Detroit: The Ultimate Ruins

Detroit is probably America’s most prominent Epic FAIL.

It’s been in the hands of liberals for so long that the damage done to it by bad social and economic policies is irreversible.

Now comes news that the city’s population has dropped to the point that the same number of people live in Detroit is the same as it was in 1910, a century ago, around the time that Detroit was becoming the world’s automaker.

DETROIT—The population of Detroit has fallen back 100 years.

The flight of middle-class African-Americans to the suburbs fueled an exodus that cut Detroit’s population 25% in the past decade to 713,777, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. That’s the city’s lowest population level since the 1910 census, when automobile mass production was making Detroit Detroit.

The decline, the fastest in city history, shocked local officials, who had expected a number closer to 800,000. Mayor Dave Bing said the city would seek a recount.

“If we could go out and identify another 40,000 people that were missed, and it brings us over the threshold of 750,000, that would make a difference from what we can get from the federal and state government,” Mr. Bing said at a news conference Tuesday.

In all, the city lost more than 237,000 residents, including 185,000 blacks and about 41,000 whites. The Hispanic population ticked up by 1,500. Meanwhile, the black population in neighboring Macomb County more than tripled to 72,723, constituting 8.6% of the county’s population in 2010, compared with 2.7% a decade earlier. Oakland County’s African-American population rose 36% to 164,078.

Detroit’s population has fallen steadily since the heyday of the auto industry in the 1950s, when it peaked around two million, but the declines have accelerated in recent years as manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the mortgage crisis has devastated even stable, middle-class neighborhoods. The number of vacant housing units doubled in the past decade to nearly 80,000, more than one-fifth of the city’s housing stock, the Census Bureau reported.

“For those of us who have been out in the neighborhoods, we knew that the foreclosures and the abandonment were really extreme and accelerating,” said Lyke Thompson, director of Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Studies. “The question is, can you put a bottom under it?”

In 1950, Detroit was the fifth largest city in the United States, trailing only New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. It was still in the top 10 as recently as 1990. Then the bottom fell out.

Why? Urban decay. Crime. The transition to an urban welfare plantation, which brought crime, drugs, broken families. Failing schools. Anyone who can get out is getting out or has gotten out. The auto industry, which once made Detroit the Motor City or Motown, has collapsed under the weight of its own mismanagement and the strangulation grip of the United Auto Workers.GM is now Government Motors, run by the Obama Regime and the UAW. Same with Chrysler. Reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Only Ford is free of gummint control. All are weighted down with contracts with the UAW that are too generous with pensions and retirement benefits. This commercial, Imported From Detroit, which debuted during Super Bowl XV, is right off of Fantasy Island:

To get a better look at Detroit, check out the Runes of Detroit Tour courtesy of Detroit YES. Take the side tours as well. There are some stunning images of a city in a death knell.

Detroit Public Schools is a hellhole. The state has ordered Detroit to close half of its failing gummint-run skoolz. That would mean 129 schools will have been closed over a two-year period.

The goal is to eliminate the school system’s current $327 million budget deficit, according to the plan’s author, Robert Bobb, who was named emergency financial manager of the 87,000-student Detroit Public Schools in 2009.

Bobb stressed that he is required by law to submit a plan that will close the deficit, and that his office is still working toward a longer-term solution. The restructuring, he says, reflects the harsh economic reality facing Detroit’s schools, which have been hit hard by the recession and decades of decline in the auto industry.

The city is undertaking a plan to demolish 10,000 vacant dilapidated homes.

Bing promised Tuesday, in his first State of the City address he’s given since coming to office 10 months ago, that his government will tear down 3,000 homes this year and 7,000 more by the time his term ends in 2014.

The demolition project begins April 1.

The abandoned homes are eyesores to the city, and hotspots for crime, Bing said.

A city survey indicates there are 30,000 vacant properties in Detroit.

Plus, first responders — emergency medical services — are having major difficulties in response times due to lack of available EMS vehicles. This is literally costing lives. That’s in addition to the personal risk first responders face in answering calls in the crime-ridden neighborhoods. Frequently, EMS responders can become targets in those neighborhoods.

