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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
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Author:  Michael J. Gaynor
Bio: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  September 26, 2007
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Laura Ingraham: Too Fine for Mulshine

In reply to Raymond Arroyo, Laura acknowledged her sensitivity, even describing herself as a marshmallow. But the truth is she is she is a brilliant and caring person whose intellect and emotion reinforce each other. Mr. Mulshine associating Laura's successful battle with cancer and conversion to Catholicism with "gooey sentimentality" tells us all we needs to know about Mr. Mulshine: he's an idiot, not a civil conservative, who embarrassed himself by trying to disparage Laura AND her millions of radio listeners.

During the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, a right-thinking redhead, Victoria Toensing, and four bold blondes appeared regularly on television in defense of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, then being vilified by the Clinton attack machine for doing his job instead of ignoring the kind of behavior that got former President Clinton impeached and cost him his law license but not the presidency: brilliant 9/11 casualty Barbara Olson (bless her soul), perky pollster Kellyanne Conway (then Fitzpatrick), acerbic Ann Coulter and lovable Laura Ingraham, the lady who went from appearing on a 1995 cover of The New York Times Magazine in a friend's leopardskin miniskirt for an article about rising young conservatives to leading the counterattack on what she calls (rightly) "the pornification of America" as the most listened-too woman in America (The Laura Ingraham Show, a nationally syndicated radio show).

Earnest political consultant and commentator Dick Morris's "The Importance of Being Laura (Ingraham)":

"A very special book came out last week, Power To The People by Laura Ingraham. Laura, a nationally syndicated talk show host is one of the brightest people behind a microphone in America today. With many other hosts, one finds oneself agreeing or disagreeing, with Laura, one learns!

"I have extracted several fascinating quotes from her new book. But they barely scratch the surface of what Laura has to teach us all in her well written volume. Please, do yourself a favor and buy it."

As expected, Laura's third book, Power to the People rocketed past former President Clinton's latest book to the top of The New York Times Book Review Best Sellers List.

Also predictably, Paul Mulshine, writing for , opted to write a ridiculous review attacking Laura's motive for writing Power to the People as well as her status as a conservative.

Note: In 2000 Mr. Mulshine wrote a piece titled "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Huckster."

Mr. Mulshine:

"Limbaugh himself is not an idiot. In fact, he's a very bright guy, but he has what we in the journalism business call a conflict of interest. He does something a real journalist would get fired for: He says things for money. The man who has made himself a national spokesman for conservatism is also the national spokesman for a cleaning fluid, for a company that sells gold coins from a Spanish galleon and for virtually anyone else who will pay him."

"The liberals are only too happy to portray Limbaugh as the spokesman for America's conservatives. Unfortunately, he has defined conservatism as a sort of general loutishness."

Now Mr. Mulshine is attacking Laura.

Criticize Rush if you must, Mr. Mulshine, but Laura is NOT someone on whom you EVER should presume to dine.

Mr. Mulshine:

"Why do radio talk-show hosts write books? Because they can sell books.

"Hence we have 'Power to the People.' The book by WABC radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham purports to describe how to restore conservative values in America by energizing the masses."

Nonsense!

This is Laura Ingraham, the first female editor of The Dartmouth Review, an attorney who clerked for illustrious proponents of constitutional fidelity and judicial restraint (Judge Ralph Winter of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court), a speechwriter in the Reagan Administrator and the author of two prior best sellers, The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places (2002), which is critical of Hillary, and Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the U.N. are Subverting America (2003), which decries the elitist views of liberals working primarily in entertainment, academia and the media.

Power to the People obviously was written as a sincere call for a return to traditional family values subverted by those elitists. It was written because Laura cares, not because she's a huckster who can sell books.

In the years since Shut Up and Sing, Laura converted to Roman Catholicism, became engaged to a very wealthy man with a penchant for attractive and celebrated women and was saved from what would have been a troublesome marriage (he started courting Katie Couric after breaking up with Laura) by cancer.

In the battle between cancer and Laura, Laura won. (Why those NBC leftists--Matt Lauer, David Gregory and Chris Matthews--think they can beat her, I do not know.)

A reviewer who implies that Laura writes for money isn't even funny. Laura has a story worth telling and the courage to tell it. She told it to benefit others, not herself, just as she went to Iraq to be with and support the troops for the troops (although obviously it was wonderful for Laura too).

On her book tour, Laura was interviewed by Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN's "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo." If you go to www.ewtn.com and click news, The World Over and past programs in succession, you will be able to access the program. It's well worth the time, because Raymond Arroyo drew Laura out even further that Laura had gone in her book. Laura to acknowledged not only having made "mistake after mistake" in her personal life and having been resistant to becoming a Catholic, but having her resistance overcome (in time to help her through her cancer battle). As Matt, David and Chris know, they've never overcome Laura's resistance and could do so only, possibly, in their dreams.

