The racist media bury the latest episode in the Duke Lacrosse Story

On Nov. 22, with the national media focused on the 50th anniversary of former President John F. Kennedy's death, few noticed the story of a jury in North Carolina convicting Crystal Mangum of murder in the 2011 kitchen stabbing death of her boyfriend Reginald Daye. Why should that fact fixate the national media?

On its own, it shouldn't. But in 2006 and 2007, Mangum's false charges of rape against three Duke University lacrosse players caused a national tsunami of media sensation, an angry wave of prejudiced coverage presuming the guilt of rich white college boys when being accused by an African-American stripper.

More than any other media outlet, The New York Times trumpeted Mangum's rape accusations, even after they fell apart. As other liberal media were backing away, the Times published a notorious, error-riddled 5,700-word lead story on Aug. 25, 2006, by Duff Wilson, who argued there was enough evidence against the players for Michael Nifong, the atrocious local prosecutor (who would later be jailed and disbarred), to bring the case to trial.

Within the Times, perhaps the most aggressive accuser was then-sports columnist Selena Roberts, who made a habit of comparing the accused Duke lacrosse players to drug dealers and gang members.

Roberts continued to lob charges of white privilege in her last column on the subject in 2007: "Don't mess with Duke, though. To shine a light on its integrity has been treated by the irrational mighty as a threat to white privilege. Feel free to excoriate the African-American basketball stars and football behemoths for the misdeeds of all athletes, but lay off the lacrosse pipeline to Wall Street, excuse the khaki-pants crowd of SAT wonder kids." She lamented, "some news media jackknifed as they moved from victim's advocate to angel-tinting the lacrosse team."

To Roberts, the false accuser never stopped being the victim. Roberts never wrote a retraction for her columns that relentlessly championed a false narrative. She is the Al Sharpton of sports columnists.

The coverage ended. Well, there was one small trickle of news. In December 2010, The New York Times ran a tiny wire item in the sports section about the Duke lacrosse "victim" being found guilty of "misdemeanor child abuse and damaging property. A Durham County jury convicted Crystal Mangum, 32, of contributing to child abuse or neglect, injury to personal property and resisting a public officer after a February confrontation with her live-in boyfriend."

Then, in 2011, Mangum was indicted for murdering her boyfriend. Again, it was a tiny item in the Times -- a brief at the bottom of page B-14 of the sports section, under "Lacrosse": "Crystal Mangum, who falsely accused three Duke players of raping her in 2006, was charged with murder in the death of her boyfriend."

So when Mangum was convicted of murder on Nov. 22, now would it garner serious attention? The Times ran a tiny, 98-word wire story. There were no burning columns from the successors of Roberts.

Now remember that the entire time Mangum was ruining the reputations of three young men, the media kept her identity a secret. But now that her secret of lying and even murder is out, the secret remains, at least on the media's radar screen.

There were no Duke-accuser updates on ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, USA Today or The Washington Post.

Like Roberts, ABC legal reporter Terry Moran didn't easily let go of the blame-the-rich-whites game in the spring of 2007, writing for his ABC blog: "Perhaps the outpouring of sympathy for (the falsely arrested Duke lacrosse players) is just a bit misplaced ... As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives ... They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team."

Those women were briefly, unfairly smeared one day in a bad Don Imus joke at 6 a.m., as "nappy-headed hos." Few would have heard it if liberals hadn't flagged it. Just as liberals flagged some falsely accused lacrosse players who were only guilty of being rich and white.

On Saturday, Nov. 23, CNN offered two segments on Mangum's conviction. Defense attorney Mark Geragos offered a strong post-trial verdict: "I thought at the time that that (Duke lacrosse) prosecution was not only ill-advised but that prosecutor and we were vindicated to some degree was -- ended up being disbarred."

"Now you have a woman, and, you know, somebody had remarked to me this morning, karma is a bitch," he said. "You've got a situation where, you know, she had at least arguably a decent defense in this case, but has absolutely no credibility."

The national media also lost credibility in this Mangum mess. Their coverage at the start was outrageous, as was their suppression at the end.

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A nation of captives

Self-reliance and freedom are inseparable. Americans once knew this in their very souls. Now, coaxed by those with a socialistic vision of government, we are beginning to forget it. We are becoming ever more dependent on government and putting our freedom at risk. It is as simple as that.

The Census Bureau recently published some remarkable data. As of the end of 2011, it said, there were approximately 151,014,000 who received one or more benefits from the federal government. That was 49 percent of the population of the country, which then stood at 306,804,000.

Some of the people receiving federal benefits had paid payroll taxes their entire working lives in return for the privilege of living in government dependency during their retirement. 49,901,000 were on Social Security, according to the Census Bureau, and 46,440,000 were on Medicare.

Others, however, were simply on the dole. 108,592,000 people in the United States as the end of 2011 were enrolled in one or more federal means-tested welfare programs, according to the Census Bureau. Those 108,592,000 welfare recipients out-numbered the 101,716,000 people who worked full time that year.

