The Urban Grind

A public university in Colorado is offering college credit to students to campaign for Obama.

A public university in Colorado may have violated state law by offering students course credit if they volunteered with President Obama’s re-election campaign. A blog post on the Adams State University website billed the opportunity as a “12 week long organizing internship for the Obama Campaign.”

Both the blog post and the course are now gone. The course was canceled due to lack of interest, according to the university. The blog post was taken down earlier this week after a conservative student blog, Campus Reform, reported on it.

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The course may have been in violation of the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act, which prohibits the use of public resources toward “campaigns involving the nomination, retention, or election of any person to any public office.” Oliver Darcy, the editor at Campus Reform who first reported the story, said the course struck him as a likely violation of state law.

“They are definitely using a few professors at least to help these students with the campaign process, so I don’t understand how it doesn’t use public resources for campaign purposes,” he said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.

A spokesperson for the university said the blog post was mistaken about the nature of the course, and that students would have been allowed to volunteer with any campaign.

“This is an independent study course that would be available to any student in any campaign,” said Julie Waechter, a spokesperson for ASU, in an interview with TheDC News Foundation.

Waechter declined to give the name of the employee who authorized the course. Dodie Day, the administrator who posted the blog entry, declined to comment.

According to Waechter, the Obama administration reached out to the university about hosting such an offer.

“The Obama campaign did approach the school. Others campaigns did not,” she said, adding that the school would have considered a similar offer from the Republican campaign of Gov. Mitt Romney.

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Earlier this week, Wood reported on a similar instance of liberal political activity entering the classroom at Ohio State University. Professor Brian McHale wrote an e-mail to colleagues asking them to set aside class time for campaign organizers to pitch students on getting involved with the Obama campaign.

“I’ve been in touch with a couple of campus organizers for the Obama campaign, who have asked me to pass along to all of you a request for access to your classes in the next few weeks,” wrote McHale in the e-mail.

Since NYU is my alma mater, this news item caught my eye.

The pro-fakestinian madness going around the country has finally come to NYU when a group of students barricaded themselves into the student center on LaGuardia Place.

The protest began shortly before 10 p.m. when about 70 students, most of them members of a student-run group called the Take Back N.Y.U. Campaign, gathered on the third floor of the Kimmel Student Center at Washington Square South and La Guardia Place.

The students pushed tables and chairs against the doors, and a woman with a megaphone outlined the group’s demands.

They included a full and annual reporting of the university’s operating budget, expenditures and endowment. The students also demanded that N.Y.U. provide 13 scholarships annually to students from the Gaza Strip and give surplus supplies to the Islamic University of Gaza. On the group’s Web site, it also asked that all participants in the protest be granted amnesty from punishment.

Frankly, I would like to know how the parents of these brats ever saw fit to even let their little rug rats out of the house. Their donkeys should all be deported to Gaza. Then let’s see how much they would still love those Hamas supporting fakestinians.

The Obama camp is in full thug mode (not that they would ever be anything else). They’re going after television stations for airing an ad put out by the American Issues Project linking Obama to the domestic terrorist William Ayres.

Lawyers for the campaign have asked the Justice Department to investigate the group — which is operating under rules governing non-profit corporations — calling on television stations to cease airing the spot, and, campaign officials said, planning to pressure advertisers on stations that refuse to do so. The ad is running in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

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A former aide to Mr. McCain’s campaign, Ed Failor Jr., is a leader of the group; Mr. McCain’s campaign has said it has nothing do with the group. It is being backed by a $2.9 million donation from the billionaire investor Harold Simmons, who was also a major funder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that in 2004 ran a disputed campaign questioning Senator John Kerry’s record as a Swift Boat commander in Vietnam. Mr. Simmons is also a major fundraiser for Mr. McCain.

