Bruce Fein speaks at Rally for the Republic, Rep. Ron Paul's counterconvention.

The Perils of Paulite
By JAMES TARANTO
September 3, 2008

"But he is an unfortunate speaker: a bespectacled ectomorph with a nasal, extremely high-pitched voice. The overall effect is as if Alan Keyes had written a speech for Pee Wee Herman to deliver. "On Bruce Fein".

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122045137546495217.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://www.minnesotaindependent.com/7285/the-ron-paul-people-all-hepped-up-with-no-place-to-vote

MINNEAPOLIS--"TARGET CENTER BANS GUNS IN THESE PREMISES" proclaims the sign at the entrance to the Rally for the Republic, Rep. Ron Paul's counterconvention. This prohibition won't be popular among the crowd, which probably ranks the Second Amendment among its favorite constitutional provisions.

Earlier this year, Paul waged a spirited campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, beating out onetime front-runner Rudy Giuliani (though not erstwhile underdogs John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee). Two decades earlier, as the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee, he was less than 41.4 million votes shy of Michael Dukakis's total.

The master of ceremonies is Tucker Carlson, senior campaign correspondent for MSNBC. Call us old-fashioned, but it strikes us as improper for a newsman to preside over a political rally. If Tom Brokaw were still alive, he would be weeping. Also on the roster of speakers is Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. We wonder if the concession stands sell Bloody Marys.

The gun ban notwithstanding, security here is notably more relaxed than at St. Paul's Xcel Center, site of the real convention. There are no metal detectors, only a woman who desultorily glances at our bag. Tickets cost $17.76, but the ticket taker ushers us in when we ask where the press is supposed to check in. We follow her directions and find no one to check us in, so we simply stride in and take a seat. The hall is at most one quarter full.

We arrive as Bruce Fein is speaking. Fein was a minor Beltway celebrity back in the late 1980s, a conservative legal scholar who was probably the most often-quoted scholar affiliated with the often-quoted Heritage Foundation. We guess he'd be considered a right-wing libertarian--a Pat Buchanan-like isolationist. But then he sounds quite left-wing on civil liberties and the Vietnam War, which he denounces at length and blames on the lofty rhetoric of John F. Kennedy. He gets his biggest applause when he calls for the impeachment of President Bush.

"We are an un-starry-eyed people," he declares as he makes his isolationist case. But if that is so, why did we buy into the lofty rhetoric of JFK--or Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, or FDR, etc.?

Fein's speech is learned, even ponderous, replete with overwrought metaphors and historical quotations. But he is an unfortunate speaker: a bespectacled ectomorph with a nasal, extremely high-pitched voice. The overall effect is as if Alan Keyes had written a speech for Pee Wee Herman to deliver.

The next speaker provides about as sharp a contrast in styles as you can imagine: Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler who sought and won the Minnesota governorship in 1998. "I am not a Democrat!" he declares to applause. "I am not a Republican!" Even bigger applause. "I think these two parties are destroying our country!" Thunderous applause.

In denouncing the two parties, Ventura takes some liberties with the facts. He claims that the League of Women Voters sponsored the 1992 presidential debates, which included Ross Perot, and this prompted the parties to petition Congress to create "another federal bureaucracy, called the National Debate Commission," which excluded Perot and other minor-party candidates. In fact, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a private organization and has sponsored debates since 1988, including those in 1992.

We were right to think that this was a Second Amendment crowd. Ventura disparages the idea that the right to bear arms is about "hunting and fishing": "The Second Amendment is there so that . . . if our government gets out of control, we have the ability to rise up and challenge it." Suddenly we are grateful for that sign at the entrance to the Target Center.

We see a few 9/11 "Truthers" in the audience, and Ventura seems sympathetic to their cause, although he keeps it rather vague, demanding to know why Osama bin Laden hasn't been indicted for the Sept. 11 attacks.

As he wraps up his speech, Ventura takes a shot at our industry: "For an entire month, our news media was focused on the death of Anna Nicole Smith. . . . That's the dumbing down of America."