Here’s another perspective on the Liberal Nightmare that is Detroit from The Foundry:

As Detroit suffered a population loss, its neighboring suburban counties with lower crime, better schools and an improving economic outlook saw their population increase. One former Detroiter told The Detroit News, “Detroit just got too messy for me … I was not getting the benefits of those tax dollars. The city services are poor and I could not use the school system. And you look at the cost of living and the corruption, we had to leave.” In other words, bad government drove her out, and she’s seeking greener pastures elsewhere.

For the record, Detroit has been under liberal leadership for decades. And the city’s big problem today is that its road forward is blocked by the very same political machine that helped deliver it to its state of ruin. Case in point: the state’s powerful teachers unions. In 2003, a philanthropist pledged $200 million for the creation of 15 charter schools in the city. Despite the city’s tragic public school system, the plan failed and the offer was withdrawn following protests by the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Little has changed, eight years later. A state-appointed emergency financial manager has proposed sweeping changes to the city’s public school system, including a plan to convert 41 of the city’s schools to charter schools. Guess who’s opposed to the reforms? That very same union.

Quoted here is University of Michigan lecturer John Austin, director of the Brookings Institution’s Great Lakes Economic Iniative. Austin sees some encouraging signs:

Austin sees some encouraging trends in the grim news. In the past 10 years, white and educated people have moved back to the city, and neighborhoods in mid-city are enjoying a renaissance.

And, Austin said, Detroit looks better now than it did in the 1980s, when the crack epidemic and crime made urban decay much more vivid.

“Detroit’s always had for the last 25 years a lot of empty lots and empty properties after streets of working-class homes began to be abandoned,” he said. “It’s always been very spooky that way. It’s less physically depressing than it was 25 years ago. It doesn’t have the general feeling of urban chaos that there was two decades ago. But part of that is there are fewer people, too.”

By the way, Mayor Bing is the former NBA star with the Detroit Pistons, a member of the NBA Hall of Fame. He’s shown the willingness to take bold, drastic steps to try to turn things around. Of course, after the corrupt regime of Obama crony Kwame Kilpatrick, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Why am I writing this? Here’s why: Milwaukee needs to look only as far as its fellow Great Lakes metropolis to see its future if it does not change course. Crime- and poverty-ridden neighborhoods? Check. Business fleeing a hostile environment? Check. Welfare and drug-dealing as the family business in far too many places? Check. Really bad public schools? Check.

Milwaukee has time to reverse course, but will it?

Greater Wisconsin Committee’s Vile Smear

Cross-posted at Red State.

The Greater Wisconsin Committee, recipient of over $1 million in unused campaign funds from former Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone, spent some of that money on a vicious, false smear against sitting State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, accusing Prosser of protecting a pedophile priest in 1979 while serving as a prosecutor.

Problem is, the ad is a lie, GWC knows it, and now the victim is speaking out against GWC and in support of Justice Prosser.

Watch the ad, then go take a shower. We’ll still be here when you return.

Here’s what the GWC says about the ad:

Prosser refused to prosecute a Wisconsin priest even though he had evidence that the priest had sexually assaulted three boys.

As a local DA, Prosser didn’t interview the priest or have the police investigate. Instead, Prosser met with the local bishop and they agreed to send the priest to another parish to prevent the church embarrassment.

Prosser even told the victims’ mother that he didn’t want to prosecute the case because the priest’s brother was a “celebrity” because he appeared on the Lawrence Welk TV show.

The priest abused more victims for years, but was eventually convicted in the original case that Prosser refused to prosecute.

Now, the victim, Troy Merryfield, has spoken up, demanding that GWC remove the sleazy ad, telling what really happened and endorsing Justice Prosser for re-election (Merryfield is not a resident of Wisconsin but says he would vote for him if he were). Read the entire letter here.

Essentially, the original case came down to a decision not to pursue prosecution based on two factors: (1) the age of the victims and the potential for emotion trauma from a jury trial and (2) a promise from the Green Bay Archdiocese for administrative action against the priest who molested the boys, action that was never taken. In other words, the Green Bay Archdiocese lied. I am, in the words of Captain Renault, shocked, shocked!

