May 20, 2008

Web Reconnaissance for 05/20/2008

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.


In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Democrats Observe A Fragile Cease-Fire - Sen. Barack Obama will return to Iowa tonight to celebrate another milestone in his long and sometimes bitter battle against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who shows no signs of dropping her effort to convince party leaders that she would be a stronger Democratic nominee for president. (READ MORE)

Candidates Vie to Be The Anti-Lobbyist - BILLINGS, Mont., May 19 -- Sen. Barack Obama accused Sen. John McCain on Monday of running a presidential campaign bought and paid for by lobbyists and criticized the presumptive Republican nominee for waiting more than a year to address the conflicts of several key advisers. (READ MORE)

Chinese Gather to Mourn Victims of Sichuan Quake - MIANYANG, China, May 19 -- China observed three minutes of silence Monday to mourn the tens of thousands of people who died in last week's earthquake, as state media reported that more than 200 rescue workers had been buried in mudslides. (READ MORE)

The Lawyers War - The war on terror is easily the most litigated war in history, and on the evidence so far the lawyers are winning. They may yet succeed in killing military commissions, despite their long U.S. history and a law duly passed by Congress and signed by the President. (READ MORE)

Khosla's Conspiracy - Spiking food prices, global shortages and Third World riots have managed to elicit repentance from some ethanol evangelists. Not Vinod Khosla. As the Silicon Valley billionaire explained last week in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, ethanol's contribution to the crisis is "very minor" and "overblown." (READ MORE)

Supreme Normalcy - Yesterday's Supreme Court rulings won't incite the uproar that accompanied recent decisions on voter fraud or race in public schools. But they did offer more welcome evidence that the Roberts Court is continuing to pull back from the legal extravagance of recent decades. (READ MORE)

40,000 told to prepare for action - Pentagon officials notified about 40,000 active-duty and National Guard soldiers yesterday that they will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the upcoming months and years. (READ MORE)

Obama to tout delegate majority - Sen. Barack Obama is expected to declare tonight that he has crossed a pivotal threshold toward becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, though his rival may trounce him by double digits in Kentucky and disputes his math. (READ MORE)

Clinton support puts union arm in debt - The independent political arm of the nation's largest government workers union has taken out a $1 million loan to replenish its coffers after spending millions of dollars backing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and criticizing her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, according to campaign records. (READ MORE)

Police rifles won't be secured - The Metropolitan Police Department says officers will start receiving assault rifles this summer as scheduled but the weapons will be unsecured in vehicle trunks until the locking devices are installed. (READ MORE)

Gilmore shuns Bush in race for Senate - James S. Gilmore III, who seeks Virginia's U.S. Senate seat, yesterday dramatically distanced himself from President Bush on trade, immigration, spending and energy, and even likened the president's hat-in-hand request of the Saudi government to boost oil production last week to Sen. Barack Obama's call to negotiate with enemy leaders. (READ MORE)

U.N. puts its scope on U.S. racism - A U.N. expert on racism and xenophobia arrived in Washington yesterday for a three-week fact-finding visit to examine human rights lapses in the United States. (READ MORE)



On the Web:
Hans A. Von Spakovsky: Anatomy of a Beltway Smear Campaign - During the past two years, while my nomination to the Federal Election Commission was pending – and before I withdrew last week – friends would call whenever the latest newspaper story or blog post attacking me was planted by political operatives and left-wing advocacy organizations. They always asked the same question: Why was I putting up with the character assassination that has become the norm in Senate confirmation battles whenever a conservative is nominated for public office? In 17 years of practicing law I'd never been accused of ethical or professional lapses. Since my arrival in Washington, however, I've been called corrupt and unethical, and labeled as everything from a Klansman to a Nazi (my last name seems to generate that latter pejorative) for my work at the Department of Justice. (READ MORE)

