Category Archives: Political Commentary

The Other Pete Knight

Andrew, Pete Knight certainly deserves to be recognized as a pilot and a space pioneer, but he was also a very controversial political figure in California. He was the driving force behind the legislation to keep gay marriage illegal (the law that the San Francisco mayor was flouting earlier this year), and he was regularly denounced by the left as a rabid right-wing homophobe (I don’t know to what degree that’s true, but considering the sources of much of the criticism, I’m inclined to think that he wasn’t as much of a neanderthal as his political enemies made him out to be).

His Speechwriters Made Him Do It

Mark Steyn has finally figured out why Kerry seems like he flip flops. It’s all an illusion:

When Kerry talks about ”any Benedict Arnold CEO or corporation that takes American jobs overseas,” he’s not referring to someone who ”takes jobs overseas.” Perish the thought! He’s all in favor of taking jobs overseas. It wasn’t him who attacked all those ”Benedict Arnold CEOs,” just his ”overzealous speechwriters.” And the minute he discovered it was going on, he called them to say, ”Look, that’s not what I’m saying.”

I mean, OK, it was what he was saying in the narrow technical sense of words emerging from between his lips, day after day, night after night, all through primary season. I had a quick rummage through the Nexis database, and found a mere 746 citations for Kerry and the expression ”Benedict Arnold.” I myself have personally been present on three occasions when he attacked ”Benedict Arnold CEOs” who ”take jobs overseas,” and on two of them he didn’t have a TelePrompTer or even a script. He just stood in front of us and the words came out of his mouth, almost as if they were what he himself believed…

…Well, it’s good to know the senator has finally found a way to neutralize the flip-flop question. Many of us assumed that, when he was for the war and then he was against it and then he was for it again, that he kept changing his mind. But now it’s possible he was just being entirely consistent — he’s always been for it, or against it, it’s just that his ”overzealous speechwriters” kept putting the wrong words in his mouth.

RTWT