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)
After Warnings to Moscow, U.S. Has Few Options - The Bush administration mixed strong rhetoric with modest action yesterday in response to Russia's continued military incursion in Georgia, warning that Moscow's international aspirations are threatened if it does not honor a negotiated cease-fire in the conflict. (READ MORE)
Democrats Pick Warner As Keynote Speaker - Democratic Party leaders announced yesterday that former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner will deliver the keynote address at their national convention in Denver this month, positioning him prominently in a week-long lineup that seeks to pay homage to the party of the past while ushering in a new... (READ MORE)
Despite Truce, Russians Take Georgian City - OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia, Aug. 13 -- A day after Russia agreed to stop its offensive and pull its troops out of Georgian territory, Russian forces took over the frontline Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, seized munitions at Georgian military bases and set up positions along the country's main... (READ MORE)
The ABA Plots a Judicial Coup - Some bad ideas never seem to die, especially in the hands of a crafty attorney. That's the story now playing out at the American Bar Association, which voted at its annual meeting this week to endorse a version of "merit selection" for federal judges. What we have here is the latest lawyer-led attempt to strip judicial selection from future Presidents. (READ MORE)
Bush Toughens Up - President Bush strengthened his response to Russia's invasion of Georgia yesterday, sending his Secretary of State to Paris and then on to Tbilisi, and dispatching C-17 transport aircraft with medicine and other humanitarian supplies to the besieged Georgian capital. (READ MORE)
Basra and the Brits - A controversy has broken out in London over Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the honor of Britain's military, and Iraq. It's a reminder of the road America could have taken before the surge made victory possible -- and a warning to politicians who are slaves to public opinion in war. (READ MORE)
Russia: 'Forget' Georgian territorial integrity - GORI, Georgia (AP) – Explosions were heard near Gori on Thursday as a Russian troop withdrawal from the strategic city seemed to collapse. A fragile cease-fire appeared even more shaky as Russia's foreign minister declared that the world "can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity." (READ MORE)
McCain hints at pro-choice running mate - Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that he would not rule out naming a pro-choice vice-presidential nominee, saying the abortion issue amounts to "a disagreement" and that he thinks conservatives would accept former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who is pro-choice, as a potential running mate. (READ MORE)
Airline relents on troop baggage fee - American Airlines announced Thursday that it will eliminate fees for a third piece of checked luggage for active military personnel on their way to the war in Iraq or anywhere in the U.S. American and other airlines waived fees for first and second pieces of checked luggage for military members. (READ MORE)
Immigration: 'Demographic divide' on the rise - New U.S. Census Bureau numbers show a stark change in immigration and birth patterns has moved up by eight years the date at which whites will no longer be the majority of the U.S. population, to 2042 - and demographers said those numbers will push immigration to the forefront of this year's political debates. (READ MORE)
Missing pilot to be brought home - His life ended in the skies over eastern Germany six decades ago. Second Lt. Howard C. Enoch Jr. was 19, a Kentucky patriot with a cheerful grin - a fighter pilot who had been in the U.S. Army Air Corps less than a year. He took off in his P-51D Mustang from a British air base one early spring, never to return. (READ MORE)
Violence draws ire for Marion Barry - A recent surge in homicides in Southeast has embattled residents pointing the finger at D.C. Council member Marion Barry, who is seeking re-election in November. There have been 18 homicides east of the Anacostia River in the past 60 days, including 14 in Mr. Barry's Ward 8. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Mikheil Saakashvili: Russia's War Is The West's Challenge - TBILISI, Georgia -- Russia's invasion of Georgia strikes at the heart of Western values and our 21st-century system of security. If the international community allows Russia to crush our democratic, independent state, it will be giving carte blanche to authoritarian governments everywhere. Russia intends to destroy not just a country but an idea. For too long, we all underestimated the ruthlessness of the regime in Moscow. Yesterday brought further evidence of its duplicity: Within 24 hours of Russia agreeing to a cease-fire, its forces were rampaging through Gori; blocking the port of Poti; sinking Georgian vessels; and -- worst of all -- brutally purging Georgian villages in South Ossetia, raping women and executing men. The Russian leadership cannot be trusted -- and this hard reality should guide the West's response. Only Western peacekeepers can end the war. (READ MORE)
