Category: Awards

"The murder of George Tiller at his church is a heinous crime, without any sense or justice. Regardless of how one feels about George Tiller’s profession, his murderer is nothing more than a domestic terrorist — someone attempting to impose by force a policy that one cannot get in place through democratic means," – Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.

I want to reiterate my personal moral opposition to legal late term abortions. I understand the awful tragedies and complexities involved. I know too that most of these children would die soon anyway – or be subject to grueling operations with many risks. I just find the ending of human life to be something we avoid as much as we possibly can. And we need to find many more ways to facilitate contraception, the morning-after pill, and adoption to make these tragedies much rarer than they are.

"Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down at his church in Kansas Sunday morning in a thoroughly evil, cold-blooded act of domestic terrorism. Yes, terrorism. Not 'extremism,'" – Michelle Malkin.

"If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than…a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” What does that tell you?," – Tom Tancredo, digging deeper.

"I never in my life thought I could possibly see a Supreme Court pick as bad as Sonia Sotomayor. Barack Obama is quite clearly trying to upend all the underpinnings of American society in order to create his own version of a Brave New World. … He nominates the most radical possible choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get away with saying anything like those things and live, professionally, for even a single additional day. … This is a war for our civic souls. We dare not lose it," – Quin Hillyer, American Spectator.

"But Judge Sotomayor will almost certainly prove to be sharp and charming, intelligent and witty  — because that's what federal appeals court judges are trained to be, and she has been on the bench a very long time.  Cryptic references to her temperament by retired clerks eager to be "in the mix" are the worst sort of gossip-dressed-up-as-journalism, and simply lower expectations which she will easily meet and exceed.  The judge is obviously a bright and accomplished professional with an enormously appealing personal story which resembles that of Justices Thomas and Alito.  This is a great country that allows anyone who works hard to rise, and some to rise spectacularly as has Judge Sotomayor," – Hugh Hewitt.

"Sotomayor may have changed her views since her college days, though her record obviously indicates consistency, but perhaps what's most striking is that on the issue of diversity, Obama seems to have the views of a 21-year-old Hispanic girl — that is, only by having a black president, an Hispanic justice, a female secretary of State, and Bozo the Clown as vice president will the United States become a true 'vanguard of societal ideas and changes,'" – Michael Goldfarb, who championed Sarah Palin last fall.

"I thought it was reprehensible, irresponsible and unpersuasive. If we’re going to regain the credibility of the American people, we’re going to have to stop with silly antics like that. It may get a snide chuckle inside the Beltway, but it offends most people. We have to get away from the politics of personal destruction," – freshman congressman Jason Chaffetz, of Utah, on the RNC's "Pussy Galore" video on Nancy Pelosi.

by Chris Bodenner

"The other thing we have to do is we have to stand up and say, look, America — Conservatives believe in the stewardship of patrimony. In other words, there are things in America that are really good, that work, have worked for 200 years. And we have a guy named Barack Obama who’s trying to fundamentally rewrite everything, change our economy, change our social structure, change our foreign policy, to something new, something fashionable, something cool. Well, we're not cool, we're not fashionable," – Rick Santorum, clearly speaking for himself:

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

The examples you cite bear no relationship the issue that John Amato raises. When Joe Biden’s hair plugs are used to dismiss his policies and John Boehner’s orange tan becomes the key talking point in response to his latest political maneuvers, you’ll have equivalency. Amato is noting the very well established tendency to mock some incidental about a powerful woman – her looks, clothing, voice – to cut her down to size. So Barbara Walters’ lisp is endlessly reduced to baba wawa jokes, but even Barney Frank’s haters don’t go there with his. I don’t know that I would call this “misogyny” so much as unreflective sexism, the kind of thing one has to work at catching himself doing.

But he did call it misogyny – the hatred of women. And not just in regards to the disgustingly sexist comment by Limbaugh, but the "corporate elites who run network news" as well. So, in the same way that Amato said pundits were diminishing Pelosi with sexist remarks, Amato was trying to diminish the substantive charges against Pelosi on torture by crying sexism. Pelosi's tough enough not to need that sort of help. She wouldn't be Speaker otherwise.

Amato is noble to highlight individual acts of sexism. But saying they represent the prevailing media culture is counterproductive I think. (Also: check out every SNL sketch ever made on Barney Frank, or David Paterson; petty ridicule comes with the office, male or female.)