C. Fred Bergsten: The Democrats' Dangerous Trade Games - President Bush and the Democratic Congress are locked in fierce conflict over approval of U.S. free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Presumptive presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain hold sharply different views on the merits of free trade and globalization. Whether we're prepared for it or not, a major national debate on these issues is looming for the fall campaign and beyond. Meanwhile, our venerable House of Representatives, in the context of the Colombia agreement, has recklessly changed the rules for congressional action on trade legislation. By rejecting long-settled procedures that prevented congressional sidetracking of trade deals negotiated by presidents, the House has hamstrung U.S. trade policy and created the gravest threat to the global trading system in decades. (READ MORE)

David Ranson: You Can't Soak the Rich - Kurt Hauser is a San Francisco investment economist who, 15 years ago, published fresh and eye-opening data about the federal tax system. His findings imply that there are draconian constraints on the ability of tax-rate increases to generate fresh revenues. I think his discovery deserves to be called Hauser's Law, because it is as central to the economics of taxation as Boyle's Law is to the physics of gases. Yet economists and policy makers are barely aware of it. Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution than physics. Unfortunately, it is often poisoned by political wishful thinking, just as medieval science was poisoned by religious doctrine. Taxation is an important example. (READ MORE)

Nechirvan Barzani: We Are Making Progress in Iraq - While the media offers mostly images of violence, and many Americans have grown weary of the war in Iraq, I bring hopeful news to Washington this week as I meet with the administration and members of Congress. Since 2003, we have built the Kurdistan Region as a model for democracy and a gateway for development for all of Iraq. We are willing partners in this transition toward an Iraqi government that is representative of all its people. Through our peshmerga forces, we provide some of the most effective units against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. We Kurds are committed to a federal, democratic Iraq at peace within its borders and with its neighbors. (READ MORE)

Fred Thompson: California, here we come… - Nowadays everyone feels entitled to their Andy Warhol-esque “15 minutes of fame.” Fairly normal people will bust a gut to get a few seconds on television. Physical harm is likely for anyone standing between a camera and blow-hard politicians desirous of hawking legislation they and everyone else know will never be enacted. The rich and vacuous, seeking to make a difference, weigh in against the world’s problems to great fanfare amidst black ties and eco-talk press conferences. And all of them seem to be making lots and lots of money. Now, consider the plight of the poor jurist in all this, especially appellate judges. Often a lot smarter and making a fraction of the money than the lawyers who appear before them, they labor in obscurity with only their clerks and a handful of others in the legal community appreciating their brilliance and understanding how truly important they are. (READ MORE)

Dennis Prager: California Decision Will Radically Change Society - Americans seem mesmerized by the word "change." And, by golly, they sure got it last week from the California Supreme Court. It is difficult to imagine a single social change greater than redefining marriage from opposite sex to include members of the same sex. Nothing imaginable -- leftward or rightward -- would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history: Not another Prohibition, not government taking over all health care, not changing all public education to private schools, not America leaving the United Nations, not rescinding the income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax. Nothing. (READ MORE)
Patrick J. Buchanan: Bush Plays the Hitler Card - "A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope. Daily, our 43rd president testifies to Pope's point. Addressing the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth, Bush said those who say we should negotiate with Iran or Hamas are like the fools who said we should negotiate with Adolf Hitler. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement. ..." Again, Bush has made a hash of history. Appeasement is the name given to what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in September 1938. (READ MORE)

Cal Thomas: GOP: Get Back - "Get back, get back. Get back to where you once belonged." - The Beatles The Republican Party is in distress. Doomsayers are everywhere. Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. Duncan complains that conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Democrats won three special elections by stealing GOP issues. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues," Duncan told the New York Times. "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this." Democrats didn't steal your issues, sir. You abandoned them. Your party discarded them. Democrats simply engaged in dumpster harvesting. (READ MORE)

