its bizarre "propaganda ban" that the administration used as an attempt to silence DePaul College Republicans last fall. Controversial University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill, in a paid appearance, spoke at DePaul, and the College Republicans faced several school administration roadblocks as they tried to protest that event. FIRE's interim president, Greg Lukianoff, stated earlier this month on the Hannity & Colmes show that in terms of free speech issues, DePaul was "a basketcase." Still, with its dropping of the "propaganda...

The latest edition of the DePaulia, the campus newspaper of DePaul, is out and online. For those new to Marathon Pundit, I've been blogging about the misadventures of Chicago's DePaul University for almost a year now. This MP post from last month sums things up pretty concisely. Last March 1, I reported on DePaul's suspension of Thomas Klocek, who defended Israel from exaggerated charges from some Muslim students. As with most American colleges, there truly is a deep liberal bias at DePaul. For instance, last fall, Dr. Harvette Grey invited that hero of the anti-American Left, Ward Churchill, to speak...