My NEW Talk Radio Watch column is now up at WND!

Enjoy free audio and webcam highlights from the week in conservative talk radio: Rush Limbaugh calling Obama a "Third World President," Beck vs the Birthers (again), Laura Ingraham's takedown of Tom Hanks, and more.

Looks like my old copyeditor at the Toronto Star has moved to Philadelpia...

Barack Obama, a man who not so long ago had time to jet across the world to make dreary Olympics-losing speeches about how his kind of town Chicago is [CORRECT], has now postponed his presidential visits to Indonesia and Australia in order to make sure “health care” passes this week – or, at any rate, is “deemed” to have passed, which is apparently the way a quarter-millennium-old constitutional republic does things.

Obama and Pelosi are strongarming swing-state Congressmen into taking one for the deem [CORRECT]. 

***
I wouldn't [CORRECT] those "deem" puns if I were you.

Just ask Jonathan Kay...

But of course:

Nicholas Fleet, a U of O economics student, said it’s an “affront” that the student federation has prevented him from putting up posters at the University Centre.

“People like Ann Coulter will come and go, but freedoms such as expression need to be tested and should be respected by student unions,” said Fleet, adding that he’s agreed not to distribute the posters.

But he noted that the posters for Coulter’s appearance were printed by Campus Print, the university printing department that is operated by the student federation.

“They took our money for printing the posters, but in the end they said we couldn’t put up the posters,” said Fleet.

That's the best economics lesson you'll have learned for your $$$ tuition, kid.

Meanwhile, London Free Press thinks "Saturday" is really far away from "Monday":

Walker's comments have served to shine the spotlight on Coulter's visit, and in doing so, has sapped attention from another American visiting two days later, Robert Kennedy Jr., a talk paid for by Western.

So says Mark Wellington, manager of student life for the University Student Council at UWO.

"It's frustrating, all this attention on Ann Coulter," he said, adding tongue-in-cheek, "Maybe if I protest (Kennedy) we'll get more attention.

See, son: it's the "tongue in cheek" part that proves you're wasting your time in higher education...

Alas, Randy Richmond wasn't assigned this story...

Actually, my new post at David Horowitz's NewsReal blog is about Media Matters' pathetic "gotcha" using the National "Catholic" Reporter.

But yeah: Hippie Jesus -- the only one you whose death you cheer...

The UK's Mike Hume remembers a historic libel case ten years on:

It is 10 years this month since the London libel courts closed down LM  magazine, leaving me as editor out of a job and facing a personal bill for around a million pounds in damages and costs, in one of the more outrageous attacks on a free press seen under Britain’s infamous defamation laws.

I have neither the energy nor inclination to refight old courtroom battles. We lost the case in court, correctly under the dire defamation law as it stands, and that was that. But it is perhaps worth glancing back to the wider issues surrounding the LM libel trial – not out of any misplaced nostalgia or wish to commemorate an anniversary for its own sake, but to see how the stand we took back then on the principle of free speech has been proved rather prescient by events over the past decade. (...)

The offending article concerned the infamous images, filmed by an ITN news team, of a very thin Bosnian Muslim behind barbed wire at a Bosnian Serb camp at Trnopolje in 1992. After ITN broadcast these evocative pictures it sparked international outrage about possible Nazi-style atrocities – ‘BELSEN 92’ as one British newspaper captioned them – that led to fervent demands for Western intervention in the civil war in the Former Yugoslavia.

Almost five years later, Deichmann’s investigative report into the background to those images argued that this was no Nazi-style death camp, and that in fact it had been the camera crew rather than the inmates who were surrounded by a barbed wire fence that made up part of an old agricultural complex adjoining the camp.

That central fact about who was ringed by the barbed wire was established in court and even acknowledged by the judge in his otherwise remarkably one-sided summing up against LM.

Nevertheless we lost, as defendants in British libel trials tend to do. 

Demands Ann Coulter treat the new Hitler with a little more repsect:

The University of Western Ontario has announced American right-wing commentator Ann Coulter will be on campus Monday night for a speech and book signing.

Her appearance has angered many in the community including director of the London Abused Women's Centre, Megan Walker.  She says Coulter is a divisive figure with dangerous opinions.

You say that like it's a bad thing!

In the past, Coulter has referred to Muslims as "ragheads" or "jihad monkeys".  She's also said the United States would be better off if women were not allowed to vote, because they typically elect Democrats.

Walker says she'd prefer Coulter stayed home.

"I am concerned that she's coming to London. We pride ourselves in this community on standing up for those who are less fortunate than others. We pride ourselves in this community on standing up for those who don't have a voice and being an inclusive community." she said.

What do expect from someone named "Megan," ferchrissakes.

Sounds like she forgot to put in her Irony Uterine Device...

A few days after Coulter's appearance at Western, the University will play host to someone on the complete opposite end of the politcal spectrum.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F Kennedy and the nephew of JFK -- will give a speech at Alumni Hall on the environment.