William Rusher: Avoiding a Republican Rout in November - As matters stand, the Republican Party is facing an historic shellacking in November. In part, this is just the usual yin and yang of partisan politics. The GOP has held the presidency for nearly eight years, and controlled Congress for six of them (until ousted by the Democrats in 2006). In a two-party system like ours, when the usual gripes against the party in power build up, what is there for the voters to do but throw the rascals out and install their opponents in their place? On top of that, President Bush is ending eight years in office, and the inevitable accumulation of complaints against him is also telling against the Republicans in Congress (READ MORE)

Chuck Norris: If I Am Elected Vice President - Last year, I enjoyed taking a momentary respite from my rather serious cultural and political commentary in order to share my tongue-in-cheek campaign promises in the column "If I Am Elected President." Because I didn't make that political cut, I decided to weigh in on the vice presidency this year. The timing seems particularly apropos, not only because of the ongoing election but also because The Washington Post currently is running a new "Chuck Norris Facts" contest. It really doesn't matter whose presidential ticket I ride on as vice president because America will be a Chucktatorship when I step into office. If I am elected vice president, I promise to fulfill these pledges unilaterally within my first 30 days in office: (READ MORE)

David Limbaugh: Over the Top Barack - Based on Barack Obama's hysterical, paranoid reaction to President Bush's remarks to the Israeli Knesset condemning the practice of appeasing terrorists, one might infer Obama was lying in wait for just such an opportunity to capture some national security street cred. After all, Democrats begin any presidential race with a national security credibility deficit, and this one should be no different, notwithstanding the unpopularity of the Iraq war. Democrats like to think they gained congressional seats in 2006 because of the war, but a better read is that Republicans did themselves in through reckless spending, scandals and other abandonment of conservative principles. (READ MORE)

Janice Shaw Crouse: Pornography and Sex Trafficking - California Assemblyman Charles Calderon estimates that people spend over $3,000 every second on adult entertainment and that there is a new adult video produced every 39 minutes. California lobbyists for the adult entertainment industry estimate that they employ 50,000 people and generate $4 billion a year. That multiple billion dollar figure reveals a pivotal fact about obscenity and pornography. They’re big bucks and big business. Of course, we have laws on the books about obscenity and pornography, but, amazingly, obscenity is not taken seriously even by those legally charged with prosecuting offenders. (READ MORE)

Phyllis Schlafly: Appeals Court Shoots Down New York City Gun Law - The media have been telling us to watch the gun-control case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, where we await a decision about Americans' Second Amendment rights. But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just handed down an equally important gun decision that has additional implications against judicial supremacy. The court, which convenes in New York City, shot down the longtime liberal dream of achieving gun control by suing gun manufacturers for crimes committed by firearms. In a remarkable decision, this federal appellate court dismissed City of New York v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp. and protected gun corporations against frivolous lawsuits in state and federal courts. (READ MORE)

A Newt One: No, Virginia...Conservatism Ain't Dead - In some way, some one has decided that Conservatism is dead in the water. There are articles and blog posts decrying the myth that Conservatism is dead. How they come to such a conclusion is beyond me but there are folks that seem to think that is the case. Apparently, they live in their own version of Upside Down Land. I ran across this article earlier today entitled, The Fall of Conservatism: Have the Republicans run out of ideas? Naturally, the title was an attention snatcher and knowing The New Yorker, having been one of those many moons ago, I was curious what the rag had to say. We at A Newt One have already addressed this upon many occasions so, although we have beat this issue like a dead mule, we will continue to thrash Moonbatitis as long as it takes to vanquish the Mental Disorder of Liberalism. (READ MORE)

A Soldier's Mind: He Fought To Deploy - Often when we turn on our televisions, we see stories in the media about Soldiers who’ve refused to deploy with their fellow Soldiers to Iraq, saying that they refuse to fight in, what they term is an “illegal war.” We’re constantly reminded that the media is very much against the policies of the current administration and anything that they do. We’re constantly hearing about groups like IVAW and others who “claim” that our Troops are constantly committing horrible acts against the people in Iraq. Yet, we never see in the media, stories about our Troops who want to go to Iraq, because they know the good that’s being accomplished there. The Troops, who wouldn’t have to go, due to medical reasons or situations in their families, yet they make the choice to go, and they serve honorably. (READ MORE)