Here is a former professional wrestler talking about Anna Nicole Smith, and a writer for The Wall Street Journal is furiously scribbling notes about what he's saying. We have to admit, he's got a point. It's time to head over to the real convention.

The Not Ready for Prime Time Players
ST. PAUL, Minn.--We arrive at the Republican National Convention just as the day's proceedings are getting under way. Watching a convention session from beginning to end is grueling, but it makes you realize why featured speakers get prime-time slots. The quality of the earlier speeches is uneven, to say the least.

First up is Rep. John Boehner, formerly the House majority leader, now the House minority leader. He begins:

I stood at a similar podium at the 1992 convention as part of the "Gang of Seven"--a group of legislators committed to reforming Congress after four decades of Democratic corruption.

I stand before you today in the same spirit of reform.

It's odd that self-styled reformers seem to love this "Gang of" nomenclature, which originally referred to a leftist faction in China's Communist Party.

Odder still is that Boehner would underscore the reforms he promised in 1992. Given the events of the ensuing 16 years, one might suspect that Boehner is, as the hippies used to say, part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Then again, no Republican presidential candidate since at least Reagan has carried the hippie vote. As someone--Tocqueville?--observed, hippies smell like patchouli and vote like Puerto Ricans.

Jo Ann Davidson, chairman of the convention's Committee on Arrangements, slips up and refers to John McCain's running mate as "Sarah Pawlenty."

Ashley Gunn, a college student from Mississippi, tells of her teen years when she founded Students Aiding Indigent Families, devoted to "buying abandoned, dilapidated houses and having students repair and remodel them," after which they are sold to unfortunates at a discount. She tells the story of one of the group's beneficiaries:

SAIF helps people like Ms. Hannah. Ms. Hannah earns $1,500 a month. Before SAIF connected with Ms. Hannah, nothing was left after she paid her expenses, which included $650 a month in rent.

Her two-bedroom shack housed her and her two adult daughters, both with severe mental and physical disabilities. About 20 years earlier, Ms. Hannah's two sons died within a month of each other. One from drowning. The other had a heart attack.

The events traumatized Ms. Hannah's husband. He left. Ms. Hannah found herself in a financial black hole from which she couldn't escape.

It reminds us of the Democratic Convention, where the program featured speakers identified as "autoworker from Michigan scheduled to lose his job," "laid-off North Carolina textile worker with huge medical bills" and "unemployed nurse and lifelong Republican from North Carolina." If this were the Democratic Convention, Ms. Hannah herself would have spoken and complained that the government wasn't helping her.

President Bush speaks after all, by satellite, from the White House. The convention Web site has no transcript or video of his remarks; the only reference to it we can find is on this page: "Other speakers tonight included President George W. Bush . . ." The Associated Press, however, has a transcript.

Still, the crowd greets the president enthusiastically, and he says one thing we especially like: "Fellow citizens: If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain's resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the Angry Left never will." We can't take credit for inventing the term Angry Left, but we certainly popularized it. Tautologically enough, Bush's comment makes the Angry Left angry.

Fred Meat
As we watch Fred Thompson's speech, a gripping account of John McCain's ordeal as a prisoner of war in communist North Vietnam, a colleague emails that he has summoned "more passion and authority on McCain's behalf than anything he ever did for himself." We write back that that's because he has a more compelling subject now. His delivery is masterful; he almost could have been an actor.

His telling of McCain's story also serves as a rebuke to the Democrats who whined last week about the "torture" of terrorists. John McCain knows what real torture is.

Thompson sings the praises of McCain's running mate:

What a breath of fresh air Gov. Sarah Palin is. She is from a small town, with small town values, but that's not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family. Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the union--and won--over the Beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.

Won't anyone speak out on behalf of the Beltway business-as-usual crowd? Thompson describes Palin as "the only nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field dress a moose, with the possible exception of Teddy Roosevelt." It's not clear if he means TR might have been able to field dress a moose or Palin might not be able to field dress TR.

