$1,055,719!
Thank you for your support!
June 27, 2008
Web Reconnaissance for 06/27/2008
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)
Headlines from the Washington Post:
Federal Police Official Killed in Mexico City
Pakistan Denies Role in Attack
U.N. Finds Afghan Opium Trade Rising
U.S. to Delist North Korea As Sponsor Of Terrorism
Obama, Clinton Join Together in Show of Unity
Senate Passes Broad War Funding Measure
Justices Reject D.C. Ban On Handgun Ownership
This Recession, It's Just Beginning
Headlines from the Washington Times:
N. Korea destroys reactor tower
Protest gives preview of abortion debate
Officials upset by court decision
Congress passes Iraq war spending plan
U.S. helps ransom Reyes' kin
Justice Kennedy casts decisive vote
Clinton introduces Obama to her donors
Headlines from the WSJ:
Silver Bullet
The Emperor of Interest Rates
Leap of Nuclear Faith
The Price of Justice
Tokyo Credit Crunch
Mbeki and Mugabe
Europe's Bloodsport
On the Web:
Peggy Noonan: Let McCain Be McCain - The big political headline this week, of course, involves John McCain's endless and humiliating attempts to placate Mitt Romney by bowing to demands he hire his operatives and pay his campaign debt. So far all he's got is a grudging one-sentence endorsement from that rampaging rage-aholic Ann Romney. Oh wait, got confused, that's Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The way it used to be is you ran and lost and either disappeared or pitched in. Mrs. Clinton continues making Mr. Obama look the dauphin to her embittered and domineering queen. What a hothouse of egos and drama the Democratic Party has become. Mr. McCain just can't get as much coverage as Mr. Obama, or the coverage is dutiful and therefore deadly. "McCain Unveils Proposal." "McCain Responds." At Google News there are 97,000 stories on Mr. McCain as I write this column, 138,000 on Mr. Obama. (READ MORE)
Kimberly A. Strassel: House Republicans Need Leadership - Of all the thorny questions facing House Minority Leader John Boehner, the one he might want to consider is this: Newt Gingrich or Bob Michel? Outwardly, the House GOP is gearing up to take on Democrats this fall. Inwardly, it's in disarray, engaged in a fight over the soul of the party. The reformers demand the leadership aggressively define itself on health care, earmarks and spending; the fat and happy push back, insisting their pork and their farm bills are necessary for re-election. In the middle is the minority leader, who has so far walked a tightrope. Yet this is a fight that must be resolved, and definitively, if the GOP wants out of the wilderness. Mr. Boehner's choice: To join with the reformers, Gingrich-like, and rally the troops around a bold agenda, or to find himself, Michel-like, a footnote in minority history. (READ MORE)
Randy E. Barnett: News Flash: The Constitution Means What It Says - Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in yesterday's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is historic in its implications and exemplary in its reasoning. A federal ban on an entire class of guns in ordinary use for self-defense – such as the handgun ban adopted by the District of Columbia – is now off the table. Every gun controller's fondest desire has become a constitutional pipe dream. Two important practical issues remain. First, will this ruling also apply to states and municipalities? That will depend on whether the Supreme Court decides to "incorporate" the right to keep and bear arms into the 14th Amendment. But in the middle of his opinion Justice Scalia acknowledges that the 39th Congress that enacted the 14th Amendment did so, in part, to protect the individual right to arms of freedmen and Southern Republicans so they might defend themselves from violence. (READ MORE)
John Fund: No, McCain Isn't 'Doomed' - Some pundits claim John McCain has no chance of beating Barack Obama. "The current bundle of economic troubles should doom any Republican hoping to succeed George Bush," says NBC's Chris Matthews. "It's almost impossible to believe that another Republican could get elected," insists Katty Kay, the BBC's Washington-based correspondent. They need to better understand the rhythms of presidential campaigns and show more humility in a year that's been chock full of political surprises. Some Democrats claim new polls by Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times showing Sen. McCain trailing by 15 points in each seal the deal on an Obama presidency. But both polls appear to be outliers. Other polls show the race to be close. Both surveys polled registered, not likely, voters. Normally, only two-thirds of those end up casting ballots, and nonvoters lean Democratic. (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: Evolving Standards of Indecency - The Supreme Court's barring of the death penalty for child rapists in Kennedy v. Louisiana underscores the hazards in the court's abandonment of moral absolutes in favor of "evolving standards of decency" and the court's unbridled arrogance in substituting its subjective judgment for the legislatively enacted will of the people. In Kennedy, the court reversed the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court to uphold the capital punishment of a convicted child rapist, holding that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits executing such offenders "where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death." A United States Supreme Court with a majority of Constitution-respecting justices would have evaluated the Louisiana statute in light of the originally understood meaning of the cruel and unusual punishment clause. (READ MORE)
Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Long March - "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." -- Obama spokesman Bill Burton, Oct. 24, 2007 WASHINGTON -- That was then: Democratic primaries to be won, netroot lefties to be seduced. With all that (and Hillary Clinton) out of the way, Obama now says he'll vote in favor of the new FISA bill that gives the telecom companies blanket immunity for post-9/11 eavesdropping. Back then, in the yesteryear of primary season, he thoroughly trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, pledging to force a renegotiation, take "the hammer" to Canada and Mexico, and threaten unilateral abrogation. Today, the hammer is holstered. Obama calls his previous NAFTA rhetoric "overheated" and essentially endorses what one of his senior economic advisers privately told the Canadians: The anti-trade stuff was nothing more than populist posturing. (READ MORE)
George Will: Shining a Supreme Light on the Candidates - WASHINGTON -- Two of Thursday's Supreme Court rulings -- both decided 5-4, and with the same alignment of justices -- concerned the Constitution's first two amendments. One ruling benefits Barack Obama by not reviving the dormant debate about gun control. The other embarrasses John McCain by underscoring discordance between his deeds and his promises. The District of Columbia's gun control law essentially banned ownership of guns not kept at businesses and not disassembled or disabled by trigger locks, even guns for personal protection in the home. The issue in the case was: Does the Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear arms" guarantee an individual right? Or does the amendment's prefatory clause -- "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" -- mean that the amendment guarantees only the right of a collectivity ("the people," embodied in militias) to "bear" arms in military contexts? (READ MORE)
Burt Prelutsky: Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumb - Timing, as they say, is everything, and not just for baseball players trying to hit a 95-mph fastball. For example, if Hitler had come along 70 years later than he did, I have no doubt that he would have succeeded in conquering all of Europe. One only has to look at how close he came, and that was in spite of all those nations and the U.S. aligned against him. Today, much of Europe has no backbone, and I doubt that, in the wake of Iraq, Americans would have the collective will required to oppose Nazism. It bears remembering that when we went to war against the Axis powers, FDR was never asked if he had an exit strategy. While it’s true that our presidents must deal with a great number of issues other than war, war and national defense are at the top of the list. Can anybody actually picture Barack Obama, a man born to be a left-wing social worker, as commander-in-chief? Keeping America safe is simply not on Obama’s to-do list. (READ MORE)
Ann Coulter: You Can't Fuel All of the People All of the Time - Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice." For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies. Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles. Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan. The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Why Liberals Lie About What They Believe - Once you've watched liberals long enough to understand how they think -- scratch that, how they feel -- they become extraordinarily predictable. To begin with, the liberal agenda is, in many respects, the same as it was in the thirties. Whether you call it communism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, or progressivism, the only real difference is how much they believe they can get away with, the way they sell it to people, and the latest trendy name for what they believe. So, once the liberals pick a policy from their stale program to push, the next step is to get it implemented. This is where liberals have problems because whether a policy makes sense, is practical, or actually improves people's lives is of secondary importance to them. What is important to liberals is whether supporting or opposing that policy makes them feel good about themselves. (READ MORE)
Oliver North: Success Equals Silence - AUSTIN, Texas -- Our Fox News' "War Stories" team came here to the capital of the Lone Star State to work on a documentary about America's 36th president to coincide with the 100th anniversary of his birth Aug. 27. Full disclosure here, Lyndon Baines Johnson was the commander in chief who sent one of my brothers and me to war in Vietnam. Because of the way he handled the war in Vietnam, LBJ never has been at the top of my list of favorite presidents. Apparently, I'm not alone. Despite his sweeping civil rights reforms and far-reaching Great Society domestic programs, his name has not been mentioned at a Democratic National Convention for three decades. But this week, President Johnson moved up a notch on my empathy scale. While we were shooting video at the LBJ Ranch and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, it was announced that this weekend, the U.S. military is transferring control of security in Anbar (Iraq's largest province) to Iraqi forces. (READ MORE)
Paul Greenberg: Could We Talk Honestly About This? - We all knew Barack Obama was quite the rhetorician, and once again he's demonstrated his way with words - and not just words but thought. It happened when he was called on to deliver a Father's Day sermon at a largely black church on Chicago's South Side. It could have been just another ceremonial occasion at the Apostolic Church of God, and just another appearance on a presidential candidate's crowded speaking schedule. Instead, the senator used the occasion to issue a moral challenge. Because this guest speaker had come not to praise the American father but to ask where he'd gone. Barack Obama, U.S. senator and family man, could have delivered another routine paean to what the pollsters and political consultants have labeled Family Values, thereby reducing them to a standard political shtick. Instead, Barack Obama recalled his own fatherless childhood, and how his grandparents stepped in to provide support, guidance, love - in short, family. (READ MORE)