Charges were later brought, and with both testimony from both victims and assistance from Prosser, the priest was convicted and sentenced to prison for his crimes. Says Merryfield:

As a victim, I find the ad by the Greater Wisconsin Committee to be offensive, inaccurate and out of context. I hope that organization will remove the ad. I hope Ms. Kloppenburg will encourage the organization to pull that ad. I hope all websites, blogs and other purveyors of political information would stop portraying this case inaccurate and out of context.

If I was a resident of the State of Wisconsin, I would vote for David Prosser in the upcoming election.

Charlie Sykes says:

The ad is already backfiring badly.

Go over to the comments thread at Sykes Writes and read the comments from Bill Christofferson, known as “Xoff,” a banana slug of a political consultant who worked for Diamond Jim and other progressives in Wisconsin. He’s also one of the driving forces behind the Greater Wisconsin Committee.

As I noted in that same comments thread:

Looks like the Greater Wisconsin Committee is playing the role of Wile E. Coyote with Justice Prosser as the Road Runner. Meep! Meep!

I retract that previous remark: banana slugs may be insulted by the comparison to Xoff.

Mary from Freedom Eden has more here:

[T]hese Leftists are showing no sensitivity whatsoever for these victims of abuse. Through their actions and exploitation of Merryfield and his brother, they are serving as abusers.

Kloppenburg’s failure to condemn the ad says a lot about her character and the sleazy tactics she’s willing to employ to win an election.

Just How Bad Is The Housing Slide?

We wrote about the decline in new housing starts here and existing home sales here. Both are at their lowest levels in almost 10 years.

Now, we learn it may be even worse than they are telling us (emphasis mine)

Two high-profile reports on home sales this week confirmed that the housing market is still mired in a deep slump with prices still falling and sales activity sluggish at best. In fact, the market may be in much worse shape than even those numbers suggest.

Figures from the National Association of Realtors that are among the most closely watched indicators on the housing market have been called into question by economists who say they may overstate existing-home sales activity by up to 20 percent.

The issue is more than just an academic dispute among economists. Without a working barometer, it’s hard to see the next storm coming.

Can you say … double-dip recession? The Other McCain certainly can.

What if we were in the second dip of a double-dip recession and, because of inaccurate measurements, we didn’t even know it?

Everything — and we mean everything — coming out of Washington and especially the White House is all about spin. They really believe the American people, because they bought the line of Hope and Change in 2008, will buy that again as well as anything else they care to sell.

Primarily, it’s about the 2012 election. The Obama Regime firmly believes that if it can fool the American people into believing things are getting better regarding the economy, it can get a second term (minimally, but that’s a topic for another post, since we don’t believe Our Lord and Savior will necessarily vacate the office simply because the Constitution tells Him He has to). And the Regime has its willing sycophants in the state-run media to trumpet whatever economic good news is there — or more accurately, what spin the Regime offers — and suppress the truth in terms of the economic reality.

What the Regime is saying is this: “Who do you believe? Us or your lying eyes?”

Budget Repair Bill Published

It is now the law of the state.

Despite a temporary restraining order by a partisan hack Dane County judge, the controversial budget repair bill was published today by the Legislative Reference Bureau. The TRO was against Secretary of State Douglas LaFollette, not the LRB.

Madison- A controversial bill limiting collective bargaining for public workers has been officially published despite a temporary restraining order barring its publication by one state official.

The legislation was published Friday with a footnote that acknowledges the restraining order, but says state law “requires the Legislative Reference Bureau to publish every act within 10 working days after its date of enactment.”

The restraining order was issued against Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette, but the bill was published by the reference bureau. The reference bureau was not included in the temporary restraining order.

Laws normally take effect a day after they are published, and Gov. Scott Walker’s administration is proceeding as if it takes effect Saturday.

“Today the administration was notified that the LRB published the budget-repair bill as required by law,” said a statement from Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch. “The administration will carry out the law as required.”

La Follette and the two top officials at the reference bureau – Chief Stephen Miller and Deputy Chief Cathlene Hanaman – could not be reached Friday. The Legislature is run by Republicans, but the reference bureau is a nonpartisan agency widely respected by both political parties.

Is it over? Well, as Yogi Berra said, “It’s not over till it’s over.” Expect the Left to find one partisan hack judge after another to try to stop this. Eventually — sooner rather than later — it will be decided by the State Supreme Court.