Like all references to Palin, Thompson's are greeted with wild applause. There's no question McCain's choice is successful as a base-arouser.

Strategically Tepid
If Thompson's speech was red meat, let's call Joe Lieberman's kosher dairy. It's much tamer than Thompson's--to say nothing of Zell Miller's in 2004, the last time a Democratic senator addressed a Republican convention. Lieberman is capable of delivering a strong attack speech, as we noted in May. But in St. Paul he summons up nothing harsher than mild disdain for Barack Obama, whom he describes as "a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead."

The theme of Lieberman's speech is the dangers of "senseless partisanship." In a weird way he echoes Jesse Ventura, except that Lieberman wants to bring Democrats and Republicans together and Ventura wants to smash the lot of them. Lieberman praises McCain for efforts that are unpopular among conservatives, including campaign-finance restrictions, immigration reform, doing "something about global warming" and participating in the so-called Gang of 14--another gang!--that ended "the partisan paralysis over judicial confirmations" while preserving the filibuster for confirmation votes.

Lieberman even praises Bill Clinton, "who stood up to . . . Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget." The crowd applauds, albeit politely. But the crowd applauds Bill Clinton!

It occurs to us that Lieberman's mildness is strategic, and sure enough, he spells the strategy out:

My Democratic friends know all about John's record of independence and accomplishment.
Maybe that's why some of them are spending so much time and so much money trying to convince voters that John McCain is someone else. I'm here, as a Democrat myself, to tell you: Don't be fooled. God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man. . . .

I ask the indulgence of those in this hall tonight, as I want to speak directly to my fellow Democrats and Independents who are watching. . . . You may be thinking of voting for John McCain but you're not sure. Some of you have never voted for a Republican before and in an ordinary election, you probably wouldn't. But this is no ordinary election, because these are not ordinary times, and John McCain is no ordinary candidate.

Lieberman's appeal is to people who wouldn't vote for McCain out of party loyalty, or despite ideological discomfort. His audience is out there in TV land, not here in the Xcel Center.

LaRouche for President?
John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate is a bit awkward for Barack Obama. He would like to argue that she is too inexperienced, but that underscores his own deficit of experience. Time magazine notes that in a CNN interview, Obama tried to argue that he should get credit for his time as a candidate:

Obama: Well, my understanding is that Gov. Palin's town of Wasilla has I think 50 employees. We've got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years.

By this standard, if you've been unemployed for five years but spent the time sending out résumés and job applications, you get credit for five years' experience in the workplace. And the most qualified man in America to be president is Lyndon LaRouche.

Yesterday's New York Times, meanwhile, featured a news story raising the following question:

With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.

Funny how no one criticizes Joe Biden for taking his seat in the Senate despite being a single dad at the time. Sexism, anyone?

Metaphor Alert
"Palin: GOP's Lightning Rod Steps Into Spotlight"--headline, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Sept. 3

Arrest That Editorialist!
Apparently there are some violent protesters somewhere around the Republican Convention, and the editorialists at the St. Paul Pioneer Press engage in an amusing bit of moral equivalence:

Random vandalism is just that--random and violent. The twerps' behavior stands in contrast to that of the great majority of protesters who gathered and marched peacefully. It's only reasonable to conclude that the vandals' aim is to discredit the anti-war movement.

That would be vandalism, too.

So discrediting your own cause is "vandalism," the equivalent of damaging someone else's property? By making such a ludicrous assertion, the PP editorialists discredit their own cause, which means that by their own definition, they are vandals, too.

Antichoice Extremists
The Boston Globe has published a shocking op-ed by antichoice extremist Jed Horne:

There's a voice missing from the debate over whether to open up the nation's offshore oil to drilling. That would be the voice of unborn Americans--not our children or even their children, but children generations from now--assuming the republic lasts that long.

Dude, haven't you heard they're just clumps of cells?