Daniel Henninger: Putin's Rules, or Ours - Is it only a coincidence that Vladimir Putin launched a tank invasion of Georgia inside the week that Alexander Solzhenitsyn died? It was said countless times that Solzhenitsyn's truth-telling began the collapse of Soviet communism. As Vladimir Putin watched his tanks threaten Tbilisi yesterday, he must have thought that the post-Solzhenitsyn world is fine with him. He and the men in his orbit are unimaginably rich for seeing the world through the bloodless eyes of a Saudi prince. Unburdened of the exhausting task of enforcing Soviet ideology, Putin's Russia got its hands around the energy-needy throats of Germans, the French, Italians and many other Europeans. London's clubs and the sunshiny resorts of Europe make for pleasant Russian playgrounds. Europe's natural-gas users will pay the tab forever. (READ MORE)
John McCain: We Are All Georgians - For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call. After clashes in the Georgian region of South Ossetia, Russia invaded its neighbor, launching attacks that threaten its very existence. Some Americans may wonder why events in this part of the world are any concern of ours. After all, Georgia is a small, remote and obscure place. But history is often made in remote, obscure places. As Russian tanks and troops moved through the Roki Tunnel and across the internationally recognized border into Georgia, the Russian government stated that it was acting only to protect Ossetians. Yet regime change in Georgia appears to be the true Russian objective. Two years ago, I traveled to South Ossetia. As soon as we arrived at its self-proclaimed capital -- now occupied by Russian troops -- I saw an enormous billboard that read, "Vladimir Putin, Our President." (READ MORE)
Karl Rove: I See Four Key Battleground States - Presidential campaigns ultimately come down to who can win 270 Electoral College votes. With most states favoring one candidate or the other, this year's contest could come down to a few battleground states. Based on visits this past week with party leaders and old pros, it's clear that Barack Obama will focus on Colorado and Virginia. Both have large concentrations of white, college-educated voters with whom Mr. Obama is popular. And both have seen Democrats surge recently. Of the two, Mr. Obama is best positioned to pick up Colorado's nine electoral votes. Denver hosts the Democratic convention at the end of this month. And a quartet of local millionaires (mini-George Soroses) have spent lavishly to boost Democrats. They have succeeded at shrinking the Republican advantage among registered voters. The GOP now has just 68,507 more voters on the rolls in Colorado than Democrats, down from a 176,572 edge four years ago. (READ MORE)
Mike S. Adams: Salem's Witch Trial - Dear President Jacobs, I am writing today to ask for your immediate resignation from the position of president of The University of Toledo (UT). This request is a result of my recent discovery that you have written a letter to the Ohio legislature in support of passing initiatives that would extend benefits to the domestic partners of gay employees at your university. It is now abundantly evident that you did not fire Crystal Dixon because she could not perform her duties at UT. You fired her because she disagrees with your political views and because she is interfering with your efforts to serve as a political lobbyist for the gay community. A university president simply cannot be allowed to a) use the power of his office to serve as a political lobbyist, while b) using the power of that office to fire employees perceived as opposing those lobbying efforts. (READ MORE)
Victor Davis Hanson: Brave Old World - Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch -- all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing. "Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from an interconnected system of free trade, instantaneous electronic communications, civilized diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism. But was that ever quite true? In reality, to the extent globalism worked, it followed from three unspoken assumptions: (READ MORE)
Charles Krauthammer: Time To Get Serious With Russia - WASHINGTON -- The Russia-Georgia cease-fire brokered by France's president is less than meets the eye. Its terms keep moving as the Russian army keeps moving. Russia has since occupied Gori (appropriately, Stalin's birthplace), effectively cutting Georgia in two. The road to the capital, Tbilisi, is open, but apparently Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has temporarily chosen to seek his objectives through military pressure and Western acquiescence rather than by naked occupation. His objectives are clear. They go beyond detaching South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia and absorbing them into Russia. They go beyond destroying the Georgian army, leaving the country at Russia's mercy. The real objective is the Finlandization of Georgia through the removal of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his replacement by a Russian puppet. Which explains Putin stopping the Russian army (for now) short of Tbilisi. (READ MORE)
