Watching CNN this evening, I was forced to be "educated" by liberal hack and Eliot Spitzer's former law school professor, Alan Dershowitz. Seriously, they let this tool teach at Harvard? I thought that was supposed to be a decent law school.

Every single American with even a shred of common sense can see the extreme hypocricy of the New York Governor's participation in a prostitution ring after having built his career on supposedly cleaning up corruption in government and business. But apparently the logic of that situation is lost on the "brilliant" Dershowitz.

Unfortunately, Dershowitz clings to the old liberal canard, invoked by Spitzer himself in his non-apology, that this is "private conduct" and a "victimless crime." Sorry Alan, but despite what you might have read in the Berkley handbook on ethics, crime is not victimless. That's why it is crime. And its not just our society and trust in our public officials that suffers. Why don't you ask Spitzer's wife and children if his lying and philandering was a victimless crime, Alan?

When will liberals learn to stop trying so hard to convince Americans that personal conduct has nothing at all to do with professional conduct. Everyone who has ever met a slimeball of Spitzer's ilk in person knows that when you are a slimeball in your personal life, those same ethics and behaviors will ALWAYS manifest themselves in your professional life sooner or later. Indeed, in retrospect, the corrupt lengths to which Spitzer went to punish his political enemies were merely a warning of the depths of corruption in his personal life.

I know it is wishful thinking to ask the warped minds of folks like Dershowitz to change after decades of misuse. I can only hope that the American people see through the ridiculous and transparent arguments that are bound to keep coming from those who will defend Spitzer and his actions as "no big deal."

Contrary to Dershowitz's assertions, Spitzer is not the victim of any political witchhunt here. He is a lying, cheating, corrupt douchebag who will hopefully get exactly what he deserves, which is a swift exit from the NY Governor's mansion and an eternal exile from national politics.

Any person, regardless of party who conducts themselves in this manner does not deserve the public's trust. You'd think someone of Dershowitz's intelligence could put aside their ideological agenda and admit that.

Here's my six word movie review for the Oscar-winning film, There Will Be Blood:

Feel Good Movie of the Year.

This weekend I picked up the perfect gift for myself for Presidents Day. It is a new book titled "Campaigning for President" and it features the amazing presidential memoribilia collection of Jordan Wright. This gentleman has collected around 1.25 million items from nearly every Presidential campaign in our nation's history. This book is like candy-coated crack for political junkies. Among my favorite items in the book are Richard Nixon cigarettes, a still-unopened ballot box from 1872 (they were probably Gore votes), and, of course, a hand card displaying voter excitement for Democrat Lewis Cass over Whig candidate "Old Zach" Taylor. I encourage all you other junkies to head down to your local Barnes & Noble and check it out.

While today is really meant to celebrate the birthday of our first President, George Washington, it is also a good opportunity for us to honor the Office of the President and give thanks for the good fortune to live in a nation where our leaders are selected in a public and peaceful manner every four years. As obnoxious as this process can become, it is still much better than the alternatives.

By Ben Beliles, from Guam, on the outer rim of the Republic

Fortunately, there are some voices crying out in the wilderness. Writers like the late Oriana Fallaci, the great Italian journalist, and the writer Victor Davis Hanson who continues to beat the drums about the encroaching radical Islamic advance against the West, do exist. Unfortunately they are few and far between in a society that is remarkably unconcerned.

What I detest most about the opponents of the war, most notably the Democratic rank and file who urge their presidential candidates to be as anti-war as possible, is their complete absence of appreciation for the tragedy that is occurring. They are often quite giddy about the prospect of defeat for their nation. They cheer like hyenas when their leaders talk about withdrawal like it’s some sort of sporting event. This merely highlights their lack of respect for the men and women of the armed forces who have laid down their lives for our country. They trumpet the death list around as if they really care about it, but what they are actually doing is stomping around on the fresh graves of the dead while using the list for their own political purpose, which is the weakening of the American political will to fight. In addition, while they feign a sense of appreciation for a military that they have reviled since well before the 1960s, the leftwing’s true colors are exposed by their blackout of the study of military history throughout the academy where recent studies have demonstrated the complete dearth of military historians and the absence of the teaching of military history. Perhaps the academy fears that teaching military history will glorify the military they despise.