Look Out Below!
"United Rethinks Plans to Drop Free Hot Meals"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 2

Yeah, That'll Help Him Get Lucky
"Virgin Rebranded as Absolute Radio"--headline, Financial Times, Sept. 2

That's Only $25,000 Each
"Cost of Tuition at Colleges Breasts $50,000 a Year"--headline, New York Sun, Sept. 3

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control
• "Sudden Death After Arrest May Be New Syndrome"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 2

• "Artist to Be Hung on Shark Hooks"--headline, BBC Web site, Sept. 3

• "Mendocino Mushroom Madness to Infect the Coast"--headline, MendocinoFun.com press release, Sept. 2

• "Canada at Grave Risk if Natural Disaster Strikes: Senate Report"--headline, CBC.ca, Sept. 2


News of the Tautological
"Supporters and Critics of Kilpatrick Take Sides"--headline, Detroit News, Sept. 3

News You Can Use
• "Hazard Lights Don't Require an Emergency"--headline, Detroit News, Sept. 3

• "Delicious or Deadly? You Pick"--headline, Scotsman, Sept. 3

• "Not to Worry: River Scum Normal in Dry Times, Authorities Say"--headline, Star Press (Muncie, Ind.), Sept. 3


Bottom Stories of the Day
• "McCain Hugs Palin Upon His Arrival in Twin Cities"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 3

• "Scathing Review of GOP Convention From Obama Team"--headline, Dallas Morning News Web site, Sept. 3

• "Reid Not Happy With Lieberman's Speech"--headline, CNN Web site, Sept. 3

• "Lindsay Lohan Blogs About Sarah Palin's Daughter's Baby Drama"--headline, E! Online, Sept. 2

• "Feud Between McCain, Michael Moore Intensifies"--headline, Hill, Sept. 2

• "Sarah Palin: Political Opponent Recalls Being Ridiculed"--headline, USMagazine.com, Sept. 2


Homer Nods
ST. PAUL, Minn.--After the convention closes for the night, we make our way over to the CNN Grill, thanks to our new friend at the network, Lucy Spiegel. We have a bacon cheeseburger and chat with Rebecca Hagelin of the Heritage Foundation and radio hostess Blanquita Cullum.

At the next table sits Tom Brokaw. He is alive. Contrary to our lead item, he is not weeping. We regret the error.

(See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal. Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Mordecai Bobrowsky, Richard Belzer, Howard Portnoy, Mark Van Der Molen, Dan O'Shea, Benton Bain, Mark Girshovich, Joe Tannenbaum, Mark DeJoy, Thomas Dillon, Jim Miller, John Williamson, Larry Pollack, Michael Ellard, Russ Wung, Daniel Foty, Doug Black, Joel Fine, Fabio Savoldelli, Mike Glasgow, Clark Monson, Kyle Kyllan, John Sanders, Jon Wolter, Michele Schiesser and Steve Schildwachter. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
end:

"The JBS is a fringe-right organization founded by a dozen men in 1958—one of whom went on to co-found the Hitler-glorifying National Alliance. Birchers worked vociferously against the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and earlier accused President Dwight Eisenhower of being a communist. Ignoring this shameful history, Ron Paul instead lauds the JBS for its anti-government stance, and, as McManus announced from the podium, has agreed to speak at the John Birch Society’s 50th anniversary convention next month". Unquote.

JBS is the John Bircher society:

It gives an inner glimpse of those who are associated with John Birch and friends.
That is a frightening thought for the Tamils, and those associated with Bruce Fein now, especially the Tamils Against Genocide, whose representative is Bruce Fein.

TAG did not have the smartness even to hire him as the attorney, where his obligations are bound by certain ethics and codes of conduct set by the Washington and American Bar Association. As representative their are no morals, codes of conduct, ethics, which suits Fein fine. It is just the freedom of the "Wild Ass", and he is free to do anything including collecting $1,000 dollars a day from the Tamils or more from the former supporters of Tamils For Justice, or Justice For Thamils.

It is 80 days since he unilaterally moved on, with the loot from Canada, Bethesda, and Worldwide contributions, which he has not accounted for. What he has done for and on behalf of Tamils Against Genocide is yet to be seen, while he overcharges the Tamils for work not done.