Matt Towery: Wasted Days and Wasted Nights: The Coming Presidential Conventions - Thanks to the timing of this year's Olympic games, the Democrats and the Republicans will be holding their presidential nominating conventions back to back. So by the time their staged, silly goings-on are over, the voters will have less than two months to properly vet John McCain and Barack Obama. There was a time when the political conventions meant something. Few recall that John Kennedy didn't arrive for the 1960 Democratic convention with his nomination locked up. And conventions prior to that were often dogfights. Nominees sometimes weren't determined until many rounds of balloting. Even as late as 1976, Ronald Reagan had a realistic chance of wresting the nomination away from incumbent President Gerald Ford. Ford barely won. With time, the conventions became irrelevant, mostly because the two major parties strove to avoid even the slightest sign of division within their ranks. (READ MORE)
Mona Charen: The 3 a.m. Phone Call Is Real - Hillary Clinton's best anti-Obama ad came to be known as the "3 a.m. phone call." It stoked voter worries that in the event of an international crisis, the first-term junior senator from Illinois might be out of his depth. On Aug. 8, the White House phone did ring, alerting President Bush that the Soviet Union, um, that is, Russia, had just sent columns of tanks and armored personnel carriers across the internationally recognized border of Georgia (formerly the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia), a tiny, democratic, America-friendly, Western-leaning country in the Caucasus mountains. It was a near perfect laboratory test -- the sort that real life rarely provides until it's too late: for how the two nominees for president would respond to an international emergency. Sen. Obama flunked. His first response was to urge restraint upon "both sides" -- that is upon the rapist and the rape victim. (READ MORE)
Ken Blackwell: Russia, China and Gitmo: A Contrast in Human Rights - Last week saw three human rights episodes play out in Russia, China and the United States. These events show us how America stacks up against the rest of the world. This past week the world saw the resurgent danger of the old Soviet Union in the modern Russian Federation. Russian military forces invaded the sovereign neighboring nation of Georgia. Although Russia claims to be aiding people in the disputed Georgian province of South Ossetia, the reality is that covert Russian agents have been fomenting upheaval, and Russia had been moving forces into place for this invasion. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is taking Russia back to an autocratic government. Political opponents are being jailed, critics silenced, strategic assets seized. The bear has returned. Putin is also using this to send a message. His message to Europe is that the Russian bear will maul any who oppose it. (READ MORE)
Douglas MacKinnon: When… - When: The Islamists obtain a nuclear weapon, they will use it against the United States or one of our allies. When: Our politicians shamelessly finish selling-out to get the Hispanic-American vote, the Mexican Army and its drug cartels will completely control parts of formerly U.S. sovereign territory. When: Liberals enthusiastically give national health insurance, free education, drivers licenses, and sanctuary, to illegal aliens, they not only dishonor the rule of law, but spit in the face of the millions of immigrants who came here legally and proudly became U.S. citizens. When: Conservative and reasoned talk radio is silenced, your voice, your opinion, and your rights, will diminish in significance. When: A liberal President joins forces with the liberal majority in Congress, your taxes will go up, capitalism and success will be increasingly assailed, wind-fall profits taxes will become doctrine, Jimmy Carter-like interest rates will be revisited... (READ MORE)
Newt Gingrich: Idle Leases - Or Addled Minds? - Senator Jeff Bingaman, Congressman Nick Rahall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who oppose producing more American oil are in a bind. They know voters are hurting from high gas prices and overwhelmingly want the government to allow more American oil production. But they can’t side with the American people and risk upsetting their left-wing base. So they needed a way to make us think they support more drilling – while effectively preventing us from ever drilling a single new well. They think they’ve found a solution: a proposed “use it or lose it” law on federal leases for energy exploration. Bingaman, Rahall and fellow drilling opponents accuse the oil industry of “sitting on” 68 million acres of “non-producing” leased land. They want to force energy companies to “use” this leased land within ten years – or lose all exploration and drilling rights. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: Communist Paper Supports Obama - A Communist newspaper is supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for president, praising his ability to “unite the working class” and eviscerate racism. People’s Weekly World/Neustro Mundo made their announcement in an editorial titled “Eye on the Prize.” The piece argues, while Obama “is not a left candidate,” he is the best candidate towards advance the kind of “progressive change” the Communist Party seeks. The editors of PWW/NM declared: “If Obama’s candidacy represented nothing more than the spark for this profound initiative to unite the working class and defeat the pernicious influence of racism, it would be a transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term.” The editorial was originally published on July 15 and reprinted online at the Communist Party USA’s website. (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: The Fear of Escalation - At what point will the Russians finally back down and withdraw from Georgia? Is that after they've completely dismembered Georgia and subsumed large swaths into Russia? Is it after they've sent a message to the other former Soviet republics not to do business with the West and that they have to worry about what Russia will do next to them? Or, is it when Russian troops stand across from US forces and US allies and a conflict spreads well beyond the borders of Georgia? If it's delivering a message, then the message was delivered loud and clear. Those other countries, including the Ukraine, are moving closer to the West, because they see the problem with Russian expansionism. Meanwhile, the Russians have turned a blind eye to rampant looking in areas they claim their peacekeepers are operating. Indeed, several Israeli journalists were robbed at gunpoint by Russian troops. (READ MORE)
Donald Douglas: The Bush Legacy Begins - Now that the war in Iraq has been won, President George W. Bush's historical legacy is already being reset as a resolute commander-in-chief who will leave office with the greatest foreign policy turnaround in the history of American international affairs. Brian Kelly, at this week's U.S. News and World Report, announced his magazine's new-found appreciation of the president, saying that Bush had, "the fortitude to execute one very tough call, and so far the country's better off for it" (the magazine's essentially renouncing its cover story of May 2007, "A Sinking Bush"). At Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, an academic expert in world politics, and the editor of Newsweek International, makes a backdoor case for the president's history-making firmness and resolve: "What Bush Got Right": (READ MORE)
Dafydd: AP Charges McCain with Democracy Mongering - The Associated Press, in the body of Pete Yost, has made serious accusations of impropriety against presumptive Republican nominee John S. McCain... charges that surely warrant federal investigation and possible disqualification from the presidential race: McCain stands charged with deliberately and maliciously supporting democracy over the increasingly progressive, humanitarian, and laudible People's Federation of Russia. More serious is the accusation that the senator, who is older than dirt, took onto his campaign staff a man, Randy Scheunemann, who willfully and with malice aforethought accepted money from the liberal democracy of Georgia -- but pointedly refused to do the same for Georgia's progressive neighbor to the north, which we can unanimously agree he should have done, in all fairness. To discriminate between democracy and progressivism, as McCain continues to do, is to engage in out and out discrimination. (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Deadbeats - Only 272,000 of the 130 million American households welshed on their mortgages. Why bail them out? The news from the BBC: “More than 272,000 people in the US received a foreclosure notice in July, a rise of 55% on a year earlier, according to analysts Realtytrac.” More than 77,000 homes were repossessed last month. That is a fraction of 1%. So what’s the reaction? Let the marketplace do its thing? Tell lenders to quit lending to deadbeats? Admit that redlining neighborhoods was actually a good thing that Congress should have let alone? No. Congress plans another bailout by the decent, responsible, hard-working Americans of the deadbeats. “Last month, the US government introduced new legislation to try to prevent homeowners losing their properties,” the BBC reported. And in West Virginia, Attorney General Darrell McGraw will throw his multi-millionaire trial lawyers another cash cow by allowing them to sue Countrywide because people are not paying back the money they borrowed from Countrywide. (READ MORE)
MountainRunner: Unasked in NYT's "photography as a weapon": does the media have an obligation to check its facts? - Relying on the mainstream media to debunk foreign propaganda is increasingly difficult. Errol Morris, writing on the New York Times opinion blog, discusses the Photoshopped Iranian missile launch. This case, like an increasing number, was caught by “New Media” effectively acting as an “Old Media” watchdog. While many papers issued retractions after the catch, the impression was set. The clarifications that rarely, if ever, received the same front-page treatment as the error they were correcting may not have been noticed. Twenty years ago, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman noted that changes in the media were changing the information landscape in the United States. The increased concentration of media ownership changed the motive from a duty to inform the public to one of profit and an increased dependency on outside sources from the government, corporations, or “elite” experts for analysis. (READ MORE)