Richard H. Collins: Don't Fear the Smear - In responding to criticisms Obama has developed a pattern: his policies spring from only the purist of motives and are, despite abundant appearances to the contrary, completely consistent with his previous statements. In contrast, his opponents are motivated by deception and greed or worse. Obama has gone so far as to claim that the campaign ahead is sure to be based on fear and smear tactics rather than a debate about the issues. At a fundraiser in Florida he claimed: We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’ Notice how he quickly connects a legitimate concern, youth and inexperience, with nefarious accusations and racism. In Obama world, any criticism is prohibited, any characterization suspect, and any attack based on fear. (READ MORE)
W. Thomas Smith, Jr: Dick Morris on the Fleecing of America - In their new book, FLEECED, political pundit Dick Morris and attorney-coauthor Eileen McGann (yes, Morris and McGann are married), expose companies – both foreign and domestic – U.S. media powerhouses, an ineffective Congress, highly-vocal party hacks, and, yes, Sen. Barack Obama, all of whom are slickering Americans for their own ends, and seriously compromising our national security (among other things) in the process. FLEECED was released on Tuesday and almost immediately soared to the #1 spot at Amazon.com. On Wednesday morning, Morris and I spent a few minutes on the phone chatting about the book and how it serves as an important primer in both an election year and in a strategically evolutionary period in the war on terror. Jumping right into a handful of primarily defense-related questions, I ask Morris about the danger posed to our national security and the potential degradation of defense under a, God-help-us, president Obama. (READ MORE)
Matt Purple: Republicans Assail Democrats on High Oil Prices - The GOP had harsh words for Democrats on Capitol Hill this morning, accusing them of misunderstanding the economics of oil and stalling needed drilling initiatives. “We ought to take a square look in the mirror,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R.-Tex.). “We need more American-made energy and Congress has resisted it. We need more supply.” “Democratic leaders have offered no solutions, only gimmicks, from suing OPEC to windfall profit taxes,” he added. His comments were made during a Joint Economic Committee hearing to discuss how increasing oil prices could affect the economy. The Joint Economic Committee is a Congressional Committee comprised of both House and Senate members that researches and holds hearings on economics issues While Democrats mostly refrained from partisan criticisms, several of the Republicans opened fire on their ideological opponents, charging them with trying to regulate oil demand rather than increase supply. (READ MORE)
Cliff May: Warfare, Lawfare, and Jawfare - It turns out that war in the 21st century is not just about killing bad guys. In Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has demonstrated that to win modern battles soldiers must do more than attack enemies – they also must make friends. It is our local allies who have been able to distinguish, in a way no computer, drone or satellite can, between loyal Iraqis on the one hand, and al-Qaeda terrorists and Iranian agents on the other. In addition to warfare, there is lawfare: the rules and regulations that govern the fighting. Last week, after much controversy and delay, the House finally passed a bill to restore to our spy agencies the authority they need if they are to have any chance of keeping tabs on terrorists abroad. The bad news: Last week, the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, granted to unlawful combatants at Guantanamo the right to challenge their detention in federal court. Honorable POWs have never enjoyed such constitutional protections. (READ MORE)
Michael J. Totten: How Kosovo Created its Own Liberal Islam - On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption that it is not a viable threat.” Nine in 10 of Kosovo’s citizens are ethnic Albanians, and more than 90 per cent of them are at least nominal Muslims. Most are so thoroughly modern and secularised that moderate doesn’t quite say it. (READ MORE)
Little Green Footballs: (Video) Al Jazeera on Islamic Saudi Academy - Al Jazeera aired this report a few days ago on the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Virginia (whose textbooks were revealed to be teaching hatred of non-Muslims). It’s over the top grievance theater at its worst, as the reporter blames the controversy on certain “Congressmen” (nudge, wink) who are “hostile to Arabs and Muslims.” (Courtesy of MEMRI TV.) Excerpt - Reporter: “We are at the Islamic Saudi Academy in the state of Virginia – the largest institution teaching the Arabic language and Islamic education on the East Coast of the U.S. However, this institution faces mounting pressure, and this is a nightmare for the families of the students enrolled in the academy. This pressure is exerted by several Congressmen, known for their great hostility towards Arabs and Muslims.” (READ MORE)
Leather Penguin: Well, at least He ADMITS His ‘Opponents’ Getting Marked For Death is not a “Bad Thing” - This hearing had nothing to do with National Security; nothing to do with anything in the nation’s interest: it’s all about getting partisan points and scoring scalps… even if the tactic could leave someone wearing a bullseye: Delahunt To Addington: Maybe Al Qaeda Will See You On C-SPAN “Addington told Delahunt he couldn’t discuss specific techniques being used, or even discussed for use, by CIA agents because terrorists may be watching his appearance and would gain insight into what U.S. intelligence agents are up to. ‘You kind of communicate with Al Qaeda if you do. I can’t talk to you because Al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN,’ Addington said. Delahunt responded: ‘I’m sure they are watching. I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington, given your penchant for being unobtrusive.’” (READ MORE)
Amy Proctor: End to Korean War Imminent; N. Korea to be Taken off U.S. List of State Sponsors of Terrorism - Incredible news! With Secretary of State Condi Rice’s trip to Asia next week is expected a major breakthrough formally ending the Korean War and resulting in North Korea’s destruction of its nuclear program. “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to Asia next week amid signs of an imminent breakthrough in efforts to get North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons and bring a formal end to the Korean War. After months of delay, the communist North appears set to hand over an accounting of its atomic activities by the end of the month, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process that will trigger an announcement by the Bush administration that it intends to lift sanctions against Pyongyang, U.S. officials said Friday.” (READ MORE)
Jihad Watch: While jihadists accuse Israel of violating truce, Israel debates whether to fight back at all - Irony. They're being accused of violating the truce and they can't even decide to fight back at all. War Is Deceit Update: "Terrorists: Israel Violated Truce; Livni Wants IDF To Act," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, June 27 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist): “(IsraelNN.com) Islamic Jihad terrorist leaders have accused Israel of violating the temporary Gaza ceasefire 15 times since it went into effect eight days ago. The alleged violations include IDF surveillance drones over Gaza skies and the shooting of Arab fishermen and farmers by soldiers. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared Thursday that Israel should respond with military force every time terrorists attack Israel with rockets and mortar shells. She told visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, ‘It doesn't interest me who fired it, we need to respond militarily and immediately to every infraction.’” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: In case no one’s noticed, we’re winning - Gerard Baker wonders in his Times of London column why the West wears such long faces regarding the war on terror. On every front, we have prevailed far past the hopes we had after 9/11. The radical Islamists have managed to marginalize themselves among even conservative Muslims, and both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to advance towards stability and moderation. The al-Qaeda network has not been able to stage a major terrorist attack in over three years. By any measure of war, the West has not just taken the initiative but has delivered a series of major defeats, especially in stripping AQ of its easy shelter in Afghanistan, from which it launched a series of attacks in the decade before 9/11. So why does the West despair? I believe that a couple of impulses are at play in the doom and gloom coming from Western media. First, it’s a lot easier to report on bombings than on bomb disposals, and on attacks rather than prevented attacks. (READ MORE)
GayPatriot: Firsthand Account of Bush Derangement Syndrome - Given the fact that we had some news to report yesterday, I wanted to welcome any new readers that might be visiting GayPatriot. You are welcome as long as you please wipe your feet at the door, and treat others as you wish to be treated. I would also like to apologize for my near-AWOL status lately. The ‘real job’ has consumed my work and spare time over the past few months. Work travel (always a pain) is at a high mark, and I’m also in kind of a “pre-Convention blues”. (Translation: I mostly don’t give a rat’s ass about the election at any given moment). However, on a very recent business trip I experienced something that I wanted to share. It was a full-blown case of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” played out during a business dinner. (READ MORE)
Noah Shachtman: FBI Data-Mining Slashed After G-Men Dis Congress - There was a time, early in the war on terror, when agencies like the FBI could have told Congressional investigators to go to hell, without paying much of a price. Not any more. Earlier today, a House appropriators voted to pull $11 million to expand a controversial FBI data-mining project, after the Bureau repeatedly stiff-armed Congressmen and their gumshoes in the Government Accountability Office. “By refusing to answer even the most basic questions about this program, the Department of Justice has given us little choice. In fact, we’re only doing what they told us to do,” said Congressman Brad Miller in a statement. “The Department of Justice... said that if Congress didn’t like what they were doing, we could pull their funding. Well, that’s what we’ve done... (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Sad Byrd - He’s unhappy that the Surge worked. Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd was one of the 6 votes against funding the war. He used the occasion to relieve himself of a gallon or so of Bush Derangement Syndrome, where everything is the fault of the 43rd president. His floor remarks began: “One year ago, Congress sent the President a war funding supplemental that included clear direction to bring our troops home by December of 2007. The President chose to veto that bill. If he had signed that bill, most of our troops would be home today. Instead of bringing our troops home, the President decided to increase our commitment of U.S. troops and treasure to a war that has now entered its sixth year. Over 4,100 U.S. service members have died. Over 30,000 U.S. service members have been wounded. This year, the President asked Congress to approve another $178 billion for this endless war. With enactment of this supplemental, Congress will have approved over $656 billion for the war in Iraq.” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Keith Olbermann Gets Trashed - It isn’t exactly giving away a state secret to say that Keith Olbermann is a creepy, ambition-crazed, ego maniacal hypocrite whose shtick used to garner himself fame and fortune - assuming the role of a Moonbat Howard Beale - is as pathetic as the stories his ex-girlfriends tell about his amorous “abilities”. Rare is the conservative blog that at one time or another that doesn’t find itself drawn to some Olbermann outrage and then picking him apart, piece by gooey piece. Despite some degree of apparent squeamishness about him, to the inhabitants of the political nether lands who inhabit such places as the Democratic Underground, the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, of course he is the answer to Rush, O’Reilly, Hannity and Coulter all contained in one bug-eyed package. But it looks like Olbermann’s inability to stick to anything even remotely resembling a principle has finally run afoul of some on the Left. (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Keep Your Guns - The opinions on yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case are all over the map. Politicians are freaking out, especially on the local level in places like Chicago, where Mayor Daley went on a rant about the ruling. Mostly because it will probably lead to a challenge, and dismissal of Chicago's own handgun ban. Liberal columnist Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post hates the idea that he believes the court got it right. His convoluted logic on the law that was struck down is laughable though; "...Given all the handgun killings in the city, was the ban really having any beneficial impact? But come on, it's not as if the law was making gun violence in the city any worse -- and it's not as if striking down the law, and perhaps adding hundreds or thousands of weapons to the city, will make things any better. The law was flawed, but it was a lot better than nothing." (READ MORE)