Ace of Spades: Obama displays profound ignorance of asymetric warfare - By stating that Iran isn't a threat because they spend much less on defense than the US, Obama displays a complete ignorance of how asymmetric warfare operates. The AQ "defense budget" for pulling off 9/11, was by comparison to the US, essentially zero. An analysis of the Iranian order of battle and where they've been spending their defense dollars over the past 10 years would show that they are a serious threat in certain specific areas. They've been investing heavily in coastal batteries, anti-ship missile systems, silent diesel electric subs, and such. They could turn the narrow strait of Hormuz into an unnavigable scrap yard faster than the US Navy could stop them or the US Air force could neutralize those batteries and missiles. (READ MORE)

Donald Douglas: Barack Obama and the Political Psychology of Race - John Judis has a great new piece on the political psychology of racial resentment, as it relates to Barack Obama's presidential bid, at the New Republic: “Now, with Barack Obama inching closer to the Democratic nomination, race looms yet again as a central factor in American politics. Already, race has played a key part in the Democratic primary, almost certainly hurting Obama among swaths of voters in states like New Jersey, Ohio, and, most recently, Pennsylvania. If he manages to win the nomination anyway--and it appears he will--race seems likely to play an even larger role in the general election.” Judis writes from the left of the spectrum, but he's even-handed. I studied racial politics and psychology in some detail in the 1990s (prior to teaching an upper-division course on Black Politics). I'm a conservative on these issues, but I never underestimate lingering racial bigotry in the country. (READ MORE)

Richard Landes: When Police Departments go Multicultural - Nick Cohen, one of my favorite British writers has a fascinating piece on the West Midlands Police force who were last prominent in their persecution of an English TV crew for secretly going into a mosque and documenting the rabid anti-English, anti-democratic nature of the hate speech that passed for “sermons” there. Predictably, it aroused intense anger within the Muslim community. The result, the police prosecuted Channel 4 for breach of its code. Channel 4 fought back and last November Ofcom found Channel 4 innocent. Here Cohen follows up with the apology the police finally issued for their astonishing behavior. But he takes the matter further into the opaque world that one enters when one asks the obvious question: why did the West Midlands police behave in this manner? (READ MORE)

Dafydd: It's Not the Crime, It's the Cover Up: NYT Still Shielding Obama On "No Preconditions" - Today, even AP admits that Barack Obama did indeed say that he would hold summit meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Venezuelan President Oogo Chavez, and North Korean Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il "without precondition"... the very policy that prompts many in the GOP (including Big Lizards!) to dub Obama an "appeaser." (Actually, Obama is even more feckless than Neville Chamberlain: Great Britain had no military to speak of in 1938; they used the eleven months between the dissection of Czechoslovakia -- "peace for our time" -- and Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in a massive mobilization and buildup for a long war. Obama has no such easy excuse.) Yet amazingly, the New York Times continues to run interference. (READ MORE)

Big Dog: Obama’s Double Standard - Barry Obama is quite upset because the Republicans in Tennessee have used snippets of his wife in an ad. His wife Michell is seen making her statement about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life. On Good Morning America Michelle Obama was asked about it and Barry interjected (kind of lends itself to the Clinton supporters assertions that he is dismissive of women) and said that he is sure that Republicans would pour over every word he said and distort it but that his wife was off limits. “'I’ve been in public life for 20 years. I expect them to pore through everything that I’ve said, every utterance, every statement. And to paint it in the most undesirable light possible. That’s what they do. But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable,' he said." (READ MORE)