For each person in this country who gets up each week day and goes to work, and works a long day, and does it week after week after week, there is now more than one other person who is living off the taxes that person and his fellow full-time workers pay and off the new net debt the Treasury must continually issue to cover the cost of a government that routinely exceeds tax revenues.

The welfare takers, according to the Census Bureau, included, among others, 13,433,000 who relied on the government to provide them with housing or a subsidy for their housing, 49,073,000 who took food stamps, and 82,457,000 living in households on Medicaid.

Think of the person who took his housing, food and health care from the government. Could he have helped in framing the Constitution? Could he have struck out West and settled Iowa? What would he do if the government decided to stop providing him with the basics of life? What if a financial crisis made it impossible for the government to continue to provide him with the basics of life?

Or what if the government decided to use its leverage over people who are dependent on it to force them to do things that are morally wrong?

Today, for example, the federal government is telling all Americans they must buy health insurance and that almost all of them must buy coverage for abortion-inducing drugs. Those Americans who take a federal subsidy to buy health insurance in the Obamacare exchanges have no choice at all: They must buy health insurance that covers abortion drugs.

The government concedes that this violates the religious and moral convictions of many Christians, but the government does not care.

If Obamacare is cemented into American life and culture, the government will soon be paying for the majority of American's health care and this government has already demonstrated it is willing to use its leverage over health care to force people to make immoral decisions on a matter that involves the deliberate destruction of innocent human life.

Government dependency does not liberate, it enslaves. If America does not recapture its pioneering spirit soon and begin dismantling the welfare state, it will dismantle us.

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Courts must stop Obamacare’s ‘taxation without representation’

President Obama’s socialized medicine law has a big problem on its hands — something much more serious than a botched website or a broken political promise. And while some say it’s nothing more than a “technicality,” the court case over this “glitch” is moving forward even as most of the mainstream media looks the other way.

“This is for all the marbles,” George Mason University professor Michael S. Greve wrote.

“This has the potential to sink Obamacare,” Cato Institute health policy expert Michael Cannon told The Los Angeles Times.

The case they’re referring to is Halbig v. Sebilius, filed in May by seven plaintiffs (four individuals and three companies) in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. At the heart of this case is a simple question: Does the federal government have the right to tax and spend $700 billion worth of health care subsidies in the thirty-four states which declined to create state-administered health care exchanges under Obamacare?

Under the specific language of the law, tax subsidies (and tax penalties) on individuals and employers only apply in states that created these exchanges. It’s right there in black-and-white — as the availability of subsidies was expressly confined to qualified plans enrolled “through an Exchange established by the State.”

Obamacare makes no mention of these subsidies being provided in federal exchanges.

At the time the law was being drafted this wasn’t seen as a problem. The President and his allies believed the allure of more “free money” from Washington would be sufficient to entice states into doing their bidding. However when it became clear this wasn’t happening, the Internal Revenue Service scrambled to issue a “rule” extending the subsidies to all states.

The rub? This IRS rule explicitly contravenes the language approved by Congress — and signed into law by Obama himself. Not only that — to quote from Halbig — it “(disburses) monies from the Federal Treasury in excess of the authority granted by the Act.”

And at $700 billion, we’re talking about the single largest instance of taxation without representation in human history.

The legal principles involved in Halbig are simple: If Obamacare is to be taken at its word — then the law’s subsidies and penalties do not apply in two-thirds of the country. And if that’s the case, then Obamacare is a “Dead Law Walking” — incapable of sustaining itself without hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending.

So where does this case currently stand? Last month U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman issued a pair of procedural Halbig rulings. First, he denied the government’s attempt to dismiss the case — concluding its plaintiffs had standing to pursue their claim against the IRS. Friedman also denied the plaintiffs’ motion for injunctive relief — concluding they had failed to demonstrate irreparable harm as a result of the law’s slow-rolling implementation. Of course Judge Friedman attributed this decision to the fact a verdict in the case is expected prior to the late March deadline for enrollment.

In other words there’s no irreparable harm because Obamacare’s mandates aren’t yet in place.

Where Judge Friedman (and higher courts) ultimately come down on Halbig is anybody’s guess — but if they follow the letter of the law they must limit IRS tax collection and Treasury disbursements to those states which established exchanges. There is simply no legal authorization to tax and spend beyond that.

Judge Friedman seemingly acknowledged as much during oral arguments last month – when government lawyers tried to copy and paste definitions from one section of Obamacare to the section governing the subsidies and penalties.

“They’re still not established by the state,” Friedman chided.

The government’s response? That even if states did not create exchanges, Obamacare’s commandment that they “shall” create them preemptively supersedes their refusal.

“The premise stands,” government attorney Joel L. McElvain argued.

That’s a pretty convoluted basis on which to impose a $700 billion tax hike. And make no mistake, this is a tax — something the Obama administration is definitively admitting after several flip-flops.

“There is no such thing as an individual mandate,” McElvain said. “It’s a tax.”

On every front, Obamacare has been a disaster. The law has forced millions of Americans to lose their coverage, raised premiums for millions more and prevented thousands of employers from creating jobs our economy desperately needs.

It’s time for the courts to put an end to this abomination: And all they have to stop it is simply uphold the law as it was written.

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