Andrew Breitbart (LIFE.com)

It is a comedic slight of history that Andrew Breitbart grew up on the mean streets of West L.A. rather than those of Flatbush or Dorchester. He has the irreverence of Muggs McGinnis and the cutting literacy of Norman Mailer, although the conservative web mogul is almost certainly not what Mailer had in mind when he thought of The New Journalism.

Nevertheless, Breitbart, a former progressive, is a street fighter, an in-the-trenches journalist provocateur who has become the bane of the New Left. While Glenn Beck received the accolades, it was Breitbart who kneecapped Van Jones, sending Obama’s communist-Truther advisor skulking out of the White House after a midnight resignation.

You gotta love this guy.

While Beck tends toward the “special,” Breitbart gives off at least the illusion that he’ll meet you in the alley to settle the matter — whatever the matter. It was Breitbart who offered $100,000 for even a snippet of footage that would show that tea party activists either spat on black members of Congress or uttered racial slurs at last year’s protest on the Capitol steps. There have been no takers to date.

Breitbart also supported James O’Keefe’s first forays into citizen journalism, resulting in Congress’s defunding of ACORN. He has since supported pro-lifer Lila Rose and another O’Keefe outing in their exposés of Planned Parenthood.

The aforementioned are a mere smattering of incidents that have propelled the Left to target Andrew Breitbart. He is one of the few conservatives in the country who can lather progressives into a vitriolic rage on the level of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.

And wouldn’t you know it, Van Jones is behind the latest attack.

Color of Change — don’t you just love these lefto names — an activist group co-founded by Jones, is calling for a boycott against the Huffington Post for publishing two recent entries by Breitbart.

“Andrew Breitbart is a liar and a race-baiter,” wrote the organization. “Breitbart targets key people and institutions within our community, in particular those who have dared talk about the reality of racism and race in this country — Shirley Sherrod, the NAACP, President Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus. And he targets those that seek to increase Black political participation, like ACORN.”

By way of outing Color of Change, they are the group who immediately took up the cause of the Jenna Six, the black teenagers convicted of viciously beating white student Justin Barker, at a Louisiana high school in 2006.

Talk about race baiting. This outfit makes Al Sharpton look like the George Jefferson when it comes to fostering racial animus.

Van Jones is the ultimate race-baiter and this latest attack on Breitbart is just one of many in his quest to silence the free press and bring down democracy. While we have no particular love for the HuffPo, we all must resist the Left’s attempts to silence anyone with whom they disagree.

Never mind that Tapper and his cronies in the New York division of the White House press room have pimped this guy off on the American people for three years, now they want us to believe they are astonished with the result. We’ve not seen ingenuousness like this since Louie discovered gambling at Rick’s Place.

For weeks now—actually since the beginning of the year—we have been witnessing the gradual defection of the liberal media from the Obama camp, but there is a problem. They have nowhere to go.

Where is the Ted Kennedy who will challenge a president so out of his depth that the US Coast Guard couldn’t mount a rescue operation? Hillary gives no indication of running.

We are now in a de facto state of war with Libya and Obama is like a kid playing behind the wheel of Daddy’s car. He’s pushing buttons, cranking the wheel this way and that, and suddenly he finds the keys. Now the car is rolling out of the driveway.

This is not what we had in mind when we called for a no-fly zone. Charlie Wilsons War was funny; this is not. Before one wages war with even the most despicable Third World potentate, it is advisable to 1) know that one can finish the job, and 2) know that someone—preferably someone friendlier to your national interests—can fill the void once the operation is completed.

The Obama doctrine—which as near as we can determine is something akin to the Butterfly McQueen doctrine on birthing babies—it would seem does not take into consideration finite details. Get Gates on the phone; he can figure it out.

So what do we have?

What we now have is a media shooting rubber bands at each other across the press rooms of America, while a befuddled president makes yet another unfixable mess. This is no small problem for the likes of Tapper and Williams and that hoopster Harry Smith. They have to cocktail with this guy.

The question is now being asked: What if Gaddafi survives? And not a moment too soon, we might add. Because, thus far, it appears the dictator is consulting Jean Paul Gaultier on his fall line.

Whether you call it an end-of-life counseling contingency or a mandatory Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), death panels are a cleverly hidden reality within the trillion-dollar government snafu we all affectionately know as ObamaCare. In fact, end of life counseling—perhaps a better term is “end-of-life lotto”—isn’t the half of it.

Even some Democrats are jumping ship on this one.