 

Locked Out

Too bad the real owners of the White House — the American people — couldn’t have changed the locks while Our Lord and Savior was partaying down in Brazil:

As Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft observes:

Of course, if he was a Republican we would have all seen this replayed every 5 minutes by the state-run media.

Like this?

Also Doug Mataconis from Outside The Beltway and The Jawa Report.

Bus Bombed In Jerusalem, Quaker Suspects Sought

Snark off.

The Religion of Piece (of Arm, of Leg, of Torso) struck again, thus time blowing up a bus full of innocents in Jerusalem.

State-run Israel Radio says a woman has died from a bomb blast at a Jerusalem bus stop.

It is the first death from Wednesday’s explosion, which also wounded more than 20 other people.

Israeli authorities have blamed Palestinian militants for the blast, the first major attack in Jerusalem in several years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Israeli police blamed Palestinian militants. The attack comes as tensions have been escalating between the two sides. In recent days, Hamas and other armed groups in the neighboring Gaza Strip have been firing rockets and mortars into Israel, prompting Israeli reprisals.

“We are talking about a terror attack,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Apparently, the bomb was detonated by remote control.

The bomb that exploded today in Jerusalem, Israel, killing one and injuring more than 20 others, may have been trigged by remote control to go off just as a bus drove by, officials told ABC News.

The bomb, which was packed with more than a kilogram of explosives and shrapnel, was left on the sidewalk near the city’s central bus station. One woman who was critically injured in the blast later died, according to several reports.

Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, told the Jerusalem Post the blast was a “cowardly terrorist attack.” An Israeli security official told the Post it was the first terrorist attack using an explosive in Jerusalem in four years.

Of course, one of the official Palestinian mouthpieces, al-Reuters, can’t help but let its anti-Israel bias show:

Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has feathers like a duck, chances are really good that it’s a duck. Once again, al-Reuters earns the nickname it’s been given in this space. This is in the same category as other state-run media outlets that referred to the Fort Hood massacre as a tragedy, or the September 11 attacks as a tragedy. No, dimwits: a tragedy is an event such as the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan. When terrorists attack, it’s a terrorist attack. Duhhhhhhhhhh!

Says The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg:

Those Israelis and their crazy terms! I mean, referring to a fatal bombing of civilians as a “terrorist attack”? Who are they kidding? Everyone knows that a fatal bombing of Israeli civilians should be referred to as a “teachable moment.” Or as a “venting of certain frustrations.” Or as “an understandable reaction to Jewish perfidy.” Or perhaps as “a very special episode of ‘Cheers.’” Anything but “a terrorist attack.” I suppose Reuters will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by referring to the attacks as “an exercise in urban renewal.”

Wonder if Helen Thomas is secretly ghostwriting for al-Reuters.

Of course, Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama can’t muster any tears for the Jewish victims of the attack, but He mourns the Palestinians killed in Gaza:

The United States calls on the groups responsible to end these attacks at once and we underscore that Israel, like all nations, has a right to self-defense. We also express our deepest condolences for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza yesterday. We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to do everything in their power to prevent further violence and civilian casualties.

House Republican Leader Eric Cantor fired back at the White House:

The administration has called on Israel to make sweeping concessions that I believe will endanger its security, but it doesn’t seem to demand similar from the Palestinians. No matter how much we desire Mideast peace, it will remain a pipe dream so long as Palestinian culture makes martyrs of terrorists who target innocents.

These are the people that Obama is mourning (via Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit via Fire Andrea Mitchell):

On Tuesday, IDF forces responded to projectiles fired at Israeli territory from the northern Gaza Strip. The attack took place in the afternoon when projectiles were fired toward the area of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. In response, IDF forces fired mortars to the point from which rockets were launched resulting in the injury of uninvolved civilians. Among them was the boy taken for medical treatment in Israel today.

The IDF regrets harming any uninvolved civilians but stresses that it is the Hamas terror organization which chooses to operate from the heart of civilian activity and uses people as a human shield.

Oh, and these people, too:

JERUSALEM – Two members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ official security forces were arrested in conjunction with this past weekend’s bloody massacre in which five family members were brutally stabbed to death inside their home in the Jewish village of Itamar, WND has learned.

The names of the apprehended suspects will be released to the Israeli media within hours but were revealed to WND by security officials working on the murder.