Andrew Cochran: Islamic Saudi Academy Latest Example of Saudis' Distribution of Propaganda - The controversy surrounding the Islamic Saudi Academy of Virginia continues to grow. Rep. Frank Wolf, the ranking Republican of the appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the State Department, wrote Secretary of State Rice (Acrobat file of the letter) to express his serious concern. "It is well known that Saudi Arabia promotes the radical Wahhabi interpretation of Islam within its own borders and has financed radical clerics abroad. Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Looming Tower, points out that "Saudi Arabia, which constitutes only 1 percentofthe world's Muslim population...supports 90 percent ofthe expenses of the entire faith," including "thousands of religious schools around the globe, staffed with Wahhabi imams and teachers." The ISA is funded through the Saudi government, which also funds radical madrassas along the turbulent Pakistani borders." (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: We Must Still be Losing - Tell the Democrats we're running out of people to which we can surrender. Abu Khalaf (a pseudonym) was the top al Qaeda leader in Mosul, al Qaeda's last reputed stronghold in Iraq, until American soldiers shot him full of holes. Further south, al Sadr's Madhi Army may be falling apart, with perhaps as few as 150 military members. So, will someone please bring me up to speed on Barack Obama's position this hour? Is he still insisting that it is 2006 in Iraq, that the situation is untenable, and that the best thing we can do is withdraw all our forces in an expensive, resource-abandoning retreat that many experts suspect could trigger a regional war that makes today's gas prices look like a bargain and trigger a worldwide depression? I ask, because it's rather difficult to keep up with his positions these days as he continues to throw his principles, campaign promises, friends, mentors, and supporters under the proverbial bus to bow at the alter of political expediency. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: The 2nd Amendment DOES NOT "Confer an Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms" - But on the other hand, I must rise to dispute not only Erwin Chemerinsky (on the Hugh Hewitt Dean Barnett radio show today) and Barack H. Obama, but also John S. McCain, who issued a statement today that ends: “But today, the Supreme Court ended forever the specious argument that the Second Amendment did not confer an individual right to keep and bear arms.” I disagree; it's not specious (though the way the argument is used certainly is): It's actually perfectly true that "the Second Amendment did not confer an individual right to keep and bear arms." Look at the wording of the Amendment (corrected to modernize punctuation): A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (READ MORE)
Kate Norley @ Blackfive: Women to the front - Iraq? I was there-no shit. Was going there something I had dreamt of as a young girl? No it was not. But real things happen in real life. The reality of my life as a young, free, American woman came into focus the moment my country was attacked by terrorists on September 11,2001. It was at that moment I understood what people meant when describing finding one's own purpose in life. I felt it. A new willingness to commit myself to a cause I believed in, led me to make the best decision of my life-joining the United States Army. Some who knew me questioned my decision and doubted my ability to survive in the armed services. One thing I've learned is it's too common, for people to make assumptions and form opinions about issues they know nothing about. Well I was in Iraq and I know what I saw. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Follow the leader - Glenn Greenwald at Salon is aghast at how Keith Olbermann could turn on a dime on the subject of FISA wiretaps and telecomm company amnesties in connection with counterterror wiretaps simply because Barack Obama changed his position. How could he? The logical error in Greenwald’s thinking is to assume that Olbermann had a position. Greenwald laments: “What’s much more notable is Olbermann’s full-scale reversal on how he talks about these measures now that Obama — rather than George Bush — supports them. On an almost nightly basis, Olbermann mocks Congressional Democrats as being weak and complicit for failing to stand up to Bush lawbreaking; now that Obama does it, it’s proof that Obama won’t ‘cower.’” Obama’s candidacy is partly founded on a cult of personality. He is the Face, the One we’ve been waiting for. A voter who simply wanted to endorse a set of policies could have voted for John Edwards or Hillary Clinton as well as Barack Obama. (READ MORE)
Bear Creek Ledger: Barack Hussein Obama in the back pocket of BIG AGRICULTURE - Now I understand why “the Obama” is continues to tout and support corn ethanol. ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) is based in Illinois but since lobbyists have no control over Obama I’m sure that he wouldn’t have received any campaign funds from the evil energy giant called ADM. Oh, he has? Like riding on ADM’s jet? “IBD - Obama’s Corn Fake - Energy: If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn’t he back imported sugar-based ethanol? This old-style politician knows it isn’t grown in the Midwest and Brazil has no electoral votes. ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation’s largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil.” (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: The Real Obama - Running in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama staked his campaign on the proposition that he was the Ivory Soap candidate on the issue of Iraq. His opposition to the war was purer than the rest of the Democratic field's. Having been an Illinois state legislator at the time the roll was called in the United States Senate, he had not cast a vote to authorize it. Free of the encumbrance of responsibility at the time of the Senate vote, he was able to present himself to Democrats as the candidate who was a visionary opponent of a misguided war. Believing that she had something like a lock on the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton pivoted to the general election before the Iowa caucus. She refused to apologize for her vote on the war. Moveover, only last fall she took a responsible position on the Kyl-Lieberman resolution urging the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. When she did so, Obama hammered her for it. (READ MORE)
John Hinderaker: The Farce Continues - The farce, that is, of Democratic control of Congress. I suspect that most Americans don't know that the Democrats have been in control of that institution for the last year and a half; otherwise, their enthusiasm for electing more Democrats would be considerably muted. Today the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held yet another hearing on the subject of terrorist interrogations. It is not clear to me why the Democrats are obsessed with this subject. The ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Trent Franks of Arizona, noted that "detainee treatment has been the subject of over 60 hearings, markups and briefings during the last Congress in the House Armed Services Committee alone, of which I am a member." And that is only a drop in the bucket, since any number of Democrat-controlled committees and subcommittees are eager to declare their solidarity with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed... (READ MORE)
Dale Franks: Heller Wrap-Up - Looking over the Heller opinion and dissents, several things occur to me, in no particular order. First, it was a 5-4 majority. We are one robed lawyer away from being told that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right at all. And there will certainly be more chances for that to happen in the not-too-distant future, because this is going to spawn a number of legal cases in gun-banning cities like Chicago and San Francisco. That we have reached a state where an enumerated right’s existence depends on how Justice Kennedy feels on the particular day he looks at the issue is a travesty. This is definitely not over yet, and a change in the court’s direction by a single vote could void Heller. Essentially we have no rights, other than those the Supreme Court extends to us. I don’t think that was the way the whole "rights" thing was supposed to work. (READ MORE)
The Redhunter: District of Columbia v. Heller - A Victory for Civil Rights - That's right, a victory for civil rights. I know that most liberals don't see gun rights as having anything to do with civil rights. They mostly see guns as "scary" things, and the idea that individuals should have them is a relic of a bygone age. In most discussions about the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is either ignored, or interpreted in weird and bizarre ways. The most bizarre of these is the notion that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to grant the states the right to establish their own armies, which is today the National Guard. The right to bear arms is a "corporate" right, not one held by individuals. This despite that no one doubts that the rest of the Bill or Rights applies to individuals. Today's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller changed all that. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Gazans fire mortars, AP calls it “test” of truce again - Mortars fired from Gaza are yet another “test” of the ceasefire, according to AP, while somehow, the closing of the border crossings—which were contingent on the ceasefire working—are labeled as the cause of the mortar fire by the AP. Note the headline: It’s a cause-and-effect summation. “Israel closes Gaza, Palestinians fire mortars” You see? As a result of closing the border crossings, the Palestinians fired mortars at Israel. Not as a matter of habit, this being the third day in a row that the Palestinians have violated the truce by firing rockets and mortars. But that’s not the worst of it. The AP is outright blaming Israel for the rocket fire. Look at the lead: (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Headlines from the Washington Post:
Federal Police Official Killed in Mexico City
Pakistan Denies Role in Attack
U.N. Finds Afghan Opium Trade Rising
U.S. to Delist North Korea As Sponsor Of Terrorism
Obama, Clinton Join Together in Show of Unity
Senate Passes Broad War Funding Measure