The Daily Caller:

An often-overlooked portion of President Barack Obama’s prized health care law, the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), will face heat in the coming months from Congress and from the courts. Congressman Phil Roe, Tennessee Republican, told The Daily Caller the IPAB is the “real death panel” in the health care law, as compared to “end-of-life counseling” provisions in Obamacare that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin once deemed “death panels.”

“This one is the real baby right here – and most people missed this,” Roe told TheDC. “What everybody was talking about, when you saw Sarah Palin and so forth, what they were talking about these advanced directives where you sit down and there’s sort of mandatory counseling – and Medicare paid for it. This IPAB got missed – and it’s the real death panel.”

In his exclusive interview in today’s DC, Congressman Coe, who is a medical doctor, goes onto say that the IPAB will cap total sums Medicare recipients can receive for care, and thus make decisions based purely on cost rather than need options.

Palin has been lambasted in the media for months on end since 2009 when she warned the nation that the President’s takeover of national health care would result in what essentially amounts to death panels. The blogosphere is still loaded with slanderous lies.

Palin was speaking of the so-called “end of life counseling” panels, but the congressman is talking about another board that will essentially accomplish the same end; i.e. kill off seniors and others with “low quality of life” prospects by denying essential care.

Both schemes are still embedded within the bowels of ObamaCare.

The intent here is self-evident. While Democrats in Congress would like you to believe that Nanny State governance will put you on the road to cheaper insurance rates, it in fact will put you on the gurney to a Margaret Sanger-style liquidation mill. What’s next, “Soylent Green”?

Be assured, this is not the end of it. When the lid finally comes off ObamaCare it will be rife with “quality of life” panels and boards, all designed to give you a quick sendoff in your twilight years.

Where is Charlton Heston when we need him!

I believe she will run in 2012.

While Washington punditry use every Palin tweet and FaceBook posting to point out why she cannot be President, the former governor continues to woo those of us who are convinced that our government cannot recover without drastic surgery. The current lot of GOPers, now only five months in office—and I’m speaking of the old-guard leadership—are already showing signs of being more a part of the problem than the solution.

Sarah Palin is the only true Reagan Republican in the current field of potential candidates, unless one considers Michele Bachmann a potential. Newt Gingrich—who I have always liked—brings with him the same insider baggage we’re trying to shun; Mike Huckabee at times borders on the downright goofy, and most of the rest will never raise enough money to see primary day.

In the meantime, Palin has been busily crafting policy statements that are sounding more presidential with every speech she gives. Her métier is energy but she has also waded into the big boy game of international politics and makes uncommonly good sense when she does.

The Qualification Thing

In light of recent events in Libya and Japan and the current economic crisis, there should now be no question (actually there never was) that Palin is qualified to be President. The woman knows how to make a decision, unlike one world traveler who comes to mind.

Does anyone really believe that the US would be following France in the current Libyan mess were President Palin in the White House? There is no way she would looking at Nicholas Sarkozy’s backside today. I gotta buck says she could kick Obama’s ass in a street fight.

Nuff said.

My dream cabinet in a Palin White House:

Secretary of State: Newt Gingrich

Secretary of Defense: Oliver North

Secretary of Treasury: Paul Ryan

Attorney General: Michele Bachmann

Secretary of Commerce: Donald Trump

Surgeon General: Keith Ablow

Energy Department: What Energy Department?

Transportation: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Education: Any home-school mother

Let’s face it, call us shallow, but we live in an aesthetical society, and the man just doesn’t have the hair. Jon Bon Jovi, now there’s hair. Wait, I think he’s a Democrat. Well anyway … And Daniels will have to stand on a footstool to shake Barack Obama’s hand during the debates.

Yet he is the darling the Washington conservative intelligentsia. Charles Krauthammer does wheelchair wheelies when anyone mentions his name. Even though Daniels did go to Princeton. Drat! Well, nobody’s perfect.

Okay, seriously, tee hee hee. No, but seriously, why now, when the Republicans are only about halfway through their November landslide victory lap, are they looking at someone like Daniels as their be all, end all to Barack Hussein al Obama’s Black Liberation theocracy? I mean, they have Mitt Romney. He has the height and the hair, and all but 31 of the 12 million Mormons in the U.S. will vote for him. (Those are the members of Jon Huntsman Jr’s family and Glenn Beck.)

Fact is, in 2012, the GOP will need a rock star to beat Barack Obama in a head-to-head race. Hillary probably will not run and that is what it will take for any generic Republican to win. Despite the Fox News 24-7 diatribe against Barry for Washington, his numbers are holding. This is only possible because Jersey Shore fans can vote, but true nonetheless.