The Belmont Club: The Captain's bars - A Marine infantry officer recently returned from Iraq responds to the post about the Ray Ban theory of history. “I read with interest your bit about the Ray-Bans and the relationship between fashion and consciousness. We always had similar experiences in my city in Iraq with regard to the Iraqi Police wanting Marine paraphernalia for their uniforms, whether out of utility or just fashion. One incident sticks out. I worked very closely with an IP Captain who didn't actually work for the city's police force. Instead, he was on the payroll of the central government and very well-trusted by it due to his history. During 2005 and 2006, there had only been 7 police officers in the entire tri-city district where I worked. This Captain was one of them.” (READ MORE)

The Captains' Journal: Concerning Iranian Weapons in Iraq - Michael Rubin’s Bad Neighbor is required reading for anyone presuming to speak intelligently on the issue of Iranian weapons in Iraq. He gives a first hand account of Iranian meddling in Iraq in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is well known to those who have studied Iraq, and contrary to the latecomers to the Iraq news cycle, the burden of proof should be on those who claim that Iran is not sponsoring fighters inside Iraq. But some of the latecomers to the issue of Iranian meddling (mostly the main stream media) are in a dustup over some recent reporting concerning the same. We’ll give a very quick synopsis and link the sources so that the reader can assess the whole narrative for himself. Tina Susman reporting and blogging for the LA Times made some comments on a press briefing by Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner to the effect that it was odd that speaking of seizing a significant weapons cache in Karbala, he didn’t mention any of the weapons as being Iranian. (READ MORE)

Chickenhawk Express: Are We Seeing the Beginning of the Obama Meltdown? - I heard some media syncophants calling Obama's rantings yesterday and today "masterful" and "a perfect way to handle the issues" but frankly it sounds like Obama is starting to do an early version of the John Kerry/Al Gore melt-down. How in the world can this guy pitch a fit about his wife's comments being brought up into the campaign when he has used the very same wife as a female counter-pitchperson against Hillary? Michelle has been on the circuit as much as "Bubba" which makes her comments completely fair and open game. Puh-leaze stop the whining. If you can't take the damn heat, stay outta the political kitchen. Just ask Terraza Kerry about spouting off on the campaign trail and how far that gets ya... it don't get ya to the Oval Office that's for sure. (READ MORE)

Jeffrey Imm: Unresolved U.S. Strategy on Jihad and the War of Ideas - An unresolved question remains who in the U.S. Government is accountable for the wartime "war of ideas" against Jihadists. Last fall, Senator Joe Lieberman questioned the FBI, the DHS, the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) about their organizations' role in the "war on ideas" against jihadists. The answer was a giant shrugging of shoulders. The Washington Times reported that: "FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed during the hearing that the FBI has no counterideology response other than its 'outreach' to Muslim-American communities so they 'understand the FBI' and address 'the radicalization issue'. " Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff also said nothing is being done domestically to battle Islamist extremist ideas. (READ MORE)

Don Surber: Appalachia diagnosed - Has it occurred to anyone that maybe the old, uneducated, gun-toting, toothless, technophobe West Virginians might just like Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton? My profuse apologies to Dave Peyton. For years my fellow Daily Mail columnist has opined that hillbillies are the last minority in America that it is OK to pick on. I used to write this off as oversensitivity. No more. Clinton campaigned hard in West Virginia. She won. 67-26. It was not even close. Instead of congratulating her, the media dumped on West Virginia. (READ MORE)

Flopping Aces: President Bush’s Hands On Diplomacy in the Middle East - Another excellent example of what personal diplomacy and leadership really means! It’s been less than four months since President Bush’s last trip to the Middle East. His attendance at the World Economic Forum in Egypt this weekend afforded him another opportunity to make diplomatic progress on a host of issues, but most importantly, Iran. With leaders of so many of the region’s leaders present, the message was unmistakable and clear: Iran’s theocratic government is a threat to peace and the best way forward is not to recognize ore reward it with meaningless talks it, but to isolate it. That has been the longstanding policy of the United States under both Democrat and Republican Administrations. Despite the calls of Iran’s enablers in the U.S. for talks for the sake of talking, President Bush is continuing U.S. leadership whose ultimate goal is non-military regime change in Iran. If Democrats really sought a peaceful solution to the problem of Iran they would support these efforts, not undermine them. (READ MORE)