Megan has nothing to say about the presence of a non-"divisive" Kennedy in her "community," even though Kennedys are the moral and political equivalent of toxic waste, and have done more to "abuse women" than Ann Coulter.

And women shouldn't be allowed to vote, since too many of them are "Megans". I happily forfeit my franchise if it means no more Obamas and, well, Kennedys.

Also RFK Jr. is a doofus.

Even I thought "ragheads" was stupid. But as far as "jihad monkeys" goes, here's the actual quote:

"If you don't want to get shot by the police, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then don't point a toy gun at them. Or, as I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's offensive. How about "camel jockey"? What? Now what'd I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you?"

She's calling Goatboy and other Muslim terrorists "jihad monkeys", see? Then again, I bet Megan would have been quiet about Goatboy's speech at Columbia.

Does she know or care what beligerent Muslims call women and gays and Jews every day, without blinking? Not to mention the whole "killing people" thing.

(PS: hey Megan, how many Muslim women are hiding out in your women's shelter right now? Wonder why?)

Oddly enough, some organizers of Ann Coulter's visit to Canada have been interviewed by a number of media outlets (not this radio station), but tell me their quotes magically don't make it to the final story...

However, Megan has been quoted widely, hinting that Coulter's appearance in London is an incitement to violence.

Anyway: see the rest of you in London on Monday night.

UPDATE: Megan is apparently a known local pest.

Straight Dope weights the evidence:

The belief that dogs could be trained to target ethnic groups led the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps to establish an experimental "war dogs" program during World War II. Dogs underwent training at Cat Island, Mississippi, to sniff out Japanese soldiers and kill them. This charming procedure involved having a Japanese-American soldier in padded gear beat a dog bloody, whereupon the dog's handler would order it to attack the soldier. The results weren't impressive. After 90 days of such abuse, the dogs still couldn't reliably distinguish ethnic Japanese.

Blah blah etc:

CNN has thrown in the towel and hired a screamer, a right-wing flame-thrower, a guy who traffics in flamboyant political trash-talk.

CNN has obviously been outclassed by Fox in this arena, and hiring Erick Erickson has got to be playing catch-up. Best known for calling Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester" and Michelle Obama a "Marxist harpy," the Red State blogger joins the news network’s new show, John King, USA, which, oddly, is not supposed to be a political slugfest, King claims, but more of an “insight and context” show.

Somehow related?

Jamie Glazov interviews the author and survivor of Muslim terror:

AIR’s attack could best be described as “throwing the kitchen sink” at me.  It was a litany of accusations and references to statements I have allegedly made, or statements that were taken out of context, pieced together to create a distorted caricature of what I believe and how I define the threat of radical Islam.

FP: Why do you think CAIR did this?

Gabriel: It seems clear to me that CAIR is becoming increasingly desperate in its efforts to try to stop the truth about radical Islam from reaching the American people. 

Really moving. These guys are pretty incredible. (Of course, you knew they'd be Catholic...)

Deborah Gyapong pops by an Ottawa courthouse to visit Ezra Levant and Chris Ashby, battling another lawsuit (not ours).

(In-joke. Sorry.)

"I did what I had to do. What I had to do was make my own box, checked it, and then wrote white is a color, not a race on the margin. Then what I had to do was lift the tails of all three chihuahua's and dab that thing on their little bho's. It is in the mail."

Douglas Murray offers further proof that I was born in the wrong country:

I have just got around to reading Alibhai-Bonkers’ latest offering. It is a column of such reckless stupidity and flame-fanning appallingness that I cannot quite believe it was published. (...)

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a disgrace to the journalistic trade. She combines two devastating characteristics, sanctimony and stupidity. Individually they would be dangerous. Together they are fatal.

A preview of my upcoming Talk Radio Watch column, featuring this highlight of the week, from Mark Steyn's guest hosting gig for Rush Limbaugh on Monday:

PLUS: Glenn Beck has to wear bullet proof vest:

From the Gun Rights Examiner:

We've been following for some time attempts by the Southern Poverty Law Center, among other "progressive" groups, to paint those of us who wish to live free as "haters." (…)

Not to be deterred, Michael Dresser of The Baltimore Sun has come up with a unique new tack:

    "Anti-Semitic flier takes aim at Md. lawmakers for their gun bill"

There's only one problem: the creator of the flier is [Jews for the Preservation of Firearms].

My new post at David Horowitz's NewsReal blog looks at the Capitol switchboard meltdown let by Rush Limbaugh's listeners, how it is being reported and what it all means.

David Horowitz passes along a patriotic response to the census.

"Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice..."

If you're like me, it took you a minute...

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

"The Letter" always makes me think of the RFK assassination for some reason. Given its dark undertone, I wonder if this song wasn't a favorite of the guys who later formed The Cars.

Some things never get old, even if they die...

The best update to Free Canuckistan! in a long time! Grab a coffee and take your time.