neo-neocon: Swiftboating Obama—and swiftboating the swiftboaters who swiftboat… - The NY Times has a dismissive article about the new Corsi book on Obama entitled Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, which to the chagrin of the Times editors, “is to make its first appearance on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcovers this Sunday—at No. 1.” A bit difficult to ignore, I guess. And so the Times is trying to discredit it in advance. After all, it’s by some of the same folks who brought you Unfit for Command, that notorious book of outrageous lies about Kerry’s Vietnam service—or so the Times would (and did) have you believe. I happen to be one of the comparatively few people who actually read the Kerry book from cover to cover (disclaimer: I have not read Obama Nation), and I was very impressed by the case it presented. By the fall 2004 I had become somewhat of a minor expert on the book, the players, and the facts contained therein. (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: Where are they now? - Google “European anti-war protests” and you will see that the status of the sovereign, democratic state of Georgia is conspicuous by its absence from the list of protest-worthy causes. Organizing the stilt puppeteers and kettle drummers, these things take time, it seems. Patience is called for. Millions marched in San Francisco, Rome, Barcelona and London when a US-led coalition of democracies prepared to depose a murderous tyrant - where are they now, when a tyrant seeks to depose a democratically elected government? Millions more protested when a wretchedly afflicted people attempted to shake off the chains of 30 year’s oppression, tribalism and superstition to create for themselves and their children a sense of security and a representative government, answerable to the people - where are they now, that a free people has been reacquainted with the rod and beaten back to the yoke? (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: REMEMBERING THE BOMB, FORGETTING WHY - This past Wednesday morning at 8:15 AM in Hiroshima, Japan, it was partly cloudy and 78 degrees with light winds. Visibility was about 10 miles. A bell softly rang in the immaculately kept Peace Memorial Park, remembering the moment in 1945 when the atomic age was born. The anniversary is marked in a similar manner every year with tens of thousands of people from all over the world joining in the solemn ceremony. The dwindling number of survivors come forward each year and tell their tales of horror about that day. It’s almost as if they are re-living something that happened just recently, so vivid and emotional are the memories. Most of the survivors (many refer to them as “victims”) were young children in 1945. Many lost their parents in the blast. They say they come to bear witness so that there will be no more Hiroshimas. (READ MORE)
ROFASix: McCain Writes on Georgia - Sen McCain's OpEd, "We Are All Georgians" published today contains few surprises except one. That is, he fails to make the case that the what happens to Georgia at the hands of Russia affects US national security. Yet, in a way it does as was explained in "Georgia" below. Perhaps, Senator McCain ought to give it a read. There is little question that Russia has become a pariah among nations with its invasion of an adjoining free nation. There is also no question that Russia doesn't care what others think or say about their imperialistic and hegemonic intervention. They know that in a couple of months all those expressing indignation will go back to bemoaning high gasoline prices or taxes. The UN will do what it does best, nothing, while the US and her allies will grumble and discussion economic sanctions against Russia and they too will do little. (READ MORE)
The Sundres Shack: A Return to Realpolitik? - Ross Douthat, in a post titled “unrealpolitik” asks an interesting question. After he recounts that russia could make our lives much more difficult with Iran and Afghanistan if we take a hard line on them, or arm the Georgian military with truly modern weaponry, he comes to the real nut of the matter: “Is the fate of Abkhazia and South Ossetia really worth escalating the already-substantial risks we face in the Middle East and Central Asia?” If that were the stakes, I would say no. Let Russia have the two little breakaway provinces they’re been agitating in for 15 years or so and pacify Georgia with some happy talk. No big deal. But those aren’t the stakes. Russia isn’t interested just in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Vladimir Putin’s goal has always been much larger. (READ MORE)