Read on . . .

By Ben Beliles, from Guam, on the outer rim of the Republic

Unfortunately, the threat to our nation and our military does not begin and end with Iraq, as some candidates for President would like to pretend.

Iran’s threatening posture of sustained nuclear arms development as well as increasing public statements advocating the elimination of the state of Israel are not even given a seconds’ thought by many in the West, which is more concerned with one Iraqi detainee who died at Abu Ghraib when several soldiers went beyond the scope of what they were ordered to in direct contravention of American policy. The fact that those soldiers were held accountable is irrelevant to the international leftist movement and an international media largely influenced by that movement’s propaganda. Where is the marching the streets in response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s proclamations against Israel and the Jewish people? Where are the demonstrations and the little dolls of Ahmadinejad being burned in effigy? There aren’t any because no one cares. With growing anti-semitic violence and vandalism in France and the rest of Europe, we can only breathe a brief sigh of relief at the election of Sarkozy, with the hope that he can make some substantive changes in a nation that is on a dangerous tailspin into darkness.

Read on . . .

By Ben Beliles, from Guam, on the outer rim of the Republic

We have to face a stark reality. The West is losing. We are a civilization that has lost the political will to successfully pursue a war of more than a few weeks duration and a few hundred casualties. Consumed in our self-absorption, we no longer have time for dealing with issues other than when we are going to get our next buzz. There is no longer any great sense of moral purpose or destiny for the American people.

What highlights the weak moral courage of the American people and their stance on the war is that the vast majority of the American people simply are unaffected by the war we are currently waging. There is no gasoline or food rationing like there was in World War II on a grand scale. There is no draft, nor any chance of one being instituted, despite the fear mongering of Charlie Rangel.

Read on . . .

I am now reading William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity by Kevin Belmonte. This book is excellent so far. I read another biography of Wilberforce several years ago but was recently inspired yet again by Wilberforce’s life by the movie Amazing Grace which received a somewhat limited release nationwide this past February. I watched an early screening of the film at the Charlottesville Film Festival and saw it again when it was released in February. Walden Films did an outstanding job telling the story of Wilberforce's life (and his life's work) with the picture, and I intend to purchase the DVD when it is released in August.

If you are not familiar with the life of Wilberforce, I encourage you to read about him and the community of reformers that he lived with in Clapham, a suburb of London. Their example of working together to effect real change through legislation is quite the contrast to our late pathetic Republican majority in Congress which did absolutely nothing it set out to do. All the work that we did to elect a Republican Congress accomplished almost nothing except for a bloated federal government, compromise on almost every front with the Democratic party, and the promotion of Ted Kennedy’s legislative packages on everything from education to immigration. If you are tired of Republican legislators who run on a platform of reform and then are too afraid to wield their majority, read about Wilberforce. It will make you realize there is an alternative to merely the accumulation and maintenance of power, which seemed to be the only waking obsession of Hastert and his buddies.

First Things comes out with another great article, this time wondering aloud just what precisely happened to Christian Socialism?

I keep reading through Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Tikkun, Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, and the parallel writings of the far Catholic left, and I fail to pick up much hankering for the old essential characteristics of socialism: the abolition of private property, the government-managed economy, and at least the pretense of economic equality. Even the soft versions of Christian socialism that Reinhold Niebuhr once cared about have disappeared, like old books and faded drapery put out of sight, upstairs in the attic.

Still, the general flirtation with anti-capitalism seems not to have lost its attractions. It has always infected aristocrats and artists—all the better sorts of people. The ever-ready slogan “The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer” still has some power to stir the jaded indignation.

Even when the facts run to the contrary. As when one reads behind the statistics that are bandied about in newspapers and magazines. If you recall that income, as the federal government counts it, consists mainly of earnings from work, you will probably be able to think very quickly of quite a number of poor persons in your family or your immediate circle of acquaintances.

It's a great read. The shift away from pro-socialist attitudes to a new, amorphorous "anti-capitalism" is both blind and relatively safe, because you never have to assert an alternative to the free market, just assert that the only economic system ever to produce wealth across economic class is a failure.

Odd... but people really do buy it.