Two cousins are now in Israeli custody and are suspected in the slayings. Ahmed Awad is an officer in Abbas’ Preventative Security Services in the northern West Bank city of Nablis. Iyad Awad is an officer in Abbas’ General Intelligence services in Ramallah.

Both the Preventative and General Intelligence services of Fatah are armed, trained and funded by the U.S.

Read that last part and you will have the same reaction as I did: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

These are the people that the Obama Regime is siding with against our longtime ally, Israel.

A side note: those who wish to treat jihad as if it were a criminal matter to be dealt with by U.S. courts want to bring this situation to America. Israel has long accepted the reality that these savages will bomb buses, shopping centers and nightclubs, but it’s not realistic to believe Americans will perceive this as an acceptable risk. Most of us are not willing to accept the chance that we might get blown up by going out to dinner at a popular restaurant or by going shopping at the mall.

That’s why this is a war, not a criminal/civil court matter. The jihadists fear U.S. Marines armed with real weapons than they do attorneys in Brooks Brothers suits armed with subpoenas.

Marines, as well as the rest of the U.S. military can send them to meet their 72 virgins (pictured below):

Consumer Pain At The Pump, Grocery Store

Cross-posted at Red State.

Inflation hammers away at consumers both at the gas pump and at the supermarket as well.

According to the U.S. Labor Department, food prices climbed 3.9 percent last month. It’s the biggest spike since November 1974.

For more than 50 years, Superior Bakery in Cranston, R.I., has supplied area supermarkets with bread, but the rising cost of supplies has forced owner Robert Cicerone to tighten his belt.

“The gas prices have hurt us immensely,” he said. “It hits your traffic margin, your cash flow. Everything that comes in the door has a surcharge,” said Cicerone.

Cicerone said he’s paying up to $1,500 a week more to fill up his 12 trucks was gas then he was 10 months ago.

The cost of sugar and flour has also increased, forcing this family business to implement a 6 percent price increase. Among other places, they deliver down the road to Ruggieri’s Market, a nearly 100-year-old, family-run grocery store.

The store’s president, Peter Ruggieri, said it’s hard to pass the price increases on to customers.

“The consumer thinks it’s the store at store level, that we’re just price gouging,” he said. “But in reality, once again, we’re working on a smaller percentage to try and keep the product moving, keeping it fresh. We don’t like to see the high prices.”

Remember, though, in calculating the inflation rate, the government conveniently does not factor in food or fuel cost increases. That’s how the Obama Regime can look the American people in the eye and do what it does best: lie through its teeth and tell us there’s no inflation out there. After all, who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?

Right now, we have Dear Leader, who stood up in a press conference and lied right through His teeth and said there has been more domestic oil production under the Regime than ever. Oh really? In whose alternate reality. This is the Regime that’s been taken to court over the issue of blocking drilling permits for the Gulf of Mexico, whose ban on those leases has been overturned twice by a federal court and who is still acting in defiance of the federal judge who ordered the Regime to begin issuing drilling permits.

If we were really serious about becoming energy independent, we’d be issuing those drilling permits pronto. In the Gulf. Off of either shore. Open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for business. Accept the business proposal from Canada to increase oil sales. Building more nuclear plants. Increasing natural gas production. Producing more coal … of course, the second largest source of clean-burning coal in the world is in Utah and was put off limits during the Clinton administration when it was made into a national park by President Clinton.

Drill, baby, drill.

Instead, Dear Leader goes down to Brazil and awards Brazil oil permits for the Gulf. Of course, one of the big sources of money behind Brazil’s oil industry is lefty money-man George Soros. So, we have the Brazilians and the Chinese drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but not American oil companies.

This approach to a national energy policy flies in the face of common sense  — until you remember that Obama is hellbent on pushing green energy, primarily solar and wind, as well as mass transit. Talking about so-called renewable energy sources is fine, but the technology is not here now and will not be for decades. Plus, the American economic machine cannot be powered on solar and wind.

Also, the price of corn is going through the roof, as we continue to convert our food into the Epic FAIL known as ethanol. A fuel additive that produces worse gas mileage, requiring drivers to fill up more often and burn more fuel. Of course, since politicians in both political parties in Congress as well as many state legislatures are ethanol whores, having sold out to the industry, we continue to pursue this bad policy, which also drives up food prices.