In Power to the People, Laura reported her conversion this way:

"Listeners who have heard me mention my conversion to the Catholic faith often ask--'what made you do it?' I usually say something funny like, 'I'm half Polish, so it was a John Paul II thing!' But the only real answer I have at least thus far in my spiritual journey) is the Holy Spirit came to me. My conversion began with heartfelt conversations I had with Pat Cippolone, an old friend who would eventually become my godfather. I did what most curious God-seekers do--I read the Bible, reflected on the Gospels, and really focused on praying. I found myself praying all the time--while brushing my teeth, on the treadmill, on the drive to the studio.

"I remember when I walked into the rectory of St. Patrick's Church in Washington to meet with Monsignor Peter Vaghi for the first time. Pat had suggested I chat with him. On the outside I was a cool cat. On the inside, I was freaking out...."

Laura went on to admit: "It was the strangest thing--this faith thing. How could this have happened to me? The person who used to make Catholic jokes in junior high school! The person who walked into her first meeting with a priest and said, 'Great to meet you, but there is no way in hell that I'm going to become a Catholic! God has a sense of humor, doesn't He?"

God, yes. Mr. Mulshine, no.

Mr. Mulshine:

"One problem: Ingraham herself is not a conservative but a populist. This holds true for most radio talkers. Forced to appeal to what the conservative writer Edmund Burke termed 'the swinish multitudes,' they spend most of their time fomenting the sort of class warfare normally associated with the left. The typical radio talker has just one target: those nasty elitists who think they're so smart. For Ingraham, any elitist will do, from Plato all the way down to Madonna.

"Her theme is that people should rise up and take back control of the mass media. But the mass media by definition appeal to the masses. In a chapter on the 'pornification' of our culture, Ingraham puts the blame not on the low nature of mankind but on the elitist hotel executives who make pay-per-view porn available. She ignores the reason they do this: The people will pay for peep shows. If Americans would pay to watch Shakespeare, then his plays would be on hotel TVs."

The simple answers to this nonsense (more attack on listeners than Laura) are these: read the book and listen to the show (www.lauraingraham.com).

Mr. Mulshine does his worst (or best):

"Speaking of Shakespeare, when the Bard portrays Henry VIII bumping off his wives he is not necessarily endorsing wife-killing. Such a subtle distinction is lost on culture critic Ingraham. In an attack on those Hollywood types trying to change 'the traditional definition of family,' she cites the HBO series 'Big Love' for what she takes to be its endorsement of polygamy.

"'Critics love it,' she writes.

"Perhaps that's because those critics understand that the portrayal of an action does not represent an endorsement thereof. The dysfunctional family in 'Big Love' is no more an advertisement for polygamy than the Soprano family is for Mafia life."

Laura is saying, "Standards, please." Mr. Mulshine apparently thinks he can wallow in muck without getting dirty and sleep with dogs without getting fleas.

Mr. Mulshine does have talents for obfuscation, oversimplification and deception.

Mr. Mulshine: "And like virtually all the self-appointed 'conservatives' of talk radio, Ingraham fails to understand that so-called 'neoconservatism' is not the intensification of conservatism but its negation. She attacks 'Hollywood moguls' for 'wanting our military to use its might to spread democracy around the planet.' She also supports the Iraq War, which was a neocon scheme to do just that.

Worse, Mr. Mulshine presumes to dispute Laura on a point of constitutional law.

Mr. Mulshine: "Ingraham is similarly obtuse on constitutional law, though she clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court. After railing against activist judges who 'invalidate democracy at the state and federal level' she goes on to attack the notorious Kelo decision on eminent domain, in which the judges let a democratic decision stand."

Is Mr. Mulshine really that obtuse?

There is a prescribed procedure for amending the Constitution and judges are not authorized to do.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent in Kelo explained the situation nicely:

"Over two centuries ago, just after the Bill of Rights was ratified, Justice Chase wrote: 'An act of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority … . A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean… . [A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it.' Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (emphasis deleted).

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded–i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public–in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings 'for public use' is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property–and thereby effectively to delete the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Accordingly I respectfully dissent."

Laura and me too!

Mr. Mulshine:

"The reader looks in vain for some indication that Ingraham is aware of such contradictions. But her approach is entirely emotional rather than intellectual. The best parts of the book concern her battle with cancer and her conversion to Catholicism. There she can indulge herself in the gooey sentimentality that is her specialty.

"As for her political philosophy, it is best expressed on radio. But why anyone who has heard it would want to see it in print is a mystery to this conservative."

In reply to Raymond Arroyo, Laura acknowledged her sensitivity, even describing herself as a marshmallow. But the truth is she is she is a brilliant and caring person whose intellect and emotion reinforce each other. Mr. Mulshine associating Laura's successful battle with cancer and conversion to Catholicism with "gooey sentimentality" tells us all we needs to know about Mr. Mulshine: he's an idiot, not a civil conservative, who embarrassed himself by trying to disparage Laura AND her millions of radio listeners.

Michael J. Gaynor

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Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


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