Somebody's Gotta Say It
Author: Neal Boortz
"I've come to the conclusion that roughly 50 percent of the adults in this country are simply too ignorant and functionally incompetent to be living in a free society. You might think I'm off base, but every day around half the people in this country go out of their way to prove me right."
-from Somebody's Gotta Say It
Think you've got it all figured out? Think again.
Neal Boortz - the Talkmaster, the High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth - has been edifying, infuriating, and entertaining talk radio audiences for more than three decades with his blend of straight talk and twisted humor. Now, the author of the smash number one bestseller The FairTax Book returns to gore every sacred cow in the pasture, from the subversive agendas behind children's books to the scam artists behind "High Art."
In Somebody's Gotta Say It, Boortz warms up for the coming political season with a preemptive strike in "the War on the Individual": "The Democrats' theme for 2008 will be 'The Common Good.' I can't speak for you, but I am an individual. Government exists to protect my rights, not to order my life. And I damn sure don't exist to serve government." He takes on liberal catchphrases like giving back ("Nobody - especially not the evil, wretched rich - actually earns anything anymore. Why do liberals think this way? Because they find it impossible to acknowledge that people work for money"), our rampant civic idiocy ("We are not a democracy. Never were. Weren't supposed to be. And we shouldn't be"), and Big Brother ("We have smoke-free workplaces. We have drug-free school zones. I say let's start establishing government-free oases, where we can be free to leave our seat belts unbuckled, and peel the labels off anything we choose"). And somehow, along the way, he finds room for pop quizzes, cat-chasing contests, and an answer, once and for all, to the eternal question, "Neal, why don't you run for president?" - in a chapter called "No Way in Hell."
Full of irresistible wisecracks and irrefutable libertarian wisdom, Somebody's Gotta Say It is one man's response to America at a time when the government overreaches, the people underperform - and the truth hurts.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1Death Knocks-Along with Opportunity 8
Schenectady 15
The War on the Individual 19
Because She's Earned It 30
I'm Never Going to Listen to You Again 35
Flag Burning 40
Evolution vs. Creation 44
Homosexuals and their (GASP!) Agenda 47
The Ninth Circuit and the Pledge of Allegiance 54
Prayer in the Schools 56
The Rainbow Fraud 65
Nice Pencils! Now, Fork Them Over... 71
Shining a Lighght on Arts Funding 77
The Louder the Commercial... The Dumber They Think You are 86
The Right to Vote 89
The "Invest in America" Approach 99
Abortion 101
Giving Back 103
What Kind of Mindless Horsesqueeze is This? 111
The Tragedy of Our Government Schools 120
Shopping with Svetlana 139
Fixing our Schools 144
Things that Should be Taught in Government Schools 152
Minimum Wage 156
Sorry, Not Interested 169
Reasons not to Vote For... 173
The Democrats'(Secret) Plan for America 176
Our Absurd War on Drugs 201
Chasing Cats 208
Freedom-Loving? I Think Not 217
Terrorizing the Mailroom 226
Smokers 229
The Presence Ever Felt 238
Trigger Words 246
The Insipid United Nations 260
The Terrible Truth About Talk Radio 272
Destroying Talk Radio: Detailing the Left's Plan for the End of Conservative Talk Radio 282
President Bush, the Democrats, the Media, and the War on Islamic Fascism 289
No Way in Hell 296
The Dollar Bill Savings Program 316
Acknowledgments 321
Book review: Windows Server 2008 Unleashed or Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers
Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets
Author: Barry Siegel
In the tradition of A Civil Action and Gideon's Trumpet, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barry Siegel unfolds the shocking true story behind the Supreme Court case that forever changed the balance of power in America.
On October 6, 1948, a trio of civilian engineers joined a U.S. Air Force crew on a B-29 Superfortress, whose mission was to test secret navigational equipment. Shortly after takeoff the plane crashed, killing all three engineers and six others. In June 1949, the widows of the engineers filed suit against the government. What had happened to their men? they asked. Why had these civilians been aboard an Air Force plane in the first place?
But the Air Force, at the dawn of the Cold War, refused to hand over the accident reports and witness statements, claiming the documents contained classified information that would threaten national security. The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, which in 1953 sided with the Air Force in United States v. Reynolds. This landmark decision formally recognized the "state secrets" privilege, a legal precedent that has since been used to conceal conduct, withhold documents, block troublesome litigation, and, most recently, detain terror suspects without due-process protections.