Of course the GOP has a rock star. Actually a couple of them but who’s counting. I know, I know, Palin didn’t go to Bryn Mawr or Vassar or … where was it Tucker Carlson went to school? Anyway, even without Palin or Bachmann or Huckabee, in a pinch they have Donald Trump. Now there’s some hair for you.

Okay, now I’ll really be serious.

For 50 years—leaving out the eight glorious years when we had a president who actually knew what to do about Moammar Khadafy—the mainstream GOP has scattered to the wind whenever a true conservative has stepped to the plate. I know, I know, everyone’s a Reagan conservative these days, but the mainstreamers hated him when he was here.

The GOP is either the party of Lincoln and Coolidge and Reagan, or it is something else; they can no longer look to the mainstream rubber-stamp politicos of the past, or the Democrats will eat their lunch.

The Republican Party is loaded with talent who don’t have John Boehner as a FaceBook friend. Sarah Palin has a built-in voting block that can literally derail any candidate who captures the nomination without her blessing. Who knows, if she decides not to run maybe she’ll go with the Midget for Monongahela, but he will not win against Barack Obama. His Healthy Indiana is nothing more than warmed over Romney Care and his stint with the George W. Bush administration was rife with big spending.

And remember the hair.

With increasing frequency this president is proving himself to be AWOL while the nation and the rest of the world await decisions and directions. Now is not the time for another historic Obama “trade mission.” Translate: sightseeing tour.

What appeared to be a simple case of freshman jitters, after General Stanley McCrystal requested additional troops in Afghanistan at the start of Obama’s term, has unfolded as something far more disturbing. By the time the Christmas Day bomber attempted to bring down a jetliner over Detroit in 2009, Barack Obama had clearly revealed himself to be a man who likes his Zs and tees.

At the beginning of the Deepwater Horizon blowout the President was again missing in action for nine days, while the nation awaited leadership. The beaches of Louisiana and Mississippi were ankle deep in raw crude before he showed up. It the meantime, his administration turned down multiple offers for help in cleanup and containment efforts from other nations.

The Libyan revolt is something quite different. Moammar Gaddafi is not merely a corrupt and brutal dictator; he is the architect of one of the most dastardly attacks against this nation in our history, the Pam Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie. The American people have a stake in seeing Gaddafi brought to justice.

It should be a given to anyone who has been engaged for the last two years that Obama lacks the talents to lead, but what is now questionable is whether he is even wired to care. Over the course of our history, in times of crisis—whether natural disasters or upheavals where U.S. interests or those of our allies have been at stake—American presidents have stepped to the rostrum to instill confidence and provide leadership; not only for Americans but for the world. Instead, this president appears on ESPN to handicap basketball games.

Barack Obama never misses a fundraiser (he is a money raising machine), nor the chance to touch on world events when attending them, but that is a far cry from addressing the nation and the world in times of calamity.

In France, Nicholas Sarkozy has assumed the position of leadership in the Libyan revolt, calling for a UN or NATO no-fly zone over the country. Unfortunately, President Sarkozy hasn’t the clout to make that imperative action a reality.

Time after time for more than two years Barack Obama has either vacationed through the realities of a world in chaos around him, or responded with too little too late. He has been soft on terrorists, Iranian democracy protesters cries for help fell on deaf ears, Egypt received milquetoast assurances of U.S. moral support; and Japan has yet to hear a formal presidential address of support from its closest ally.

What we are witnessing here appear to be the actions—or rather inactions—of a man-child, too preoccupied with his recreational pursuits to concern himself with the business of the presidency. Barack Obama is either inept or lazy; in either case he is unfit for the Office of the President.

UPDATE: Many of these blogs are literally hammered out within hours of an event or headline publication.  Several of you have questioned the validity of this particular post.  Clearly there is an ongoing nuclear event in Japan and lives are in danger.  However, the risks from radioactive poisoning are not nearly as great as the media are reporting. The greatest risks are from direct contact with radioactive material, and the consumption of contaminated food.  Irradiation is far rarer and not nearly as lethal as previously believed.

Ann Coulter has a good article on this here.

The same hysterical Earthers who have convinced half the population that mankind can control the world’s climate if we will only drive hybrid Hondas or replace our light bulbs, are about to go on a marathon world tour. They will make every primetime news broadcast and magazine, telling us that we must discontinue development of nuclear power plants now if we are to avert another Fukushima.

They have apparently already gotten to Joe Lieberman and it won’t be long until a few sellout RINOs will be onboard the “No Nukes Gospel Express,” choo-chooing the U.S. on to further dependence on foreign oil. And we will listen to them and wonder if we should do more to recycle our aluminum foil.