Remember, too, during the 2008 campaign when Our Lord and Savior said He would necessarily make energy prices skyrocket?

Either Obama knows something we do not — namely the outcome of the 2012 election has been predetermined — or He has a political suicide wish. Running for re-election with gas prices soaring past $5 a gallon, other energy prices through the roof and out-of-control food prices is a recipe for disaster at the polls. Americans are not stupid. We know we have more than enough natural resources to meet our needs and drive down prices.

And no, making sure our tires are properly inflated isn’t going to save enough gas to get us through this crisis.

November 2012 cannot get here fast enough.

Largest Drop In Existing Home Sales In A Decade

Update: Some depressing facts about the Housing Slide From Hell from Business Insider.

More good news on the economic front. Sarcasm off.

Sales of existing homes plunged almost 10 percent in February, the largest such drop in almost a decade.

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes dropped more than forecast in February, sending prices to the lowest level since 2002 and indicating the market is struggling to recover.

Purchases decreased 9.6 percent to a 4.88 million annual rate, less than the 5.13 million median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. The median price fell 5.2 percent from a year earlier.

Foreclosures are adding to a glut of distressed properties on the market and pressuring values, leaving some Americans with bigger mortgages than their homes are worth as joblessness hovers near 9 percent. The figures underscore the Federal Reserve’s view that the housing market “continues to be depressed” even as the rest of the economy improves.

“The demand for housing just isn’t there,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We have to clear this inventory of foreclosures. We think that happens in the second half of the year.”

Once again with emphasis: until the housing market rebounds, there will be no economic recovery. And the housing market is moribund. And new home construction also plunged in February.

The Commerce Department says home construction plunged to a seasonally adjusted 479,000 homes last month, down 22.5 percent from the previous month. It was the lowest level since April 2009 and the second-lowest on records dating back more than a half-century.

The building pace is far below the 1.2 million units a year that economists consider healthy.

Millions of foreclosures have forced home prices down and more are expected this year. Tight credit has made mortgage loans tough to come by. And some potential buyers who could qualify for loans are hesitant to enter the market, worried that prices will fall further.

The drop in home construction activity was felt coast to coast. It fell 48.6 percent in the Midwest, 37.5 percent in the Northeast, 28 percent in the West and 6.3 percent in the South.

Economists say falling prices, sluggish sales and the weak construction rate all point to a housing market that is years away from a recovery.

Years away from recovery. Years.

Add in the drastic increase in wholesale prices — especially food and energy prices — and double-digit unemployment, close to 20 percent when the underemployed and those who have given up looking for work are added in, and there’s the perfect storm for a Carter-era word: economic malaise.

Worst. President. Ever.

I can see November 2012 from my house.

Hate Vs. Art

Glenn McCoy on the hypocrisy of the Left in determining that it’s OK to desecrate the Holy Bible but it’s a hate crime to do the same thing to the Koran:

The Koran Is Burning

Update via Barracuda Brigade: The Religion of Piece (of Arm, of Leg, of Torso) has placed a $2.2 million bounty on Pastor Jones’s head. Bring. It. On.

This is constitutionally protected free speech. Florida pastor Terry Jones burns a Koran via Gateway Pundit.

My guess is most of my fellow conservatives are either going to wring their hands or express condemnation of Jones for his actions.

I will take a contrary position. I have absolutely no problem with burning the Koran. I’ve said multiple times that the Koran is the Muslim world’s version of Mein Kampf, a book filled with hatred and violence. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam is not simply a religion but rather an entire political, legal and social structure. A totalitarian structure that is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and the concepts of liberty, freedom and democracy. Islam has much more in common with totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union.

A side note: before anyone begins citing the so-called violent passages in the Old Testament, remember the one thing about Christian doctrine: the Gospel of the New Testament supersedes the Law of the Old Testament because Christian doctrine teaches that Christ fulfilled the Law through His life, death and resurrection.

Bottom line is Jones’s actions are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. It’s one reason why we oppose the concept of hate crimes and hate speech. No matter what happens in the Muslim world, this action provoked nothing. They hate us simply for existing. People who worry about the Muslim world’s reaction to this are typical of what Winston Churchill said:

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.