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In its fight against the American Issues Project, Mr. Obama’s campaign is essentially arguing that the group should fall under more strict election laws because its sole purpose seems to be to defeat Mr. Obama at the polls; issue groups are allowed to run some political advertising so long as affecting an election is not their primary purpose. Under election laws, Mr. Simmons would not be able to exceed a donation of $42,000 to the group and others like it. In a second letter about the group sent to the Justice Department in the past week, Robert F. Bauer, Mr. Obama’s election lawyer, accused the group of flouting “all legal obligations attendant upon political committee status.”

What a bunch of cry babies!

Frankly, John McCain should have aired such ad from the very beginning. McCain should also put out an ad about how despite the fact that Obama has denied being a Muslim, he has supported Kenyan terrorist Raila Odinga, who wanted shariah law, as opposed to that country’s pro-American government. That would have been a great example of going for the jugular. Unfortunately, McCain would never run such an ad, as he’s too much of a phony.

Anyway, here’s the ad that has the Obama people in such snit.

I’m surprised YouTube hasn’t removed it yet.

This one works at the University of Maine, and according to one of the students, offered his class extra credits for burning the flag or the Constitution.

Of course, that slimeball professor is denying it.

In an e-mail responding to a request for comment from the Bangor Daily News on Friday, Grosswiler said he thought McDade misunderstood the class discussion, which was intended to elicit thought about the First Amendment. He said he has held this same discussion for years without incident.

“I don’t intend for students to burn either the Constitution or the flag, and over the years hundreds of students have understood that,” Grosswiler wrote.

And the equally slimy administrators are standing by their man.

UM spokesman Joe Carr said Friday that Grosswiler’s classroom comments were not intended to be taken literally and that extra credit would not be granted for carrying out such activities.

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When asked whether the university would pursue disciplinary action, Carr replied, “No.”

He said Grosswiler has worked at the University of Maine since 1991, is one of the more veteran professors in the department of communication and journalism, and is a “well-respected member of the faculty.”

Now if this Grosswiler encouraged his students to attend or organize an anti-illegal immigration protest, or a burning of the Koran, you can be sure that most of the students and faculty would be clamoring for his blood. But since it’s only the American flag and Constitution that are involved here, then everything is fine and dandy.

My friend Ron Lewenberg, a Columbia alumnus, weighed in on Ahmadinejad’s speech, and whole issue of free speech.

The best comment on that post is from ROTC graduate Justin T on why Columbia continues to ban military recruiters, and how liberals whine about being under-represented in the military:

I’m glad there aren’t more liberals in the military. If there were, we wouldn’t have the greatest military in the world; all we’d have is a bunch of whiny unionized metrosexual pacifist vegetarians on government welfare.

At which point our fall would be only a matter of time.

Now the pint sized Iranian dictator is saying he has never denied the Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad, who plans to address the UN General Assembly tomorrow, said he did not deny the Holocaust occurred, but didn’t see what was wrong with asking questions about it.

“I’m not saying that it didn’t happen at all,” he said. “[But] can you argue that researching a phenomenon is finished forever, done? Can we close the books foreever on a historical event?”

And on another ridiculous note, he insisted there were no gays in Iran.

In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that like in your country. … In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.

Yeah right. The ones that are found are hanged. (the photos on that blog are kind of graphic.)

So now the gay rights groups are rebuking Ahmadinejad.

Via American Digest

That was actually good. Now I don’t know if President Bollinger was doing it just to save face for Ahmadinejad being invited to speak in the first place. After all, several New York legislators are considering withholding public funds from Columbia as a result of this invitation.

“Bollinger made a big mistake, and there should be consequences for him for making that decision,” the chairman of the New York City Council’s Finance Committee, David Weprin, said in an interview. “We should look at everything involving Columbia, whether it be capital projects, city and state, or other related things that we do in the city for them,” he said.

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Albany awards Columbia millions of dollars a year in student financial aid and also provides funding for smaller-scale capital projects. Last year, Albany awarded the school $10 million for nanotechnology center and $12 million for a cancer center in Washington Heights.