Mind you, more people will die of exposure in Japan, due to this week’s cataclysmic quake and tsunami, than of radiation poisoning, and the media are giving it virtually no coverage. Millions are without power, tens of thousands more are homeless without food and water, and these guys are busily instilling fear in the population that a nuclear meltdown that will not occur.

This is the kind of propaganda that has kept us in the dark ages of energy development and propelled second-rate powers like France ahead for 40 years. It doesn’t work in Europe or Asia but the United States government buys into it every time.

Thanks to Michael Douglas and Jane Fonda’s “The China Syndrome,” Three Mile Island became the benchmark for nuclear disasters in the 1970s, until the word leaked out that the containment structure worked perfectly there. Then of course came Chernobyl, an embarrassment for the No Nukes progressives, because it happened in their beloved USSR worker’s paradise. Meltdowns are exclusive to capitalistic societies, you know.

While the nuclear disaster on Honshu is alarming it was not an unforeseen event; Japanese physicists and engineers have been preparing for such an event for 40 years. The reactors in Japan were built in their present locations to provide seawater as a last resort in the event that the cooling systems failed. The cooling is working.

Not to diminish the severity of any nuclear event. Anytime a reactor malfunctions, much less suffers damage from a natural disaster, there is cause for serious concern. But the rods are slowly cooling in those plants and every indication is that quality assurance at the plants was exemplary.

Fukushima is not Chernobyl or anything close to it. Chernobyl was destined for failure. The Russians were not only careless in maintaining the facility but their design was flawed on the drawing board, providing for virtually no containment structure. There has never been a nuclear facility designed as poorly in the U.S., Europe or Japan.

Yes, a meltdown can occur in Japan, but in all likelihood it will not. The Japanese are some of the most fastidious engineers and scientists in the world. Every design—and this is true in all modern manufacturing—has a built-in margin of safety that takes into consideration the worst-case scenario. Engineering errors happen every day, but we have not seen one at Fukushima thus far.

The fact is, there is never a way to eliminate risk, whether in manufacturing or travel, or simply going to the Super Wal-Mart. Risk is something we live with everyday. But consider the alternative of living for the next 20 years dependant on nonexistent green energy.

The seriousness of the situation in the Middle East cannot be exaggerated; the potential that Yemen, Kuwait, Qatar or even Saudi Arabia may eventually fall pray to radical Islam is very real. But the more pressing matter, at least for the moment, is that prolonged unrest in the region may continue to adversely impact oil prices here at home.

Yet in the face of all evidence to the contrary the President remains loyal to a “green” energy policy that continues to hamper job growth and threatens to put the U.S. in a potentially catastrophic position, should even one OPEC nation fall to an Iranian-style theocracy.

On the one hand it is ludicrous to believe that Obama doesn’t know that green energy is a myth; the technology has not yet been developed that comes close to seriously competing with fossil fuel as a staple energy source. Even the most liberal expert on energy development knows that biofuel is decades away from reaching that goal. And beyond the feasibility is the possibility that biofuel does more harm than good; that its greatest effect may be a negative impact on world hunger.

So it would seem clear that something else is going on, i.e. that the President is deliberately trying to collapse the economy by, among other things, creating an oil dearth. This is a theory that both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have floated.

The argument is still not convincing. Just when Barack Obama starts to look like an evil genius, the likes of which exits only in fiction, he comes off with a shuck-n-jive theory that defies credulity.

“[R]ight now, the industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres –- both offshore and on land –- where they aren’t producing a thing,” The President informed us in his weekly address. “So I’ve directed the Interior Department to determine just how many of these leases are going undeveloped … People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner.”

There goes the Dr. Strangelove theory right out the window. Even Bill Clinton, no friend to Hummer driving capitalists, recognizes that restrictions on offshore drilling must be relaxed immediately, if the nation’s economy is to be set on course for recovery.

The tracts that the petroleum industry have left undeveloped remain so largely because they have either proved geographically to be low-yield or financially prohibitive for immediate recovery. Technology improves annually, and oil companies often lease sites based on the prospects of future technological gains. In other words, Shell wants to lock up as many as prospective tracts as it can before Texaco grabs them. But even with advances in technology, land and offshore petroleum exploration is at best a crapshoot. In is not rational to assume that large recoverable reserves lie under every square foot of land permitted, or even under most of it.

Hundreds of years of fossil fuel exist within the boundaries of the continental United States and Alaska. Much more exits off our shores being sucked up by nations unfriendly to America.

Whether Barack Obama is an entrenched ideologue or a political neophyte is irrelevant at this point. By failing to release restrictions on domestic drilling, both offshore and on land, he is placing the United States in the precarious position of have to rely on the unreliable.

