It’s Friday, September 9th, 2011….but before we begin, we’ll insert one more bit of fact, courtesy of Speed Mach, into Team Tick-Tock’s ever-growing web of fiction:

Now, here’s the Gouge!

First up, after observing Wednesday’s GOP debate, James Taranto reports….

Why They Cheered

Capital punishment brings out the worst in the liberal elite.

Perhaps the most striking statement at last night’s Republican presidential debate came not from Rick Perry or Mitt Romney but from the audience, which applauded the preface of one of moderator Brian Williams’s questions. Here’s how it looked in the transcript:

Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you . . .

(APPLAUSE)

Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?

Perry answered: “No sir,” pointed out that death-row convicts are entitled to extensive appeals, and crisply declared: “In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice.”

Williams then asked Perry to explain the audience’s reaction to Williams’s question: “What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?”

Although Williams surely did not intend it as such, this question was a gift for Perry, who got to reiterate his position while flattering voters by praising their wisdom: “I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of–of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens–and it’s a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don’t want you to commit those crimes against our citizens. And if you do, you will face the ultimate justice.”

Brian Williams was far from alone in being vexed by the audience’s applause. “That crowd cheering for all of Rick Perry’s executions was truly creepy,” tweeted Glenn Greenwald, an expert on creepiness. “Any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join,” wrote the excitable Andrew Sullivan. “This is the crowd that believes in torture and executions.” (Sullivan is hallucinating again. No jurisdiction in America employs torture as a criminal penalty.)

Blogger E.D. Kainadds: “When Perry is asked about the two-hundred and thirty some people he’s executed on death row during his governorship, the audience bursts into applause. Torture, war, and death, and this is the ‘pro-life’ party. I submit to you that this moment is perhaps the most telling since George W. Bush left office; that the modern Republican party is not only intellectually bankrupt, but morally bankrupt as well.”

Capital punishment draws strong emotional reactions on both sides, doesn’t it? And whatever one thinks of the death penalty or the audience’s behavior last night, the harshness, self-righteousness and simple-mindedness of these responses belie the left’s self-image as intellectually sophisticated and tolerant of other viewpoints.

Kain implies that there is a contradiction between supporting capital punishment and opposing abortion, as if the establishment of guilt by due process meant nothing. Ta-Nahisi Coates similarly conflates the orderly administration of justice with wanton violence: “Apparently people were shocked by the applause here. The only thing that shocked me was that they didn’t form a rumba line. . . . This is still the country where we took kids to see men lynched, and then posed for photos.” But mob justice would still be injustice if the punishment were life in prison.

Coates correctly notes that in America, “most people support the death penalty. It’s the job of those of us who oppose the death penalty to change that.” But as Josh Marshall explained in a 2000 New Republic piece, what sets the U.S. apart from Europe and Canada in this regard is not support for capital punishment but the political system’s response to it:

It’s true that all of America’s G-7 partners, save Japan, have abolished capital punishment, but the reason isn’t, as death-penalty opponents usually assume, that their populations eschew vengeance. In fact, opinion polls show that Europeans and Canadians crave executions almost as much as their American counterparts do. It’s just that their politicians don’t listen to them. In other words, if these countries’ political cultures are morally superior to America’s, it’s because they’re less democratic.

It seems to us that the crowd’s enthusiasm last night was less sanguinary than defiant. The applause and the responses to it reflect a generations-old mutual contempt between the liberal elite and the large majority of the population, which supports the death penalty.

There are, of course, reasonable arguments against the death penalty. But opponents are too resentful at their inability to steamroll over public opinion as if this were Europe or Canada to argue their case effectively. One of their most ludicrous tropes is to liken the U.S. to authoritarian regimes that also practice capital punishment. In reality, as Marshall showed, America still has the death penalty because it is less authoritarian than Europe. Thus whenever someone makes that argument, we feel a tinge of patriotic pride. We believe a similar sentiment lay behind last night’s applause.

More importantly, here’s the poster child for the “Why We Need Capital Punishment” campaign:

And since we’re on the subject of hypocritical bleeding-heart Liberals, over at The Obamao’s Department of Injustice, Attorney General….