Ed Morrissey: Will Obama lose women in the fall? - Sexism seems to be the topic of the day. From Howard Kurtz to Geraldine Ferraro, the question of the women’s vote after an Obama nomination has suddenly jumped to the fore — and not just publicly, either. My mailbox has more than a few missives from liberal women who claim that they will find casting a vote for Barack Obama nearly impossible, thanks to the bruising identity-politics campaign in this primary season. Women perceive Obama as diminishing them as he diminishes Hillary, and even when those slights seem mostly imaginary, they resonate. Kurtz looks at this logically: (READ MORE)

Andrew Klavan: The Lost Art of War - Hollywood’s anti-American war films don’t measure up to the glories of its patriotic era. In Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), John Wayne’s Sergeant Stryker (center) must steep himself in violence, and make physical and spiritual sacrifices, to defend civilization.Hollywood has gone back to war. And this time, it’s appalling. All autumn long, the film industry released movies about America’s battle against global jihad. With one exception—the competent actioner The Kingdom—each of these movies distorted an urgent, ongoing historical enterprise through the lens of a filmmaker’s unthinking leftism. Redacted, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, and Lions for Lambs characterize our soldiers and government agents as rapists, madmen, murderers, torturers of the innocent, or simply victims caught up in a venal and bloodthirsty American foreign policy. All this at the very moment when our real-life soldiers and agents are risking, and sometimes losing, their lives fighting the most hateful and cancerous worldview since Nazism. But I guess that’s showbiz. (READ MORE)

ShrinkWrapped: The Third Classic Blunder - The prospect of a President Obama fills me with a deep sense of unease. I worry what his left-liberal policy prescriptions will do to our economy, our Supreme Court, and our zeitgeist, yet I expect or democracy will continue to thrive despite his best (or worst, depending on one's point of view) excesses. I also tend to broadly agree with those who suggest that in foreign policy, there is such a weight of inertia supporting a common conception of our national interest that a President Obama will be constrained from committing any particularly egregious acts. Yet I also find reason for worry that President Obama will manage to trump President Carter in setting a course down the wrong trunk of a complex decision tree. Yesterday Tom Friedman discussed Obama and the Jews in an attempt to be reassuring that President Obama would not alter the longstanding American consensus in favor of Israel: (READ MORE)

Dale Carpenter: The (limited?) potential of the California marriage decision - So the California Supreme Court did it. In an extraordinary, sophisticated, and far-reaching opinion (available here), the California Supreme Court held (1) that the fundamental right to marry protected by the state constitution includes the right of same-sex couples to marry, and (2) that exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage burdens their fundamental interest in marriage and amounts to sexual-orientation discrimination that cannot survive strict scrutiny under the state constitution’s equal protection clause. Both of these holdings depart in very significant ways from the same-sex marriage precedents so far, including the jurisprudentially questionable Massachusetts marriage decision in Goodridge from 2003. The California Supreme Court decision is by far the best and most well-reasoned opinion so far upholding same-sex marriage claims. (READ MORE)

Jay Tea: I Guess I'm Just Racist, Or Sexist, Or Both - I find myself deeply envying Barack Obama's power over the political debate in this country. He apparently has the ability, with a mere sentence or two, to take topics off the table and remove them from discussion. And we all better comply with his pronouncements over what is fair game fro discussion, and what is not. For example, his religion. Yes, there are those scurrilous, stupid rumors that he's some sort of "crypto-Muslim" who's going to take over the White House -- and, I dunno, maybe tip over the Washington Monument so it points towards Mecca or something -- and he needs to be "exposed." The most common rebuttal is that he is a Christian, in good standing, and a member of a Christian church for decades. (READ MORE)


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