William Teach @ Stop the ACLU: Queen Nancy Loves That Whole Free Speech Thang - I’m wondering if folks could pitch in a few cents here or there and purchase Nancy P. this wonderful framed copy of the 1st Amendment, in light of her latest San Fran hissy fit. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted Sen. Joe Lieberman on Wednesday for making what she called ‘totally irresponsible’ remarks about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and warned that the Senate might retaliate by revoking Lieberman’s committee chairmanship.” Party above freedom. Party over speaking ones mind. Party over individuality. Why does the word Fascism come to mind? (READ MORE)
Jammie Wearing Fool: A Bad Day for the Left Gets Worse: Plame Suit Dismissed - First, Michael Mukasey says there will be no prosecutions forthcoming in the Justice Department nonscandal, and now comes the delicious news that non-undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame has her bogus lawsuit against Vice President Cheney dismissed. “A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dismissed former CIA analyst Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and several former Bush administration officials for disclosing her identity to the public. The Court of Appeals in Washington dealt another setback to the former spy, who has said her career was destroyed when officials blew her cover in 2003 to retaliate against her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Plame's outing led a lengthy criminal investigation, which resulted in the conviction of Cheney's top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice.” (READ MORE)
Orin Kerr: Perceptions of the Terrorist Threat and the Anthrax Attacks - A few weeks ago, the Justice Department was preparing to indict Bruce Ivins, a biodefense scientist, for the 2001 Anthrax attacks. The government's apparent theory was that Ivins launched the attacks to make his field of research of more important (and perhaps to make money from some patents he held in the area). Ivins committed suicide before being indicted, and DOJ has now released a redacted version of the documents it had on Ivins that it believes show he was responsible for the attacks. Assuming that DOJ was right that Ivins and Ivins alone was behind the attacks, the anthrax attacks provide a fascinating example of how perceptions of the terrorist threat are formed. Back in October 2001, shortly after 9/11, the Anthrax attacks were front-page news. Five people died, and many high-level government employees were treated to a round of Cipro treatments in case they had been infected. (READ MORE)
Jay Tea: Hey, Democrats: Get Your Priorities Straight -- Or Else - Yesterday, a psycho gunman shot and killed Bill Gwatney, Arkansas' Democratic party state chairman. The initial reports say that it was not likely a political killing, but rather personal -- one account said the shooter had been laid off from Gwatney's Chevrolet dealership. That didn't keep the usual nuts from saying this was part of the "right-wing hate machine" and blamed talk radio, Fox News, right-wing bloggers, and anyone else they don't like for this crime. Oddly enough, there was another incident in the news recently that comes a lot closer to political terrorism than this one shooting of one state chairman. And that was the death of a man in Denver this week. (READ MORE)
Fred Thompson: Dangerous Times In Georgia Demand Serious Leadership - My mind goes back to August 2002 in Tbilisi, as I visited Georgia with John McCain. I remember it feeling rather dark and secretive, with the former-Soviet Union’s heavy hand still making its presence felt. President Eduard Shevardnadze, formerly Soviet minister of foreign affairs, presented a friendlier face to the United States, but was beset by economic problems and corruption charges. At the time I did not fully appreciate the power of the democratic impulses that were just beginning to bubble up and would lead to the democratic Georgian government we now see threatened. What has happened in Georgia since that time should not be surprising to anyone. Certainly Russia has tried to pretty itself up: it renamed the KGB and even gave its 21st century strongman Vladimir Putin a new title. But for some time we’ve seen Russia sliding back to its authoritarian comfort zone. (READ MORE)
Phyllis Chesler: Free Speech May Be Free But It is Not Without Consequences. It May Cost Us Our Lives -Terrorists do not terrify me–but the passivity of their potential victims does as does their glazed-over glamorization of fascist and totalitarian leaders. That Columbia has again invited Mr. Amadinejad to lecture does not surprise me; that so many “good” people have not grasped the inevitability of such an invitation deeply saddens me. I have been writing about the Stalinization and Islamification of the western academic world and its betrayal of the truth, the Jews, America, and women since 2002. I discussed it in my books The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It. and in The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom, as well as in approximately one hundred articles between 2003-2007. For my views, which I proudly stand by, I have been slandered as a “racist neo-conservative.” (Yes, even Orwell would weep). (READ MORE)
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