Here is the whole deal in a nutshell:

Imus said something fairly stupid, and later apologized.  What he said was fairly offensive, inexcusable and fairly indefensible.

Sharpton, one of the worlds most experienced players of the race card, called it racist, and wanted his head on a platter. 

Imus went on to Sharpton’s show to defend what cannot be defended. 

Sharpton frankly didn’t want an apology, he wanted a confession that Imus was racist…and he still wants him fired.

Should he be fired or is a two week suspension enough?

Is Sharpton a hypocrite considering all the racist remarks he has made?

And did Imus manage to defend his comments to any measurable degree?

You decide… 

Happy Easter to the Troops from Congress. 

While it not fair to blame just the Democrats, as Republicans love pork too, Pelosi and Reid vowed they were bring us a new direction in Congress.  

They lied.  And since they are in charge, they bear the responsibility of their respective branches following the same old path that congress has been stuck in.  Yes, yes, the previous congress spent like crazy.  So what?  Does that justify this?

In my StopRosie.com post I have been accused of being a paid shill for the mystical O’Reilly faction that is using Nazi tactics to destroy free speech.

I first laughed at the accusation of being paid.  Honest, of all the reasons I do this, money is far from my thoughts.  I pay my own hosting, I am my own webmaster, I sucker my daughter into a little free graphic design, and to date I have easily invested 2000+ hours of unpaid time in writing, reading, research and all the sundry time wasters that blogs require.  I am nowhere close to making any manner of profit.  Period.

I am unaffiliated with any party, and only loosely affiliated with most other bloggers.  I do not operate in lockstep with the neocons, or even the mild conservatives.  My views are frequently not in the majority and I like it that way.

I wish I was a sellout, I could use the cash.

As to the accusations about working with O’Reilly to destroy free speech, where this intersects with Rosie O’Donnel, the accusation falls empty, because at its core, the flap over Rosie has nothing to do with free speech, at least not in the way most people are addressing it.

 Let me repeat that.  The StopRosie.com issue is not a free speech issue.

I will preface that outrageous proclamation by saying that I take free speech seriously.  My blog is a representation of free speech and if anyone were to interfere I would react harshly.

I have written numerous blogs on free speech issues, and if anyone has read them they will know two things:

• I value free speech as one the essential core values that makes America unique, and great.
• Free speech is the most over used, abused and misunderstood freedoms we own.

The two statements are not in conflict.  Any manner of goofiness gets attributed to free speech, and even in the wider interpretation of free speech as meaning the freedom of ideas, or even the freedom of expression, as it so often is now, there are a lot of things that are either restricted or were never really intended to be covered.