Justices Reject D.C. Ban On Handgun Ownership
This Recession, It's Just Beginning
Headlines from the Washington Times:
N. Korea destroys reactor tower
Protest gives preview of abortion debate
Officials upset by court decision
Congress passes Iraq war spending plan
U.S. helps ransom Reyes' kin
Justice Kennedy casts decisive vote
Clinton introduces Obama to her donors
Headlines from the WSJ:
Silver Bullet
The Emperor of Interest Rates
Leap of Nuclear Faith
The Price of Justice
Tokyo Credit Crunch
Mbeki and Mugabe
Europe's Bloodsport
On the Web:
Peggy Noonan: Let McCain Be McCain - The big political headline this week, of course, involves John McCain's endless and humiliating attempts to placate Mitt Romney by bowing to demands he hire his operatives and pay his campaign debt. So far all he's got is a grudging one-sentence endorsement from that rampaging rage-aholic Ann Romney. Oh wait, got confused, that's Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The way it used to be is you ran and lost and either disappeared or pitched in. Mrs. Clinton continues making Mr. Obama look the dauphin to her embittered and domineering queen. What a hothouse of egos and drama the Democratic Party has become. Mr. McCain just can't get as much coverage as Mr. Obama, or the coverage is dutiful and therefore deadly. "McCain Unveils Proposal." "McCain Responds." At Google News there are 97,000 stories on Mr. McCain as I write this column, 138,000 on Mr. Obama. (READ MORE)
Kimberly A. Strassel: House Republicans Need Leadership - Of all the thorny questions facing House Minority Leader John Boehner, the one he might want to consider is this: Newt Gingrich or Bob Michel? Outwardly, the House GOP is gearing up to take on Democrats this fall. Inwardly, it's in disarray, engaged in a fight over the soul of the party. The reformers demand the leadership aggressively define itself on health care, earmarks and spending; the fat and happy push back, insisting their pork and their farm bills are necessary for re-election. In the middle is the minority leader, who has so far walked a tightrope. Yet this is a fight that must be resolved, and definitively, if the GOP wants out of the wilderness. Mr. Boehner's choice: To join with the reformers, Gingrich-like, and rally the troops around a bold agenda, or to find himself, Michel-like, a footnote in minority history. (READ MORE)
Randy E. Barnett: News Flash: The Constitution Means What It Says - Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in yesterday's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is historic in its implications and exemplary in its reasoning. A federal ban on an entire class of guns in ordinary use for self-defense – such as the handgun ban adopted by the District of Columbia – is now off the table. Every gun controller's fondest desire has become a constitutional pipe dream. Two important practical issues remain. First, will this ruling also apply to states and municipalities? That will depend on whether the Supreme Court decides to "incorporate" the right to keep and bear arms into the 14th Amendment. But in the middle of his opinion Justice Scalia acknowledges that the 39th Congress that enacted the 14th Amendment did so, in part, to protect the individual right to arms of freedmen and Southern Republicans so they might defend themselves from violence. (READ MORE)
John Fund: No, McCain Isn't 'Doomed' - Some pundits claim John McCain has no chance of beating Barack Obama. "The current bundle of economic troubles should doom any Republican hoping to succeed George Bush," says NBC's Chris Matthews. "It's almost impossible to believe that another Republican could get elected," insists Katty Kay, the BBC's Washington-based correspondent. They need to better understand the rhythms of presidential campaigns and show more humility in a year that's been chock full of political surprises. Some Democrats claim new polls by Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times showing Sen. McCain trailing by 15 points in each seal the deal on an Obama presidency. But both polls appear to be outliers. Other polls show the race to be close. Both surveys polled registered, not likely, voters. Normally, only two-thirds of those end up casting ballots, and nonvoters lean Democratic. (READ MORE)
David Limbaugh: Evolving Standards of Indecency - The Supreme Court's barring of the death penalty for child rapists in Kennedy v. Louisiana underscores the hazards in the court's abandonment of moral absolutes in favor of "evolving standards of decency" and the court's unbridled arrogance in substituting its subjective judgment for the legislatively enacted will of the people. In Kennedy, the court reversed the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court to uphold the capital punishment of a convicted child rapist, holding that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits executing such offenders "where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death." A United States Supreme Court with a majority of Constitution-respecting justices would have evaluated the Louisiana statute in light of the originally understood meaning of the cruel and unusual punishment clause. (READ MORE)
Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Long March - "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." -- Obama spokesman Bill Burton, Oct. 24, 2007 WASHINGTON -- That was then: Democratic primaries to be won, netroot lefties to be seduced. With all that (and Hillary Clinton) out of the way, Obama now says he'll vote in favor of the new FISA bill that gives the telecom companies blanket immunity for post-9/11 eavesdropping. Back then, in the yesteryear of primary season, he thoroughly trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, pledging to force a renegotiation, take "the hammer" to Canada and Mexico, and threaten unilateral abrogation. Today, the hammer is holstered. Obama calls his previous NAFTA rhetoric "overheated" and essentially endorses what one of his senior economic advisers privately told the Canadians: The anti-trade stuff was nothing more than populist posturing. (READ MORE)
George Will: Shining a Supreme Light on the Candidates - WASHINGTON -- Two of Thursday's Supreme Court rulings -- both decided 5-4, and with the same alignment of justices -- concerned the Constitution's first two amendments. One ruling benefits Barack Obama by not reviving the dormant debate about gun control. The other embarrasses John McCain by underscoring discordance between his deeds and his promises. The District of Columbia's gun control law essentially banned ownership of guns not kept at businesses and not disassembled or disabled by trigger locks, even guns for personal protection in the home. The issue in the case was: Does the Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear arms" guarantee an individual right? Or does the amendment's prefatory clause -- "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" -- mean that the amendment guarantees only the right of a collectivity ("the people," embodied in militias) to "bear" arms in military contexts? (READ MORE)
Burt Prelutsky: Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumb - Timing, as they say, is everything, and not just for baseball players trying to hit a 95-mph fastball. For example, if Hitler had come along 70 years later than he did, I have no doubt that he would have succeeded in conquering all of Europe. One only has to look at how close he came, and that was in spite of all those nations and the U.S. aligned against him. Today, much of Europe has no backbone, and I doubt that, in the wake of Iraq, Americans would have the collective will required to oppose Nazism. It bears remembering that when we went to war against the Axis powers, FDR was never asked if he had an exit strategy. While it’s true that our presidents must deal with a great number of issues other than war, war and national defense are at the top of the list. Can anybody actually picture Barack Obama, a man born to be a left-wing social worker, as commander-in-chief? Keeping America safe is simply not on Obama’s to-do list. (READ MORE)
Ann Coulter: You Can't Fuel All of the People All of the Time - Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice." For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies. Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles. Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan. The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Why Liberals Lie About What They Believe - Once you've watched liberals long enough to understand how they think -- scratch that, how they feel -- they become extraordinarily predictable. To begin with, the liberal agenda is, in many respects, the same as it was in the thirties. Whether you call it communism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, or progressivism, the only real difference is how much they believe they can get away with, the way they sell it to people, and the latest trendy name for what they believe. So, once the liberals pick a policy from their stale program to push, the next step is to get it implemented. This is where liberals have problems because whether a policy makes sense, is practical, or actually improves people's lives is of secondary importance to them. What is important to liberals is whether supporting or opposing that policy makes them feel good about themselves. (READ MORE)
Oliver North: Success Equals Silence - AUSTIN, Texas -- Our Fox News' "War Stories" team came here to the capital of the Lone Star State to work on a documentary about America's 36th president to coincide with the 100th anniversary of his birth Aug. 27. Full disclosure here, Lyndon Baines Johnson was the commander in chief who sent one of my brothers and me to war in Vietnam. Because of the way he handled the war in Vietnam, LBJ never has been at the top of my list of favorite presidents. Apparently, I'm not alone. Despite his sweeping civil rights reforms and far-reaching Great Society domestic programs, his name has not been mentioned at a Democratic National Convention for three decades. But this week, President Johnson moved up a notch on my empathy scale. While we were shooting video at the LBJ Ranch and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, it was announced that this weekend, the U.S. military is transferring control of security in Anbar (Iraq's largest province) to Iraqi forces. (READ MORE)
Paul Greenberg: Could We Talk Honestly About This? - We all knew Barack Obama was quite the rhetorician, and once again he's demonstrated his way with words - and not just words but thought. It happened when he was called on to deliver a Father's Day sermon at a largely black church on Chicago's South Side. It could have been just another ceremonial occasion at the Apostolic Church of God, and just another appearance on a presidential candidate's crowded speaking schedule. Instead, the senator used the occasion to issue a moral challenge. Because this guest speaker had come not to praise the American father but to ask where he'd gone. Barack Obama, U.S. senator and family man, could have delivered another routine paean to what the pollsters and political consultants have labeled Family Values, thereby reducing them to a standard political shtick. Instead, Barack Obama recalled his own fatherless childhood, and how his grandparents stepped in to provide support, guidance, love - in short, family. (READ MORE)
Richard H. Collins: Don't Fear the Smear - In responding to criticisms Obama has developed a pattern: his policies spring from only the purist of motives and are, despite abundant appearances to the contrary, completely consistent with his previous statements. In contrast, his opponents are motivated by deception and greed or worse. Obama has gone so far as to claim that the campaign ahead is sure to be based on fear and smear tactics rather than a debate about the issues. At a fundraiser in Florida he claimed: We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’ Notice how he quickly connects a legitimate concern, youth and inexperience, with nefarious accusations and racism. In Obama world, any criticism is prohibited, any characterization suspect, and any attack based on fear. (READ MORE)