Holder Denies Prior Knowledge of ‘Fast and Furious’

The head of the U.S. Justice Department launched his strongest personal defense yet in the growing furor over Operation Fast and Furious, the controversial sting targeting Mexican drug cartels and American gunrunners.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said for the first time that not only he but also other higher-ups at the Justice Department were not aware of the operation as it was being carried out. (Hell’s Bells!  No one at Injustice has even seen the MOVIE The Fast and the Furious!) Holder also suggested politics could be a driving force behind Republican lawmakers’ forceful inquiries into the matter.

“The notion that somehow or other this thing reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that. … I don’t think is supported by the facts,” Holder told reporters at an unrelated press conference in Washington. (TRUST me!) “It’s kind of something I think certain members of Congress would like to see, the notion that somehow or other high-level people in the department were involved. As I said, I don’t think that is going to be shown to be the case — which doesn’t mean that the mistakes were not serious.”

A spokeswoman for the Republican leading a congressional investigation described Holder’s comments as baseless “whining,” and earlier Wednesday the House Republican himself said the issue is about more than who knew what, when. “Whenever you talk about human mistakes, you have to say, ‘What was in the system that allowed that human mistake to go on and perpetuate itself?'” Rep. Darrell Issa R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on Fox News Channel.

In a related item….

Convicted Louisiana Mayor Seeks Vacation Pay

Former Mayor Derek Lewis appeared before the Port Allen City Council to make his case that the city owes him about $19,000 in accrued vacation pay. Lewis resigned in June, just hours before he pleaded guilty in Baton Rouge federal court to a racketeering charge. Lewis admitted he accepted bribes from undercover operatives posing as businessman who were looking for a city contract. The phony businessmen were pitching a government-created garbage can-cleaning service known as Cifer 5000.

On Wednesday, an agitated Lewis told council members to check the minutes from a March 2010 City Council meeting during which the former mayor declared he was taking his first-ever vacation while in office.

Thankfully for the citizens of Port Allen, it was also his last!

Next up, Bill Meisen forwarded what is likely to be, particularly as November 2012 approaches, a harbinger of things to come:

Longshoremen storm Wash. state port, damage RR

Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha. Six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, he said. (Is kidnapping no longer a felony in Washington state?!?)

No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested. Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines and spilling grain from car at the EGT terminal, Duscha said. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union believes it has the right to work at the facility, (You know….sorta like the Machinists have the “right” to build all the 787’s!) but the company has hired a contractor that’s staffing a workforce of other union laborers.

Thursday’s violence was first reported by Kelso radio station KLOG. Police from several agencies in southwest Washington, the Washington State Patrol and Burlington Northern Santa Fe responded to the violence to secure the scene that followed a demonstration Wednesday.

“We’re not surprised,” Duscha said. “A lot of the protesters were telling us this in only the start.” One sergeant was threatened with baseball bats and retreated, Duscha said. “One officer with hundreds of Longshoremen? He used the better part of discretion.” Discretion, hell!  We’d suggest the Longview police grow a set, and then adopt the “canoe” approach favored by lawmen of what is sadly a bygone day:

The train was the first grain shipment to arrive at Longview. It arrived Wednesday night after police arrested 19 demonstrators who tried to block the tracks. They were led by ILWU International President Robert McEllrath, who said they would return. The blockade appeared to defy a federal restraining order issued last week against the union after it was accused of assaults and death threats.

As the late Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story, courtesy of the WSJ:

A Union Goes Too Far

Violence by unionized longshoreman is noticed by the NLRB.

It turns out a union can go so far that even the current National Labor Relations Board can’t turn a blind eye. A grain operator at the Port of Longview in Washington state was hit with a violent strike yesterday by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Longshoreman walked out at nearby ports in Tacoma and Seattle.

According to police reports, some 500 longshoreman broke in at about 4:30 a.m. Thursday morning and held six security guards hostage for two hours while the protesters rampaged through the facility. They cut brake lines on railroad cars and spilled grain from boxcars.

The grain terminal under attack is owned by EGT, LLC, which is a joint venture of U.S., Japanese and South Korean companies. The consortium built the facility for $200 million and announced it would employ non-union longshoreman to save $1 million a year in operating costs. Contract negotiations between EGT and the union broke down earlier this year. The facility has been under physical assault since July.

