Say it ain't so, NPR!

National Public Radio will be much poorer for firing news analyst Juan Williams today.

Apparently, they didn't like some remarks he made recently during an appearance on FoxNews.

Ye socks may recall NPR as the same network who keeps Nina Totenberg on the air after she wished AIDS on the grandchildren of a conservative senator.

It's a shame when some of the most vocal advocates for freedom of speech are only so vocal when it is convenient and gibes with their own political agenda.

I wish Mr. Williams success wherever he lands following this dismissal. He's sure to get better ratings than anyone he leaves behind at NPR.

Grayson stacks the deck, stifles free speech

Well, ye socks, our illustrious freshman congressman Alan Grayson finally got around to hosting a "town hall meeting" in the district tonight.

I put that in quotes, because the hastily-thrown-together circus was anything but an open forum for his constituents.

It was held in the union hall (go figure) of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, immediately following a meeting of the local Democratic Party.

This meant there were only about 120 seats to be had, and most of them were filled by party activists who hung around after their meeting.

Many, many more people surrounded the building, but were denied entry. Instead, they had to stand outside in the sultry summer air to express their frustration, wave signs, and chant slogans. Surprisingly, there was only one arrest during the two hours of protest: a man who jostled someone while trying to record video of the scene.

Inside, despite the late hour, Grayson used his three children as human shields, reminding every one of the four people who actually dared to ask him a probing question that they were present.

Amazingly, he had the nerve to dismiss questions about tort reform and Medicare fraud because they were not part of the socialist health care bill pending before Congress. In that, he totally missed the point. The fact that these items are not addressed in the bill are just two of the things that make it bad legislation. But, I suppose it is too much to expect our representative in Washington to listen to our concerns and . . . oh, I don't know . . . maybe introduce an amendment or two to address them?!

Ultimately, Grayson was forced to admit the real cause of the nation's high health care costs: "There is a profound lack of competition." Yep, his precise words. And, they ring true.

It is the lack of free and open competition that causes people in New York to pay double the premiums that their neighbors across the state line in Pennsylvania pay.

Any REAL health care reform would address things like that and remove the contrived barriers to affordability.

Instead, Grayson and his ilk seem hellbent on erecting even more barriers, constructing an even bigger bureaucracy in Washington, and leaving an even more astounding mountain of public debt to our children and grandchildren (and their children and grandchildren).

Pitiful and pathetic.

Of shoes and liberty

In case ye socks missed it this weekend, El Presidente made a surprise visit to Baghdad.

While he was there, some idiot decided to take off his shoes and throw them at him.

Apparently, that's some big insult in the Arab world.

Whatever.

The bigger story, the one the rest of the press corps failed to highlight in their coverage of this display of bad manners, is that nobody got killed in its aftermath.

That wouldn't have happened just a few years ago.

Nobody would have dared throw footwear at Sodamn Insane, because they would have paid with their lives.

Were it not for the target of his contempt, the idiot shoe-tosser would not enjoy the freedom of speech that allowed him to go home to his family after his little temper tantrum.

Would that he and his ilk, both there and here, would focus their contemplations along those lines instead of coming up with new ways of voicing their indignation for the sake of being indignant.