First of all, I have to say it's a damn shame. The powers that be at the Times Herald should be ashamed of themselves for bowing to "peer pressure".
I guess the only news fit to print is that which public opinion deems fit. First amendment be damned. Try now to get a letter to the editor published, if you mention Obama in a negative light...it just won't happen.
Well, Lisa, it may come down to publishing our own "underground" newspaper, but, we will not be silenced. Patrick Henry wrote "Common Sense", self published and distributed it on his own...maybe it's time for our own "Common Sense"...oh, right, that's called a blog (to quote Lisa "until they take that away, too".
Lisa's Last Column:
An Attack Of Righteous Indignation
By LISA MOSSIE
For The Times Herald
In the wake of the Pittsburgh police shootings, there has been a lot of concerned commentary coming out of the left denouncing the right-wing, anti-government, pro-gun culture that supposedly nurtured and bred the animal otherwise known as cop killer Richard Poplawski.
Liberals, who can usually barely be roused from the latest issue of Vanity Fair to formulate an opinion on cop killings, suddenly discovered a new cause to back because, in their estimation, cop killing can now be identified as a function of the conservative culture of hate.
In a snarky conversation comparing Dick Cheney’s oh-so-relevant hunting accident (it happened more than three years ago) with the murder of the policemen in Pittsburgh, Markos “Daily Kos” Moulitsas quipped, “When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently prefer to talk ‘revolution’ and kill cops.”
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s liberal “humorist” Reg Henry, whose column appears in this space on Saturdays, spoke with disgust of the “mother’s milk” imbibed by the right: anti-government, pro-gun vitriol spewed by conservative talk show radio hosts.
Henry then quickly distanced himself from directly blaming Limbaugh, by first cowardly refusing to name him (lest a Lexis Nexis search by Limbaugh’s producers drag Mr. Henry into the awkward position of having to defend his thin accusations and tortured logic on a national stage) and by secondly claiming that “these hatemongers did not fire the fatal shots at the Pittsburgh police ... but the killer took the general illogic to its logical conclusion.”
It should be noted here that Mr. Henry, in his righteous indignation, refused to give the killer “the perverse pleasure of naming him,” but didn’t dignify the fallen officers by naming them, either.
Instead, at the end of his column, Mr. Henry collectively calls Stephen Mayhle, Paul Sciullo II and Eric Kelly “needlessly dead heroes,” a moniker that rings hollow coming as it does after thorough politicization of their deaths.
Over here on the border of cop killer central, we Philadelphia suburbanites mourned with our city as it lost six officers to deliberate murder in the line of duty in the last three years.
Officers Gary Skerski, Chuck Cassidy, Isabelle Nazario, Patrick McDonald, John Pawlowski and Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski, were all killed by career criminals. Even Andre Butler, who killed Officer Nazario by ramming his stolen Escalade into her vehicle, had already amassed a significant criminal record by the tender age of 16.
He was, in fact, a fugitive from the juvenile justice system at the time of his arrest.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, on March 21 four Oakland police officers were killed in two related incidents.
Sergeants Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans, Daniel Sakai, and Officer John Hege were killed by Lovelle Mixon.
In 2007, Mixon was released on parole after serving five years of a six-year sentence for assault with a firearm.
Shortly thereafter, he was named as a suspect in a homicide; however, there was insufficient evidence to hold him.
Nevertheless, there were enough additional charges to send him back to prison for nine more months.
This pillar of society and suspected rapist of a 12 year-old girl was so well respected in his Oakland community that he inspired numerous rallies in his support.
I seriously doubt that anyone attending those rallies was a Rush Limbaugh ditto-head.
In fact, all of these cop killers have had significant and multiple run-ins with the criminal justice system, all had a history of violence, weapons violations, and drug use and by rights, every last one of them should have been in custody at the time they were on the streets murdering police officers.
Based on the laws we have on our books already, none of these perpetrators should have had access to a firearm, much less been able to commit murder. Yet for liberals, to whom the concept of personal responsibility is anathema, the solution is always more laws and less freedoms. And now, thanks to Poplawski, they believe they can blame the right wing not only for our support of the Second Amendment, but as a culture that breeds hate and violence.
So let’s talk about what kind of culture breeds a cop killer.
Could it be a culture of criminal justice that is more about catch and release than punishment or rehabilitation; a culture that offers rewards for crimes that far outweigh the risks or the consequences?
Could it be a culture that holds up the admitted and unrepentant cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal as a “political prisoner,” a poster boy against the death penalty and a fitting commencement speaker to lecture our nation’s youth?
Could it be a culture of “stop snitching” perpetuated by the rap and hip-hop community and characterized by ostentatious displays of wealth? A culture that glorifies violence against cops and women in heavy rotation on-air and whose message is not only condoned but praised and awarded as “art”?
Could it be a culture that perpetuates victimhood and oppression as a way of life?
A culture whose spiritual leaders include race-baiters like Reverends Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright?
And hasn’t that culture of victim and oppressor just been validated on a national scale by the election of the first true product of that culture, Barack Obama?
Could it be a culture in which the media are able to paint all of law enforcement with the broad brush of corruption due to the actions of a few?
A culture of moral relativism that then uses that characterization to make excuses for the hostility, lawlessness and violence of the culture from whence the killers came?
Is this the “conservative culture” that breeds cop killers, or is this a very sour “mother’s milk” of another, more liberal kind?
Every attack on a cop is an attack on our way of life, our civilization and our liberty, regardless of the perpetrator’s political beliefs.
Every attack on a cop is an attack on us all.
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