“When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty.
When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace.
When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.”
— Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
Chinese-American writer and editor

In Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”  Anyone with “esquire” behind his or her name will rightly tell you that the bard’s quote, when taken in context, is in praise of lawyers. Personally, I prefer it taken out of context, as do most who quote it. Like all lawyer jokes, it makes the point that no one likes them and that there are far too many of them.

Paradoxically, it is the law that separates us from the uncivilized; yet lawyers in excessive numbers create a barrier to progress that threatens the very civilization we enjoy. This is especially true when wisdom is divorced from the practice of the law, as is so often the case in America today.

Take, for instance, the ridiculous ruling of the California Supreme Court, which mandated that the people of that state must accept a redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

Or the recent United States Supreme Court decision that invented a constitutional right to habeas corpus and all the rights associated with citizenship for hostile combatants taken prisoner on foreign battlefields. Our ancestors would think us mad, indeed.

Thousands of years ago, King Solomon is reported to have been the wisest man in the world. When asked to judge between two women who claimed to be the mother of an infant, Solomon ordered that the child be cut in two and each woman be given half. One of the women immediately cried out that the king should give the baby to the other woman, which proved to Solomon that this woman was the child’s mother, for she was willing to give her child to someone else rather than see it slain. Solomon’s wisdom is not often in evidence in the legal profession today.

Recently, an Associated Press article was published concerning the number of American lawyers and law schools. It seems that the United States now has the dubious distinction of having 200 accredited law schools. Currently in this country we have one million lawyers, most of them hungry and anxious to sue someone. Anyone.

Contrast that with Japan, a nation with approximately half our population, which has 18,000 practicing lawyers. We have nearly ten times that many people in law school at this very moment!

“I think we have this fundamental disconnect between images of lawyers in the popular media, in the courtroom dispensing justice, where everyone seems prosperous and well paid,” says William Henderson, an Indiana University-Bloomington law professor who studies the job market. “The reality is for a lot of people, law school is a route to trying to start your own private practice, and that’s a very crowded business right now.”

So we have one million lawyers, their ranks swollen annually by fifteen percent from 200 law schools around the country. Many who cannot make it in private practice join the ranks of advocacy law. These are the legal parasites who impede society’s advancement in the name of a cause such as global warming or homosexual special rights. They specialize in attacking traditional values and institutions and generally wreaking havoc on society. They are the ACLU types and other radical fringe groups bent on destroying America. And many times, they become the judges who find themselves ascending the ladder to our federal courts — where they can do some real damage.

Ethical lawyers and wise judges are rare today, and they are not rewarded for their common sense. A judge who wants to see his career flourish will not rule in a manner that will invite scrutiny by a higher court. To have a decision overturned is not in the best interests of a jurist’s long term career goals.

Do you suppose King Solomon would have concerned himself with such things?
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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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The 16-month Hillary-palooza has finally gone bust. Her website bravely instructs us to “Support Senator Obama Today.” Mrs. Clinton’s staff has been pared down to a skeleton crew. And she’s finally getting around to paying off the health insurance bills. 

But Hillary’s campaign wasn’t a presidential nomination effort in the usual sense. It was a massive exercise in feminist consciousness-raising foisted on an unsuspecting American public. 

Take Clinton’s June 7 concession speech that was billed as an endorsement of rival Barack Obama. In reality it was a neo-Marxist rant lightly disguised as a feminist pep talk.  

Hillary regurgitated her demand that women receive “equal pay” — slyly omitting the words “even though they choose to work fewer hours at jobs that are less likely to maim and kill.” Mrs. Clinton also saw fit to blame her defeat on “unconscious” sex biases that had created the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.”  

That hard-edged rhetoric is one of the reasons why Hillary lost the race. 

Let’s look at the votes. While Barack Obama had a lock on the African-American vote, Hillary Clinton rallied the support of white women. The Black and white female vote basically offset each other. 

So which group was the tie-breaker? 