Even with the case closed, the families of those who died in the crash never stopped wondering what had happened in that B-29. They finally had their answer a half century later: In 2000 they learned that the government was now making available the top-secret information the families had sought long ago, in vain. The documents, it turned out, contained no national securitysecrets but rather a shocking chronicle of negligence.
Equal parts history, legal drama, and exposé, Claim of Privilege tells the story of this shameful incident, its impact on our nation, and a courageous fight to right a wrong from the past. Placing the story within the context of the time, Siegel draws clear connections between the apocalyptic fears of the early Cold War years and post-9/11 America—and shows the dangerous consequences of this historic cover-up: the violation of civil liberties and the abuse of constitutional protections. By evoking the past, Claim of Privilege illuminates the present. Here is a mesmerizing narrative that indicts what our government is willing to do in the name of national security.
Publishers Weekly
In 1948, three civilian engineers died in the crash of an air force B-29 bomber that was testing a missile guidance system; in their widows' lawsuit, the Supreme Court upheld the air force's refusal to divulge accident reports that it claimed held military secrets. But when the declassified reports surfaced decades later, the only sensitive information in them involved the chronic tendency of B-29 engines to catch fire, egregious lapses in maintenance and safety procedures, and gross pilot error. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Siegel (Shades of Gray) ably recounts the case, a scandal and cover-up with grave constitutional implications. The 1953 Supreme Court decision gave the executive branch sweeping authority to conceal information under national security claims without judicial review, a precedent confirmed when the Court refused to reopen the case in 2003. (The author notes the influence of Cold War anxieties and the 9/11 attacks in these rulings.) Siegel insists on decorating the story with often extraneous human-interest profiles of everyone involved. But his is an engrossing exposition of the facts and legal issues in the case, which produced a disturbing legacy of government secrecy and misconduct still very much alive. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Becky Kennedy - Library Journal
Siegel (A Death in White Bear Lake), a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has written an excellent book, as fast-paced and engrossing as a novel but telling a true story. In 1953, U.S. v. Reynolds established a "state secrets privilege" for the federal government that allowed government officials to withhold information it believed to be a threat to national security without having to provide evidence or proof. The story began in October 1948 when three civilian engineers died in the crash of a B-29 Air Force jet over Waycross, GA. Siegel extensively details the background of the court case in which the surviving widows filed suit against the government, claiming that U.S. Air Force negligence caused the crash. Citing national security concerns, the air force refused to release an accident report that plaintiffs said was proof of the negligence. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the air force. Using U.S. v. Reynolds and its fascinating history as a center point, Siegel discusses the state secrets privilege and its applications up to the present. The book's memorable characters and compelling subject make it essential reading. Recommended for all libraries.
Kirkus Reviews
How a landmark Supreme Court ruling that established the state secrets privilege was challenged 50 years later. In 1948, an Air Force test flight crashed into the swamps of Florida, killing three civilian contractors on board. Consequently, their families sued the government to determine what went wrong. Citing executive privilege and national security, the Air Force refused to divulge any information and was eventually vindicated by the Supreme Court in its 1953 ruling, U.S. v. Reynolds. In 2003, a widow and three children of the dead contractors petitioned to have the ruling overturned, claiming the Air Force had lied to cover up negligence. Giving the increasing importance of Reynolds (the Bush administration cites it constantly), this should be a fascinating story. Regrettably, Pulitzer-winner Siegel (Lines of Defense, 2002, etc.) clutters it with irrelevant detail, such as where minor figures in the drama went to college and what they studied. He also fails to bring to life the major players, who read like stock characters in an intergenerational TV drama. Reynolds had a dramatic impact on American policy during the past 50 years, Siegel rightly points out; it's frequently cited by government officials seeking to keep their doings hidden from prying journalists and aggrieved plaintiffs-or, if you buy the government's version, evil terrorists. The author loses these complexities amid the minutiae of the case as it wound it way through the courts, from '48 to '53 and '03 to '07, when the Supreme Court again ruled against the contractors' families. That decision suggests how greatly the first Reynolds decision has shaped current government policy and behavior, as well as judicialoversight of it, but Siegel never lifts his eyes from the details long enough to provide the in-depth analysis this important case demands. Lacks drama, intrigue and insight.
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