W. Thomas Smith, Jr: Dick Morris on the Fleecing of America - In their new book, FLEECED, political pundit Dick Morris and attorney-coauthor Eileen McGann (yes, Morris and McGann are married), expose companies – both foreign and domestic – U.S. media powerhouses, an ineffective Congress, highly-vocal party hacks, and, yes, Sen. Barack Obama, all of whom are slickering Americans for their own ends, and seriously compromising our national security (among other things) in the process. FLEECED was released on Tuesday and almost immediately soared to the #1 spot at Amazon.com. On Wednesday morning, Morris and I spent a few minutes on the phone chatting about the book and how it serves as an important primer in both an election year and in a strategically evolutionary period in the war on terror. Jumping right into a handful of primarily defense-related questions, I ask Morris about the danger posed to our national security and the potential degradation of defense under a, God-help-us, president Obama. (READ MORE)
Matt Purple: Republicans Assail Democrats on High Oil Prices - The GOP had harsh words for Democrats on Capitol Hill this morning, accusing them of misunderstanding the economics of oil and stalling needed drilling initiatives. “We ought to take a square look in the mirror,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R.-Tex.). “We need more American-made energy and Congress has resisted it. We need more supply.” “Democratic leaders have offered no solutions, only gimmicks, from suing OPEC to windfall profit taxes,” he added. His comments were made during a Joint Economic Committee hearing to discuss how increasing oil prices could affect the economy. The Joint Economic Committee is a Congressional Committee comprised of both House and Senate members that researches and holds hearings on economics issues While Democrats mostly refrained from partisan criticisms, several of the Republicans opened fire on their ideological opponents, charging them with trying to regulate oil demand rather than increase supply. (READ MORE)
Cliff May: Warfare, Lawfare, and Jawfare - It turns out that war in the 21st century is not just about killing bad guys. In Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has demonstrated that to win modern battles soldiers must do more than attack enemies – they also must make friends. It is our local allies who have been able to distinguish, in a way no computer, drone or satellite can, between loyal Iraqis on the one hand, and al-Qaeda terrorists and Iranian agents on the other. In addition to warfare, there is lawfare: the rules and regulations that govern the fighting. Last week, after much controversy and delay, the House finally passed a bill to restore to our spy agencies the authority they need if they are to have any chance of keeping tabs on terrorists abroad. The bad news: Last week, the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, granted to unlawful combatants at Guantanamo the right to challenge their detention in federal court. Honorable POWs have never enjoyed such constitutional protections. (READ MORE)
Michael J. Totten: How Kosovo Created its Own Liberal Islam - On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption that it is not a viable threat.” Nine in 10 of Kosovo’s citizens are ethnic Albanians, and more than 90 per cent of them are at least nominal Muslims. Most are so thoroughly modern and secularised that moderate doesn’t quite say it. (READ MORE)
Little Green Footballs: (Video) Al Jazeera on Islamic Saudi Academy - Al Jazeera aired this report a few days ago on the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Virginia (whose textbooks were revealed to be teaching hatred of non-Muslims). It’s over the top grievance theater at its worst, as the reporter blames the controversy on certain “Congressmen” (nudge, wink) who are “hostile to Arabs and Muslims.” (Courtesy of MEMRI TV.) Excerpt - Reporter: “We are at the Islamic Saudi Academy in the state of Virginia – the largest institution teaching the Arabic language and Islamic education on the East Coast of the U.S. However, this institution faces mounting pressure, and this is a nightmare for the families of the students enrolled in the academy. This pressure is exerted by several Congressmen, known for their great hostility towards Arabs and Muslims.” (READ MORE)
Leather Penguin: Well, at least He ADMITS His ‘Opponents’ Getting Marked For Death is not a “Bad Thing” - This hearing had nothing to do with National Security; nothing to do with anything in the nation’s interest: it’s all about getting partisan points and scoring scalps… even if the tactic could leave someone wearing a bullseye: Delahunt To Addington: Maybe Al Qaeda Will See You On C-SPAN “Addington told Delahunt he couldn’t discuss specific techniques being used, or even discussed for use, by CIA agents because terrorists may be watching his appearance and would gain insight into what U.S. intelligence agents are up to. ‘You kind of communicate with Al Qaeda if you do. I can’t talk to you because Al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN,’ Addington said. Delahunt responded: ‘I’m sure they are watching. I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington, given your penchant for being unobtrusive.’” (READ MORE)
Amy Proctor: End to Korean War Imminent; N. Korea to be Taken off U.S. List of State Sponsors of Terrorism - Incredible news! With Secretary of State Condi Rice’s trip to Asia next week is expected a major breakthrough formally ending the Korean War and resulting in North Korea’s destruction of its nuclear program. “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads to Asia next week amid signs of an imminent breakthrough in efforts to get North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons and bring a formal end to the Korean War. After months of delay, the communist North appears set to hand over an accounting of its atomic activities by the end of the month, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process that will trigger an announcement by the Bush administration that it intends to lift sanctions against Pyongyang, U.S. officials said Friday.” (READ MORE)
Jihad Watch: While jihadists accuse Israel of violating truce, Israel debates whether to fight back at all - Irony. They're being accused of violating the truce and they can't even decide to fight back at all. War Is Deceit Update: "Terrorists: Israel Violated Truce; Livni Wants IDF To Act," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, June 27 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist): “(IsraelNN.com) Islamic Jihad terrorist leaders have accused Israel of violating the temporary Gaza ceasefire 15 times since it went into effect eight days ago. The alleged violations include IDF surveillance drones over Gaza skies and the shooting of Arab fishermen and farmers by soldiers. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared Thursday that Israel should respond with military force every time terrorists attack Israel with rockets and mortar shells. She told visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, ‘It doesn't interest me who fired it, we need to respond militarily and immediately to every infraction.’” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: In case no one’s noticed, we’re winning - Gerard Baker wonders in his Times of London column why the West wears such long faces regarding the war on terror. On every front, we have prevailed far past the hopes we had after 9/11. The radical Islamists have managed to marginalize themselves among even conservative Muslims, and both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to advance towards stability and moderation. The al-Qaeda network has not been able to stage a major terrorist attack in over three years. By any measure of war, the West has not just taken the initiative but has delivered a series of major defeats, especially in stripping AQ of its easy shelter in Afghanistan, from which it launched a series of attacks in the decade before 9/11. So why does the West despair? I believe that a couple of impulses are at play in the doom and gloom coming from Western media. First, it’s a lot easier to report on bombings than on bomb disposals, and on attacks rather than prevented attacks. (READ MORE)
GayPatriot: Firsthand Account of Bush Derangement Syndrome - Given the fact that we had some news to report yesterday, I wanted to welcome any new readers that might be visiting GayPatriot. You are welcome as long as you please wipe your feet at the door, and treat others as you wish to be treated. I would also like to apologize for my near-AWOL status lately. The ‘real job’ has consumed my work and spare time over the past few months. Work travel (always a pain) is at a high mark, and I’m also in kind of a “pre-Convention blues”. (Translation: I mostly don’t give a rat’s ass about the election at any given moment). However, on a very recent business trip I experienced something that I wanted to share. It was a full-blown case of “Bush Derangement Syndrome” played out during a business dinner. (READ MORE)
Noah Shachtman: FBI Data-Mining Slashed After G-Men Dis Congress - There was a time, early in the war on terror, when agencies like the FBI could have told Congressional investigators to go to hell, without paying much of a price. Not any more. Earlier today, a House appropriators voted to pull $11 million to expand a controversial FBI data-mining project, after the Bureau repeatedly stiff-armed Congressmen and their gumshoes in the Government Accountability Office. “By refusing to answer even the most basic questions about this program, the Department of Justice has given us little choice. In fact, we’re only doing what they told us to do,” said Congressman Brad Miller in a statement. “The Department of Justice... said that if Congress didn’t like what they were doing, we could pull their funding. Well, that’s what we’ve done... (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Sad Byrd - He’s unhappy that the Surge worked. Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd was one of the 6 votes against funding the war. He used the occasion to relieve himself of a gallon or so of Bush Derangement Syndrome, where everything is the fault of the 43rd president. His floor remarks began: “One year ago, Congress sent the President a war funding supplemental that included clear direction to bring our troops home by December of 2007. The President chose to veto that bill. If he had signed that bill, most of our troops would be home today. Instead of bringing our troops home, the President decided to increase our commitment of U.S. troops and treasure to a war that has now entered its sixth year. Over 4,100 U.S. service members have died. Over 30,000 U.S. service members have been wounded. This year, the President asked Congress to approve another $178 billion for this endless war. With enactment of this supplemental, Congress will have approved over $656 billion for the war in Iraq.” (READ MORE)
Flopping Aces: Keith Olbermann Gets Trashed - It isn’t exactly giving away a state secret to say that Keith Olbermann is a creepy, ambition-crazed, ego maniacal hypocrite whose shtick used to garner himself fame and fortune - assuming the role of a Moonbat Howard Beale - is as pathetic as the stories his ex-girlfriends tell about his amorous “abilities”. Rare is the conservative blog that at one time or another that doesn’t find itself drawn to some Olbermann outrage and then picking him apart, piece by gooey piece. Despite some degree of apparent squeamishness about him, to the inhabitants of the political nether lands who inhabit such places as the Democratic Underground, the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post, of course he is the answer to Rush, O’Reilly, Hannity and Coulter all contained in one bug-eyed package. But it looks like Olbermann’s inability to stick to anything even remotely resembling a principle has finally run afoul of some on the Left. (READ MORE)
