DADvocate

Holding a protest this past Wednesday "more than 1,000 students, parents, and concerned citizens gathered across from city hall to rally in support of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program." Were it not for the crowd being overwhelmingly black, liberals could have dismissed it as a gathering of insignificant, disaffected tea partiers. Several people spoke.

But the most moving speeches were from the parents and students participating in the scholarship program. High-school student Carlos Battle spoke about how he was personally working to redefine the image of the black teen in Washington, D.C. — and how the Opportunity Scholarship program was giving him a chance to fulfill his dream. A father of a scholarship student pointed out the hypocrisy of Congress bailing out failing corporations but taking scholarships away from D.C. students.

Here's another speech Carlos Battle gave when he graduated from the eighth grade.

My mom knows that I have always wanted to be two things – a lawyer and an NBA basketball player. Before I received my scholarship, it would have been difficult to achieve either of these goals. Now, as I prepare to enter high school at GDS, I know that if I do well academically, I have a great chance to go to an Ivy League school like Harvard or Yale. On the basketball court, I look forward to leading the GDS Grasshoppers – yes, you heard me correctly, the Grasshoppers - to heights they have never achieved.

We need more like him.

Inside the Capital in Washington, Rep. Linda Sanchez wants to restrict your freedom of speech. Sanchez proposes a bill that restricts speech via any "electronic means."

(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

With definitions as broad as these, nearly anyone could easily be charged with this crime. God knows I've suffered enough coercion, intimidation, harassment and substantial emotional distress due to posts and comments written by liberals. Of course, I dish out my share. Under this law, A Modest Proposal would have landed Jonathan Swift in prison.

Again, why is it that liberals constantly find ways to put more and more people in prison?

Also on Wednesday, Obama and Biden ran out for a burger. Biden ordered a burger with jalapenos and Swiss cheese. (Jalapenos! More than I would have expected from Biden.) Obama ordered a burger with American cheese and DIJON mustard.

To be perfectly clear, I care not at all what Obama, or Biden, put on their burgers. Apparently MSNBC thought Dijon mustard reflected poorly upon Obama. Videos at the link show Obama asking for the Dijon mustard and another shows MSNBC speaking over Obama's order just as he requests the mustard.

But, this isn't about the mustard, it's about the reaction of many liberals to William Jacobson discussing it in his blog in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner. The liberal commenters went nuts. Read them at the above link and more here in his follow-up post, "Thou Shalt Not Mock Obama's Mustard. Jacobson's only moderately funny but the liberal commenters and their rage are hilarious.

Conservatives see the humor because conservatives have better senses of humor.

At the end we had 140 self declared liberals and 145 self declared conservatives, and the results were not at all what we expected. As it turned out conservatives gave significantly higher rating to the jokes in each of the seven categories (see table below)!

So, is the stereotype of liberals as being funnier completely off? When we asked our respondents to self-report how funny they are, liberals indicated that they were funnier. This means that liberals are not finding life to be funnier, but they think they are.

What is the moral of all of this? I think it is that conservatives might not be as closed minded as we might expect, at least not in terms of humor.

The joke really is on the liberals.