So on December 14 the BOC met to vote on the MCRI. The meeting was well-attended, if not attended-to well.

A group calling itself the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary decided to bring its own lawlessness to the meeting. This gang of loudmouth political agitators has expropriated Malcolm X's famous line and is known as "By Any Means Necessary," or BAMN. The word "lawful" is nowhere to be found as a modifier for "means."

BAMN, like its counterparts elsewhere, seeks to block a vote of the people. The people must not be allowed to decide. For their own sake, no doubt. By any means necessary.

The means chosen for the December 14 meeting? Chaos and intimidation in general, unruly students in particular. They bussed 250 Detroit public high school students to the meeting. Whenever cued by the adult instigators acting as their guardians, i.e. when the BOC began to vote on MCRI being placed on the 2006 ballot, these students would shout loudly. Give the agitators credit: you can't beat the high school pep rally experience.

When the shouting didn't seem to be enough, these students were corralled to the front of the room where they pushed over a table. Twelve police officers rushed in. (By the way, how does a group like BAMN come up with 250 high school students during a school day? Do our kids double as rent-a-protestors when we drop them off at school? Do they get extra credit for trampling democracy?) The strategy worked. The BOC meeting was abruptly canceled.

Yet, before the meeting broke up, in the midst of all the din, the Board actually did manage to vote on MCRI. And, once again, it failed to garner the necessary three votes to certify the measure for the ballot.

Board of Canvassers member Lynn Banks, who voted in favor of certification on the 14th but had refused to do so before the court order, said, "I have never in my 20 years of service seen such anarchy and lawlessness." But there was certainly plenty of lawlessness to go around, including (previously) her own.

Fortunately for the citizens of Michigan, the Michigan Court of Appeals over-rode the BOC and placed the initiative on the ballot for 2006.

Today, many leftists who call themselves "progressives" have turned against democracy. Instead, they embrace themselves as Marx's vanguard of the proletariat. Since the far left can't trust the little guy to vote they way they tell him to vote, then votes must be blocked, speech must be drowned out, political participation squelched.

Enjoy the holidays. For we have a tough battle ahead for the soul of America.