Crazy Politico: Keep Your Guns - The opinions on yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case are all over the map. Politicians are freaking out, especially on the local level in places like Chicago, where Mayor Daley went on a rant about the ruling. Mostly because it will probably lead to a challenge, and dismissal of Chicago's own handgun ban. Liberal columnist Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post hates the idea that he believes the court got it right. His convoluted logic on the law that was struck down is laughable though; "...Given all the handgun killings in the city, was the ban really having any beneficial impact? But come on, it's not as if the law was making gun violence in the city any worse -- and it's not as if striking down the law, and perhaps adding hundreds or thousands of weapons to the city, will make things any better. The law was flawed, but it was a lot better than nothing." (READ MORE)
Andrew Cochran: Islamic Saudi Academy Latest Example of Saudis' Distribution of Propaganda - The controversy surrounding the Islamic Saudi Academy of Virginia continues to grow. Rep. Frank Wolf, the ranking Republican of the appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the State Department, wrote Secretary of State Rice (Acrobat file of the letter) to express his serious concern. "It is well known that Saudi Arabia promotes the radical Wahhabi interpretation of Islam within its own borders and has financed radical clerics abroad. Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Looming Tower, points out that "Saudi Arabia, which constitutes only 1 percentofthe world's Muslim population...supports 90 percent ofthe expenses of the entire faith," including "thousands of religious schools around the globe, staffed with Wahhabi imams and teachers." The ISA is funded through the Saudi government, which also funds radical madrassas along the turbulent Pakistani borders." (READ MORE)
Confederate Yankee: We Must Still be Losing - Tell the Democrats we're running out of people to which we can surrender. Abu Khalaf (a pseudonym) was the top al Qaeda leader in Mosul, al Qaeda's last reputed stronghold in Iraq, until American soldiers shot him full of holes. Further south, al Sadr's Madhi Army may be falling apart, with perhaps as few as 150 military members. So, will someone please bring me up to speed on Barack Obama's position this hour? Is he still insisting that it is 2006 in Iraq, that the situation is untenable, and that the best thing we can do is withdraw all our forces in an expensive, resource-abandoning retreat that many experts suspect could trigger a regional war that makes today's gas prices look like a bargain and trigger a worldwide depression? I ask, because it's rather difficult to keep up with his positions these days as he continues to throw his principles, campaign promises, friends, mentors, and supporters under the proverbial bus to bow at the alter of political expediency. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: The 2nd Amendment DOES NOT "Confer an Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms" - But on the other hand, I must rise to dispute not only Erwin Chemerinsky (on the Hugh Hewitt Dean Barnett radio show today) and Barack H. Obama, but also John S. McCain, who issued a statement today that ends: “But today, the Supreme Court ended forever the specious argument that the Second Amendment did not confer an individual right to keep and bear arms.” I disagree; it's not specious (though the way the argument is used certainly is): It's actually perfectly true that "the Second Amendment did not confer an individual right to keep and bear arms." Look at the wording of the Amendment (corrected to modernize punctuation): A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (READ MORE)
Kate Norley @ Blackfive: Women to the front - Iraq? I was there-no shit. Was going there something I had dreamt of as a young girl? No it was not. But real things happen in real life. The reality of my life as a young, free, American woman came into focus the moment my country was attacked by terrorists on September 11,2001. It was at that moment I understood what people meant when describing finding one's own purpose in life. I felt it. A new willingness to commit myself to a cause I believed in, led me to make the best decision of my life-joining the United States Army. Some who knew me questioned my decision and doubted my ability to survive in the armed services. One thing I've learned is it's too common, for people to make assumptions and form opinions about issues they know nothing about. Well I was in Iraq and I know what I saw. (READ MORE)
The Belmont Club: Follow the leader - Glenn Greenwald at Salon is aghast at how Keith Olbermann could turn on a dime on the subject of FISA wiretaps and telecomm company amnesties in connection with counterterror wiretaps simply because Barack Obama changed his position. How could he? The logical error in Greenwald’s thinking is to assume that Olbermann had a position. Greenwald laments: “What’s much more notable is Olbermann’s full-scale reversal on how he talks about these measures now that Obama — rather than George Bush — supports them. On an almost nightly basis, Olbermann mocks Congressional Democrats as being weak and complicit for failing to stand up to Bush lawbreaking; now that Obama does it, it’s proof that Obama won’t ‘cower.’” Obama’s candidacy is partly founded on a cult of personality. He is the Face, the One we’ve been waiting for. A voter who simply wanted to endorse a set of policies could have voted for John Edwards or Hillary Clinton as well as Barack Obama. (READ MORE)
Bear Creek Ledger: Barack Hussein Obama in the back pocket of BIG AGRICULTURE - Now I understand why “the Obama” is continues to tout and support corn ethanol. ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) is based in Illinois but since lobbyists have no control over Obama I’m sure that he wouldn’t have received any campaign funds from the evil energy giant called ADM. Oh, he has? Like riding on ADM’s jet? “IBD - Obama’s Corn Fake - Energy: If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn’t he back imported sugar-based ethanol? This old-style politician knows it isn’t grown in the Midwest and Brazil has no electoral votes. ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation’s largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil.” (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: The Real Obama - Running in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama staked his campaign on the proposition that he was the Ivory Soap candidate on the issue of Iraq. His opposition to the war was purer than the rest of the Democratic field's. Having been an Illinois state legislator at the time the roll was called in the United States Senate, he had not cast a vote to authorize it. Free of the encumbrance of responsibility at the time of the Senate vote, he was able to present himself to Democrats as the candidate who was a visionary opponent of a misguided war. Believing that she had something like a lock on the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton pivoted to the general election before the Iowa caucus. She refused to apologize for her vote on the war. Moveover, only last fall she took a responsible position on the Kyl-Lieberman resolution urging the designation of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. When she did so, Obama hammered her for it. (READ MORE)
John Hinderaker: The Farce Continues - The farce, that is, of Democratic control of Congress. I suspect that most Americans don't know that the Democrats have been in control of that institution for the last year and a half; otherwise, their enthusiasm for electing more Democrats would be considerably muted. Today the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held yet another hearing on the subject of terrorist interrogations. It is not clear to me why the Democrats are obsessed with this subject. The ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Trent Franks of Arizona, noted that "detainee treatment has been the subject of over 60 hearings, markups and briefings during the last Congress in the House Armed Services Committee alone, of which I am a member." And that is only a drop in the bucket, since any number of Democrat-controlled committees and subcommittees are eager to declare their solidarity with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed... (READ MORE)
Dale Franks: Heller Wrap-Up - Looking over the Heller opinion and dissents, several things occur to me, in no particular order. First, it was a 5-4 majority. We are one robed lawyer away from being told that the right to keep and bear arms is not a right at all. And there will certainly be more chances for that to happen in the not-too-distant future, because this is going to spawn a number of legal cases in gun-banning cities like Chicago and San Francisco. That we have reached a state where an enumerated right’s existence depends on how Justice Kennedy feels on the particular day he looks at the issue is a travesty. This is definitely not over yet, and a change in the court’s direction by a single vote could void Heller. Essentially we have no rights, other than those the Supreme Court extends to us. I don’t think that was the way the whole "rights" thing was supposed to work. (READ MORE)
The Redhunter: District of Columbia v. Heller - A Victory for Civil Rights - That's right, a victory for civil rights. I know that most liberals don't see gun rights as having anything to do with civil rights. They mostly see guns as "scary" things, and the idea that individuals should have them is a relic of a bygone age. In most discussions about the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is either ignored, or interpreted in weird and bizarre ways. The most bizarre of these is the notion that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to grant the states the right to establish their own armies, which is today the National Guard. The right to bear arms is a "corporate" right, not one held by individuals. This despite that no one doubts that the rest of the Bill or Rights applies to individuals. Today's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller changed all that. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: Gazans fire mortars, AP calls it “test” of truce again - Mortars fired from Gaza are yet another “test” of the ceasefire, according to AP, while somehow, the closing of the border crossings—which were contingent on the ceasefire working—are labeled as the cause of the mortar fire by the AP. Note the headline: It’s a cause-and-effect summation. “Israel closes Gaza, Palestinians fire mortars” You see? As a result of closing the border crossings, the Palestinians fired mortars at Israel. Not as a matter of habit, this being the third day in a row that the Palestinians have violated the truce by firing rockets and mortars. But that’s not the worst of it. The AP is outright blaming Israel for the rocket fire. Look at the lead: (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
June 26, 2008
From the Frontlines Web-a-thon June 26, 2008
On June 26, from 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific to 12midnight Eastern/9pm Pacific, Melanie Morgan and Michelle Malkin will be anchoring a livestreamed, 8-hour fund-raising “web-a-thon” to send the largest number of care packages to our troops overseas in U.S. history. They’ve got a star-studded line-up participating in this effort to support our military, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Dr Laura Schlessinger, Ollie North, Monica Crowley, Ann Coulter, Nancy Reagan, actor Kelsey Grammer, and Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik. You’ll be able to tune it at Hot Air and on UStream, embed the broadcast on your own blogs, and even catch some of the show on your radio dial if you’re lucky to be in the listening area of a radio station partner.