On August 31, the NLRB issued a complaint accusing the union of taking “violent and aggressive” actions, destroying EGT’s property and harassing its employees. In response to an NLRB request, federal Judge Ronald B. Leighton issued a temporary restraining order, which the union has ignored. It would have been impossible for the NLRB not to have issued a complaint when a union is publicly trashing people and property.

There is some concern that the strike against the two big ports could spread to other important U.S. points of entry if ILWU shops begin slowdowns in sympathy with the union in Washington state. If that happens, the events yesterday will become a national issue demanding the attention of a President who is desperately trying to hold his union base together. This one is worth watching.

For any number of reasons, not the least of which is to see whether or not Washington state law enforcement authorities will actually perform the duties they are sworn to execute.

Meanwhile, in the Environmental Moment, another developing story worth watching; one in which hope, change and transparency once again appear to have taken a back-seat to influence peddling and campaign contributions:

The Solyndra Scandal

The FBI raids a beneficiary of federal loan guarantees.

The political scandal over the failure of Solyndra, the politically connected solar-panel maker, just got a lot more interesting. The FBI raided the company’s Fremont, California offices yesterday and executed a search warrant.

Congress has been investigating the company, which received a $535 million government loan guarantee in March 2009 and announced August 31 that it is filing for bankruptcy. Yesterday’s FBI raid is the first hint of a larger government probe, which is being conducted in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s Inspector General. The FBI declined to comment. A Solyndra spokesman said it was surprised by the raid and is cooperating.

Solyndra was once a leading light, if you will, of the Obama Administration’s signature “green jobs” dreams. The Energy Department signed off on the loan guarantee under a George W. Bush-era law, and the Federal Financing Bank, a unit of the Treasury Department, also provided a loan with a 1.025% quarterly interest rate. A parade of Administration officials praised the investment, including President Obama, who said in a speech last year at the company’s Fremont headquarters that “companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”

Solyndra never did turn a profit and laid off employees in November. But in February the company renegotiated its loan guarantee—with a hitch. Under the new agreement, Solyndra’s investors would loan the company $75 million but be first in line on repayment in the event of bankruptcy, in front of taxpayers.

One of Solyndra’s biggest backers is the George Kaiser Family Foundation, whose namesake is an Oklahoma oilman who bundled campaign contributions from multiple sources for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign.

In an email yesterday, an Energy Department spokesman said the government “restructured the debt to give Solyndra more time to repay and avoid default—much like commercial lenders do when a homeowner is having trouble making the mortgage payments.”

The email added that the new deal ensured that “no additional taxpayer funding was used,” that Energy received “substantial additional collateral protection in the form of intellectual property, claims on the parent company and more,” and that the deal “permitted the company to complete, equip and begin operating its plant, which increased its value in any future liquidation or sale.” Sounds like Energy officials already feared Solyndra might go belly-up.

Meanwhile, the Daily Caller reported yesterday that “Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips” to the White House between March 2009 and April 2011 and that Mr. Kaiser also made a few visits. Mr. Kaiser and the White House deny any impropriety.

House Republicans began pressing the Administration for more disclosure about the loan earlier this year—an effort that the White House budget office did not seem to welcome. In July, the Energy and Commerce Committee issued a subpoena to force the White House to answer its queries, which it finally started to do in August.

Speaking about the bankruptcy earlier this week, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: “There are no guarantees in the business world about success and failure. That is just the way business works, and everyone recognizes that.” He added that “you cannot measure the success based on one company or the other.”

That is all true enough, but then most businesses don’t stick taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in potential losses when they fail. The problem with politically directed investment isn’t merely that bureaucrats are betting with someone else’s money on industries they may not understand. Such investment also invites political favoritism for the powerful few at the expense of millions of middle-class taxpayers. Americans need to know the full story of who made or influenced the decision to give Solyndra its loan guarantee, and if political pressure was brought to bear.

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll call it a week with this headline from the Wide, Wild World of Sports:

NBA Owners, Players Agree To Try Larger Group Meetings

Good plan….unless of course the meetings are further expanded to include all the players’ illegitimate offspring….in which case they’ll need to move their confabs to the Superdome.

Enjoy the weekend!

Magoo