In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker finally came to the game after reading Left Coast Ledger. Just kidding. But Walker must have been listening to someone who understands trade unionism and radical leftist strategy.

Less than a week into the fleebaggers’ boycott Greta Van Susteren inadvertently gave Walker the solution. She suggested that Walker could outmaneuver the AWOL Democrats by separating out budgetary measures and pass his collective bargaining legislation without a quorum. It took the legislature another two weeks but they finally got the message.

We also suggested that he wage warfare against the AWOL senators by fining, penalizing and cutting off their staff budgets. The slomos in the legislature finally did fine them as well.

At any rate someone got the message and the Governor has signed a bill that essentially ends collective bargaining privileges for state government employees. Now if they strike he should fire them and replace them with non-union employees, which will effectually break the unions.

Then the fine folks at NPR fell for wunderkind journalist James O’Keefe’s sting, and showed the world that public broadcasting is indeed liberally biased. O’Keefe, who is rapidly becoming a national treasure, will now go through a seemingly never-ending public scourging by the liberal media and blogosphere, while the Obama administration scrambles to continue funding public radio and television.

These groups—the ACORNS, the Planned Parenthoods and public broadcasting networks—are arms of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party; without them the left is seriously hampered in its efforts to socialize the nation.

Kudos to Andrew Breitbart for standing behind O’Keefe and pro-lifer Lila Rose in their efforts to uncloak the cultural Marxist agenda by exposing these government-funded front groups. Breitbart is right in his assertion that left wing bias in media cannot be stopped, but we sure as hell shouldn’t have to fund it.

Bill Maher actually got something right this week. Maher hates God. I don’t know if his dad molested him when he was a kid or what, but the guy definitely has a father problem. But this week that hatred actually turned for good when he told Muslim Democratic representative Keith Ellison that the Quran is a “hate-filled holy book” that inspires terrorism.

Ellison went on a fake crying jag during his opening testimony before the King committee Thursday, while pointing out that one Muslim firefighter at the WTC gave his life saving Christians. Ellison’s motive was not lost on anyone who has been on the planet for the last 10 years. We are unduly picking on Muslims. But Maher didn’t let him off the hook. “Obviously there is something going on, that they’re getting from the Quran,” said the host on his “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

That’s about it for this week.

Pray for Japan.

This is the same Keith Ellison who wrote that the Constitution is evidence of a racist conspiracy, by the way. The same Keith “Hakim” Ellison who defended Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic statements. Good ol’ red-blooded American Muslim Keith Ellison.

For the record, 60 Muslims died in the WTC attacks. Which should be reason enough for Ellison or any Muslim American to wonder why a significant segment of their religion is trying to kill Americans.

Instead Muslim Americans are organizing protests, complaining of persecution, xenophobia, and racism by those who are trying to determine why their religion above all others in the world seeks to settle its disagreements with violence. Muslim groups are calling the hearings Islamophobic while disseminating anti-Semitic literature.

In 2009 and 2010, 76 U.S. Muslims were charged with domestic terrorism in 49 plots, nearly double the number since 2001. These defendants have been charged with conspiracy and other crimes for trying to wage war on their countrymen.

Currently Homeland Security identifies homegrown terrorism as the biggest threat to the United States from extremist Muslims. Does not Mr. Ellison want to know why?

American Muslims with few exceptions have either complained of nonexistent persecution or remained silent since the events of September 1, 2001. They have had a full decade to speak out against the extremists they claim are a small fraction of their religion and have not done so. Hundreds of terrorist plots have been exposed and not one has been hatched by members of any other faith in the United States, unless the Westboro Baptists can be considered terrorist for the protests of military funerals.

A terrorist is a person who uses terrorism in pursuit of political aims. That is a generalized definition of a combined number of online dictionaries. Despite PJ Crowley’s characterization to the contrary, Jerrod Loughner was not a terrorist, he was a garden variety psycho killer. A large number of Muslims world wide are engaged in terror against the United States, and it is time that we learn just exactly why they hate us so much.

The Left in this country are trying to shape the Muslim debate with politically correct rhetoric and charges of racism and xenophobia. If as a nation we allow them to succeed many more Americans will die. Islam is far more than a religion; it is a political philosophy honed from the twisted mind of a man who obsessed on the evils of women and violently promoted anti-Semitism.

No patriotic American would participate in the discrimination of others for any reason; diversity is what make this country the Seat of Liberty. But when a large segment of a religious sect seeks to destroy the nation that give it its religious freedom, it behooves our leaders to find out why. It is time for Americans to know if we have anything to fear from this religion.