You can purchase care packages right now, right here, in advance of the web-a-thon. Buy early and often! MAF has raised over $200,000 in advance of the telethon.
The goal is $500,000.
Let's do it!
Update
Lying in bed last night with the wife reconnecting, I blurted out: "I'm tired. How did we get so busy all of the sudden?"
"Not so sure, I was hoping that once school let out for summer it would slow down," was her reply.
"Yeah. Seems like ever since then we've been non-stop."
And then the recounting of what is taking up so much time was listed.
This week alone we have 3 picnics to, cook for and attend. One was last night - eldest son's Court of Honor - he earned his 2nd Class Scout rank. One tomorrow night, Vacation Bible School, and one on Sunday, youngest son's end of year Bridging Ceremony for Cub Scouts - he is becoming a Bear Cub.
On top of that my contract has ended and been awarded to a new company so I've been involved with them, negotiating, signing forms, etc.
All of which on its own doesn't add up to much, until you add in the kicker.
Two weeks ago, the parent of one of my Cub Scouts (not only am I an Assistant Scoutmaster for eldest son's Scout Troop, but I am also the Cubmaster for youngest son's Cub Scout Pack) was arrested for possession of child pron. Of course the news didn't hit for a week so since last Thursday I've been involved in one meeting after another concerning what to do, restrictions, etc. Thankfully, but honestly I'm not quite sure yet, many of the other parent's aren't news-hounds so the news didn't result in an avalance of calls or emails. So tomorrow night, immediately following the VBS Picnic, I'm off to another meeting this time with the Charter Organization for the Pack to formalize our decisions.
As an aside, you have no idea how thankful I am that this did not break while school was in session. I have to hand it to the Scouts and Cub Scouts, they haven't taken anything out on the children of the accused but we aren't waiting, the leadership of both organizations have adopted a no tolerance policy for teasing, bullying, finger pointing or whispering groups on the part of our Scouts, Cub Scouts or adults in the presence of his family. I just can't even imagine what they are going through.
Anyhow, I hope to be back on track next week.
Thanks for sticking around.
"Not so sure, I was hoping that once school let out for summer it would slow down," was her reply.
"Yeah. Seems like ever since then we've been non-stop."
And then the recounting of what is taking up so much time was listed.
This week alone we have 3 picnics to, cook for and attend. One was last night - eldest son's Court of Honor - he earned his 2nd Class Scout rank. One tomorrow night, Vacation Bible School, and one on Sunday, youngest son's end of year Bridging Ceremony for Cub Scouts - he is becoming a Bear Cub.
On top of that my contract has ended and been awarded to a new company so I've been involved with them, negotiating, signing forms, etc.
All of which on its own doesn't add up to much, until you add in the kicker.
Two weeks ago, the parent of one of my Cub Scouts (not only am I an Assistant Scoutmaster for eldest son's Scout Troop, but I am also the Cubmaster for youngest son's Cub Scout Pack) was arrested for possession of child pron. Of course the news didn't hit for a week so since last Thursday I've been involved in one meeting after another concerning what to do, restrictions, etc. Thankfully, but honestly I'm not quite sure yet, many of the other parent's aren't news-hounds so the news didn't result in an avalance of calls or emails. So tomorrow night, immediately following the VBS Picnic, I'm off to another meeting this time with the Charter Organization for the Pack to formalize our decisions.
As an aside, you have no idea how thankful I am that this did not break while school was in session. I have to hand it to the Scouts and Cub Scouts, they haven't taken anything out on the children of the accused but we aren't waiting, the leadership of both organizations have adopted a no tolerance policy for teasing, bullying, finger pointing or whispering groups on the part of our Scouts, Cub Scouts or adults in the presence of his family. I just can't even imagine what they are going through.
Anyhow, I hope to be back on track next week.
Thanks for sticking around.
Web Reconnaissance for 06/26/2008
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)
Yeah I know...soon. I promise.
On the Web:
Daniel Henninger: Is Sour News Good News for the Dems? - It is written everywhere that the public is in a sour mood. Further, that a sour nation is swell news for the election chances of Barack Obama and the Democrats. Hard to disagree. Gas and food prices are high, the president's approval is impossibly low, housing is a national nightmare and consumer confidence is at levels not seen since 1967. With Hillary defeated, Republicans are too despondent to vote. Worse, many of their own representatives, forced to choose between killing earmarks or blowing up their control of Congress, chose spending money over holding power – the definition of a loser. This column is not about to argue that the sour-mood hypothesis is wrong and that John McCain and the GOP will shock the world. This glum summer, the conventional wisdom is looking good. (READ MORE)
Karl Rove: It's All About Obama - Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election. His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign. Consider his treatment of Jeremiah Wright. After Rev. Wright repeated his anti-American slurs at the National Press Club, Mr. Obama said their relationship was forever changed – but not because of what he'd said about America. Instead, Mr. Obama complained, "I don't think he showed much concern for me." Translation: Rev. Wright is an impediment to my ambitions. So, as it turns out, are some of Mr. Obama's previous pledges. (READ MORE)
Olivier Sarkozy & Randal Quarles: Private Equity Can Save the Banks - In recent months a major U.S. investment bank has failed and the global financial-services industry has announced over $350 billion in losses. In response, banks and other financial-services firms have had to raise close to $330 billion in new capital. It may be tempting to think the worst is over, but this is only the beginning. The International Monetary Fund recently estimated that the global financial sector can expect to realize nearly another $600 billion in losses, while some economists have projected the figure will be closer to $1 trillion. In any case, it is clear that the financial-services industry will continue to need unprecedented amounts of new capital over the rest of this year. Over the past 20 years, private equity firms have demonstrated the ability to shoulder risk and to improve the efficiency and profitability of the companies they invest in. (READ MORE)
Amir Taheri: Iran's Troubling Opposition - On Monday the British parliament removed the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) from the U.K.'s list of banned terrorist organizations. The decision upholds a Court of Appeals' ruling in May that there is no evidence linking the Iranian opposition group to terrorism, and that it should be free to recruit, organize and raise money in Britain. Western and Arab intelligence services have long appreciated the MEK for its sources deep inside Iran. The group was the first to provide evidence of Tehran's secret nuclear project. But the U.S. and Continental Europe shouldn't rush to follow London's move. Although the People's Mujahedeen has won the support of many Western politicians, it is not the force for democratic change it claims to be. The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla war in northern Iran. (READ MORE)
Condolezza Rice: Diplomacy Is Working on North Korea - North Korea will soon make a declaration of its nuclear programs, facilities and materials. This is an important, if initial, step and we will demand that it be verifiable as complete and accurate. Amidst all the focus on our diplomatic tactics, it is important to keep two broader points in mind. One, we are learning more about Pyongyang's nuclear efforts through the six-party framework than we otherwise would be. And two, this policy is our best option to achieve the strategic goal of verifiably eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons and programs. North Korea now faces a clear choice about its future. If it chooses confrontation – violating international law, pursuing nuclear weapons, and threatening the region – it will face serious consequences not only from the United States, but also from Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, as it did in 2006 after testing a nuclear device. (READ MORE)
Robert A. Nintz: Business Failures Are Not a Crime - Anyone surprised by last week's arrest of two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers must have slept through the Enron era. If Enron, WorldCom, Tyco – and the list goes on – taught us anything, it is that whenever the investing public suffers staggering losses on Wall Street, we can expect to see someone hauled off in handcuffs. The real question is not why it happened, but where it will end. Despite the complex nature of the subprime meltdown, the government has presented an indictment that reads very much like a garden-variety fraud. In essence, the case turns on the simple proposition that Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin lied to their investors about their funds' true status and prospects. That is, the government has alleged that they were telling the outside investing public one thing, while secretly harboring a far gloomier scenario. There is no question that at some point permissible spin crosses the line and becomes willful misrepresentation. (READ MORE)
David Pryce-Jones: Malevolence and the Mufti - Time and again the Arab world throws up absolute rulers who do nothing but harm, working their way into power by exploiting and imprisoning and killing as they see fit. There seems no way to stop these ruthless careerists except by deploying superior violence against them. A perfect example of the type is Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem between the world wars. Haj Amin, the subject of David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann's "Icon of Evil," was born in about 1895 into the most prominent family of Ottoman Palestine. Authoritarian by nature, he possessed the skills necessary for operating in the culture of absolutism in which he had grown up. When he was still in his early 20s, the British acquired their Mandate in Palestine as a result of World War I and in 1921 made the crucial mistake of contriving Haj Amin's election to be Mufti. (READ MORE)