In states with exit polls, Barack Obama enjoyed 17 primary victories. In only four states did a plurality of white female voters support him: Iowa, Illinois, Vermont, and Oregon. [www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21660890] 

But in 10 states, Mr. Obama took the white male vote: Iowa, Illinois, Vermont, and Oregon, plus Virginia, Wisconsin, Maryland, Connecticut, Utah, and Georgia. 

The significance of that result is amplified by the fact that white men represent a smaller fraction of the electorate. For example in Illinois, white males compose 23% of the Democratic electorate, compared to 34% who are white females. 

So in nearly 60% of Obama’s victories, the smaller number of white men, weary of Hillary’s girl-power riffs, came together to overcome the larger but splintered female vote. 

After she conceded the race, the true-believers in the feminist Nirvana came out to genuflect at Mrs. Clinton’s altar, lauding how her campaign had shattered gender myths and barriers. But in truth, Mrs. Clinton only crystallized the worst stereotypes about the Sisterhood: 

1. Feminists are devious. Long-time Clinton confidante Dick Morris once wrote, “Bill lies about sex, Hillary lies about everything.” From her fairytale that “women were routinely excluded from major clinical trials” to the bullets-in-Bosnia brouhaha, Hillary Clinton has a nearly congenital tendency to disregard the truth. 

2. Feminists love to blame men. When her defeat became undeniable, Hillary cast about for explanations, eventually deriding the nation’s alleged epidemic of sexism as “deeply offensive to millions of women.” But what about Hillary’s sexist caricatures of men? 

3. Feminists don’t accept responsibility for their failures. How many times do you remember Mrs. Clinton saying, “I’m sorry” over the past year and a half? If you scan Hillary’s June 8 endorsement speech, she never hints at the many miscalculations and missteps of her campaign. 

4. Feminists are arrogant. Recall Hillary’s famous promise, “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good”? Remember the aura of inevitability that she exuded during the early months of her campaign?  

5. Feminists are self-possessed narcissists. As a college student, Hillary once confided that she had “not yet reconciled myself to the fate of not being the star,” adding that as a child she used to “pretend there were heavenly movie cameras watching my every move.” Does anyone doubt that Hillary believes her rightful place in the world is at the center of the universe? 

6. Feminists can become very abusive. I have previously documented Hillary’s foul ways: www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/070408 . On the day that Bill was inaugurated as President, Hillary was informed she wouldn’t be moving into the vice-president’s office, prompting this rebuke: “G*d d*mn it, Bill, you promised me that office!” 

Once again, Hillary didn’t get her way. Heaven help us from a candidate scorned.

-By Warner Todd Huston

A photographic essay of Obama propaganda and the Media’s willing assistance with it

In America we have always been a skeptical people. One of our states even has a skeptical motto. Missouri calls itself the “Show Me State” proving that Missourians don’t imagine they’d be apt to have the wool pulled over their eyes too readily. Consequently, when most American citizens look at their politicians they usually view them through a prism of skepticism and since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, our skepticism has almost bordered on the irrational. (Photo with Obama logo behind by Reuters)

The American press has traditionally been even harder on our politicians and government than even the average American. Since the first days of our country, the press has savaged, doubted, dug up dirt and attacked our politicians, seeming to never believe a word the pols say. From George Washington to George Bush, the press has been at odds with politicians. Yet, for some unexplainable reason, the pretentiousness and presumption of Barack Obama is being allowed to pass uncommented upon. The media especially is allowing him to make all sorts of claims that they should never allow anyone else to get away with. They are unquestioning with his claim to be the candidate of “change” and the candidate that will “reach across the aisle.” Neither claim can be substantiated by the man’s career thus far. He does not reach across the aisle and he is responsible for no great program of change. A properly skeptical press would ask for the proof of Obmam’s claims, but they merely smile and allow him to ramble on as if what he is saying is unassailable.