Columbia uses the state Dormitory Authority to borrow money at low interest rates. Mr. Silver could use his influence over the authority to weed out Columbia bonding projects before they are submitted for approval.

The school is also seeking approval from city lawmakers for its plan to expand into a 17-acre swath of land in West Harlem. Albany also has the power to use eminent domain to facilitate Columbia’s expansion.

As I posted earlier, Columbia has made a big fuss about how they are for robust debate and expressing unpopular views. However, that all goes out the window when it comes to a conservative organization that wants America’s borders guarded.

The Iranian president will address students and faculty at a forum only days after Columbia retracted a speaking invitation to the president of the Minuteman Project, a controversial citizens’ group that seeks to secure America’s borders from illegal immigrants, even going so far as to try building a fence along the border with Mexico.

Minuteman founder and president Jim Gilchrist said he now feels “sweet and sour” toward Columbia after an invitation to participate in an Oct. 4 talk was taken away last week. Gilchrist appeared at Columbia last year, but his speech was thwarted when students and other opponents stormed the stage as he took the podium.

As I posted yesterday, Columbia has a long history of being Nazi friendly. Therefore, it would only follow that they are sympathetic to the idealogical heirs of the Nazis, the Islamists. Take a look at some of their faculty.

Not only is that cesspool of anti-Americanism/shrine for the worship of terrorists not budging on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of their deans actually said that Hitler would be allowed to speak there, if he would have taken questions from students.

“If Hitler were in the United States and wanted a platform from which to speak, he would have plenty of platforms to speak in the United States,” Mr. Coatsworth said in an interview with Fox News that was linked last evening by the Drudge Report. “If he were willing to engage in debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him.”

A former professor of history at Harvard, Mr. Coatsworth is dean of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs, whose graduates, according to a statement Mr. Coatsworth issued last week, “serve as diplomats, intelligence analysts, security experts, business leaders, human rights activists,” and leaders of non-governmental organizations.

This is sickening, but considering Columbia’s history of being Nazi friendly, not surprising.

Hot Air has the video of this dean.

Thanks to CAIR, Michigan State University (the same place where those thugs prevented Congressman Tom Tancredo from speaking) has bowed to pressure from CAIR and their own Muslim Student Union.

After professor Indreck Wichman sent an email to Muslim students calling them ?dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems,? CAIR got involved. The school will now be offering diversity training. (Hat tip: Pamela of Atlas Shrugs)

CAIR is also going after writer/author Dennis Prager for his opposition to Keith Ellison taking his oath of office using a Koran. Prager wrote the following:

Of course, Ellison’s defenders argue that Ellison is merely being honest; since he believes in the Koran and not in the Bible, he should be allowed, even encouraged, to put his hand on the book he believes in. But for all of American history, Jews elected to public office have taken their oath on the Bible, even though they do not believe in the New Testament, and the many secular elected officials have not believed in the Old Testament either. Yet those secular officials did not demand to take their oaths of office on, say, the collected works of Voltaire or on a volume of New York Times editorials, writings far more significant to some liberal members of Congress than the Bible. Nor has one Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon. And it is hard to imagine a scientologist being allowed to take his oath of office on a copy of “Dianetics” by L. Ron Hubbard.

So why are we allowing Keith Ellison to do what no other member of Congress has ever done — choose his own most revered book for his oath?

Anyway, now CAIR wants Prager to be removed from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

“No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policy-making position at a taxpayer-funded institution that seeks to educate Americans about the destructive impact hatred has had, and continues to have, on every society,” CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, wrote in a letter to the council’s chairman, Fred Zeidman.

What about the destructive impact of hatred in Muslim countries, where Christians are either killed, harmed or just banned from practicing their religion? And what about the destructiveness of the hatred of the Hamas and Hezbo terrorists, to whom CAIR has funneled money? (Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)