But the media is especially compliant where it concerns the Obama campaign’s graphic designs, displays that can be so easily compared to religious iconography or even old style communist propaganda. The overblown, obscenely reverential posters featuring Obama’s upturned face in Jesus-like poses have gone uncommented upon by what should be a hard-nosed, doubtful media. These over-the-top graphic images in the form of posters and campaign literature design are amazing for their obvious propagandistic style, yet the media seem not to find any reason to be off put by the absurdity of these graphics. Nor have they noticed the campaign art’s similarity to communist imagery. One can’t help but wonder why this blatant re-use of the graphic style used by Stalin, Hitler and Mao has raised not the slightest question in the minds of the American media?

Obama’s most recent graphic arrogance took the form of a faux “great seal” similar to the one seen on the podium of the president of the United States. On Friday, June 20, Obama met with a dozen Democratic governors in Chicago. The room featured a nice nameplate for each governor, but in front of Barack Obama was displayed an amazing bit of presumption in the form of a seal saying “Obama for America” and taking the form of an official seal the sort one might find from a government office. (Seal Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

And the Obama campaign has been inundated with helpful citizen propagandists like Los Angeles-based street artist Shepard Fairey who is responsible for creating the ubiquitous HOPE poster, the poster that started a rash of artists and designers hoping to catch the Obama wave to fame.

The HOPE poster has a companion poster, PROGRESS.

As well as the similar CHANGE version. But there are many others out there.

And all of them seem to evoke the graphic tradition of communist propaganda.

One has but to view a few communist posters meant to keep the people reminded of the god-like status of their communist dictators and oppressors to see the stunning similarity that the Obama posters reveal with their communist progenitors.

It’s impossible to view these communist posters without seeing how they resemble the Obama campaign posters.

Of course, it is one thing that the Obama campaign itself has so easily expressed its inner propagandist, emulating communist graphics. After all, they are certainly free to do as they like with their own image. However, that the media has seen fit not to comment on Obama’s absurd artistic pretensions is bad enough, but to make matters worse, the media has been lending the Obama campaign assistance in turning Barack Obama from mere politician to religious icon on top of the campaign’s own communist inspired graphics.

Let’s take a look at how Cuba’s Fidel Castro was once depicted by his supporters, for instance. Here are two images from a 1959 magazine called “Bohemia” where Castro was drawn in Christ-like poses, face upturned, a pious look upon his benevolent countenance.

One might laugh if Castro’s murderous regime wasn’t so serious.

But the media has also made of Obama a sort of religious icon with magazine covers like Newsweek…

Time…

And Rolling Stone.

Of course, it isn’t just magazines that have given Obama the benefit of the look of a messiah. One might possibly excuse a magazine because they are, it might be remembered, in the business of selling magazines. A flashy cover might just make those issues fly off the stands a bit more, of course.

But, what about the news wires and newspapers? Aren’t they supposed to be less interested in pure capitalism and more interested in the real news? Shouldn’t they be less inclined to fall for Obamania?

Sadly, it looks like they are swooning for Barack Obama as badly as the “street artists” and magazine sellers.

So, not to be left out, Reuters, the Associated Press, and various other news services, news papers and media outlets have joined in to portray Obama in all sorts of images that recall religious iconography. Some images seem to show Obama with a halo.

Or preaching from the pulpit.

Surrounded by worshippers seeking his touch as if he were a faith healer.

Juxtaposed with religious symbols.

Or in otherwise ethereal poses.

One has to wonder why an otherwise hard bitten, cynical media establishment is allowing itself to be so used in this way? The obvious answer, of course, is that the media is not an observer, not a “reporter” or commentator on American politics. The media is an active participant and they have chosen sides. They have joined the Barack Obama team and are more than happy to put their normal cynicism aside to help Barack Obama to achieve elevation from a junior Senator with little experience with nothing to sell to president of the United States of America.

I’d love to say that the small handful of photos I’ve included in this report is all there is to the Obamification of the media. Unfortunately what I presented here is but a tiny handful of examples. The media have become the Obama campaign’s propaganda arm in perfect emulation of the most blatant examples of human history. But, for all those other examples, at least they were generally under the thumb of an oppressive, despotic government of one sort or another. This time, it is the supposed free and open press acting the part of propaganda minister.