George Will: Educated Policy in a Globalized World - PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Fifty years ago, Jack Kilby, who grew up in Great Bend, Kan., took the electrical engineering knowledge he acquired as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin to Dallas, to Texas Instruments, where he helped invent the modern world as we routinely experience and manipulate it. Working with improvised equipment, he created the first electronic circuit in which all the components fit on a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. On Sept. 12, 1958, he demonstrated this microchip, which was enormous, not micro, by today's standards. Whereas one transistor was put in a silicon chip 50 years ago, today a billion transistors can occupy the same "silicon real estate." In 1982, Kilby was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, where he is properly honored with the likes of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. (READ MORE)
Larry Elder: How Can a "Fellow Black Republican" Oppose Obama? - Mr. Elder, I am shocked that you oppose Barack Obama and belong to the Republican Party. We must get over ourselves and realize there is room at the top for everyone and we must get there by helping each other -- instead of agreeing with policies and old politics that are proven not to work. To endorse John McCain, a person who will not make it easier for the underprivileged, is just too much. How can a fellow black American feel this way? Your Former Supporter Dear Former Supporter, Do you have any Republican friends, let alone black ones? If so, how many of them want to make it harder "for the underprivileged"? You also might want to familiarize yourself with the history of the Democratic and Republican parties, and see which party has stood up longer for the rights of people of color. Do you know that Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution... (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: The Imitators: Part III - Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies." Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies." Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests-- including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival. In the course of the twentieth century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth... (READ MORE)
Mary Katharine Ham: The Revival of Good Ol' American Competition - When the champions of the comeback season of “American Gladiators” won their titles, there were no touchdown dances, trash talkers, or T.O. temper tantrums in the Gladiator Arena—the strobe-lit home of the muscled, tanned forbears of today’s reality TV. Instead, 32-year-old Monica Carlson hugged her twin daughters while her husband beamed, “I couldn’t be more proud,” said Chad. “It’s a great, special moment for her and for our family.” Evan Dollard, the 25-year-old male champion, dedicated the win to his mom. “I wanted this to be a special moment for my family, my friends, everybody watching at home—Especially for my mom,” who died of cancer before he started the competition. “I love her. I was doing that for her,” he said. The runners-up—one a teacher and coach, the other a fitness trainer, both of whom work with teenagers—congratulated the winners and thanked their families for support. (READ MORE)
Andrew Buttaro: Ignorance is a Tough Sell: Review of Willful Blindness - Just over a week ago, the Supreme Court struck down a bipartisan agreement governing the treatment of terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. Defying the will of the executive branch and Congress, the court ruled that those detained in custody can challenge their status in American courts. Writing for the 5 to 4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy opined, “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” Justice Antonin Scalia fiercely dissented, arguing that the United States was “at war with radical Islamists,” and that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.” “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” he warned. So Andrew McCarthy is nothing if not timely with the publication of his new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of a Jihad. Within its pages he wrestles with the legal issues surrounding the war on terror. (READ MORE)
Ken Blackwell: The Energy Quagmire - America is in a worsening energy crisis, and the increasing consumer costs associated with it are wreaking economic havoc on American families. Tackling this crisis has fallen prey to presidential politics and looms large as a top-shelf issue in this fall's election. Gas prices have topped $4 a gallon, and prices are soaring across all sectors of the economy because of the impact of fuel prices on businesses. Families are hurting. It's worse than just having to cut back on family vacations and travel, or not being able to visit each other. It's sapping money out of the paychecks of families, money that would otherwise go to funding non-public schools, college, retirement, buying or paying off a home loan, or getting out of credit card debt. Energy prices are undermining family independence. Voters are demanding action and the presidential candidates are scurrying around in response. (READ MORE)
Dick Morris & Eileen McGann: Obama's New Strategy - Have you noticed a change in Barack Obama’s campaign? Instead of avoiding controversies over values, religion and race, he seems to welcome them and wade into the debates with an increasing enthusiasm. Characterizing how the Republicans will attack him, he predicted that they would criticize his “funny name” and add “and by the way, did you notice that he’s black?” Obama used to go out of his way to avoid this kind of reference, but now he brings it on. Deliberately. Why? Obama and the conservative right are mutually trying to keep the debate about his candidacy on the existential level — is he the hope for America’s future or a Manchurian Candidate, a kind of sleeper agent sent to destroy our democracy? That debate, which pits Obama’s rhetoric against the Rev. Wright’s rantings, is a contest that could go on all day, and Obama would win it. It is simply a bridge too far to believe that Obama is that evil and that invidious. (READ MORE)
Debra J. Saunders: The GOP Made Obama Do It - It was no surprise when Barack Obama flipped on public financing last week. When it suited his goals last year, he pledged, "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." When it didn't suit his goals, he ditched the pledge. And get this: Apparently he did it because the Republicans made him do it. Obama has raised an impressive $296 million to date -- dwarfing John McCain's $122 million. He stands to raise a lot of money -- certainly more than the $84 million he would have received from the federal presidential public financing system -- for the nine weeks following the Democratic convention. So forget "change we can believe in." I cannot get as indignant as some critics seem to be. After all, public financing never was about reforming politics. It always was about helping Democrats get into the White House... (READ MORE)
Donald Lambro: Offshore Drilling a Potent Issue for McCain - WASHINGTON -- America's paralysis over the oil crisis is a textbook example of the ideological divide that has polarized our politics and hurt our economy in the process. Reducing the price of $135-a-barrel oil and $4-a-gallon gasoline is not that hard to do. This is not brain surgery or nuclear physics. We have it within our power to bring down the price of both by tapping into our vast resources and technology -- now. That's what Sen. John McCain is proposing to do. Last week, he called for ending the ban against drilling on the outer continental shelf to extract the billions of barrels of oil that lie beneath the ocean and licensing new refineries to turn it into gasoline. Both would not only boost U.S. oil and gas supplies, they would bring down the price of both -- and faster than his critics say. (READ MORE)
Cal Thomas: If You Build It, They Won't Come - On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the appeal lodged by environmental groups that focused on a two-mile stretch of border fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The fence, which has been built since the petition was filed, is a vital part of the Bush administration's drive to secure the border between the United States and Mexico. The Supreme Court's decision is a welcome and needed victory in the war against illegal immigration and efforts to preserve the unique character that is America. The environmentalists based part of their challenge on claims the fence would harm the mating habits of two types of wildcats. To them, it is more important to allow wildcats to procreate than to control our borders and demand that everyone who comes here obey our laws. We must obey their laws. Google "Driving in Mexico" and see all of the paperwork that is required to enter that country. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: SCOTUS: No Execution for Child Rape - The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal to execute persons convicted of child-rape in a 5-4 decision Wednesday. "The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion. The ruling broke on party lines, the liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer siding with Kenney. In their decision, the liberal justices ruled that a Louisiana law that sent 43 year-old man named Patrick Kennedy to death row in 2003 for raping his 8-year old stepdaughter was “cruel and unusual punishment.” “It is the judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an increasing number of other states that these harms justify the death penalty,'' conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent. “The court provides no cogent explanation why this legislative judgment should be overridden.'' (READ MORE)
Richard Fernandez: The death of penalties - The Scotus Blog covers the Supreme Court’s decision that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for the crime of raping a child. “The broad declaration that death sentences should be reserved “for crimes that take the life of the victim” will apply, the Court said, to crimes against individuals — thus leaving intact, for example, a possible death sentence for treason.” Justice Kennedy argued that one reason “for nullifying a death sentence for raping a child was that the child victim gets enlisted, perhaps repeatedly, to recount the crime, forcing on the child ‘a moral choice’ that the youngster is not mature enough to make.” (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Support Of Amnesty Costs Chris Cannon His Job - Congressman Chris Cannon is extremely conservative, was mentioned in some corners as a potential veep choice for John McCain, and he has even made an effort to reach out to bloggers -- which is something 95% of his fellow Republicans in DC don't bother to do. Still, I'm absolutely thrilled that he lost a primary election yesterday to Jason Chaffetz for a simple reason; Cannon is pro-amnesty and in my book, there is no such thing as a good Republican legislator who's pro-amnesty. Put another way, if Ronald Reagan rose from the grave and ran for Congress, I would back his primary opponent if Zombie Reagan were pro-amnesty. Obviously, as you'll see from reading this excerpt from the Washington Times, a lot of other conservatives feel the same way: (READ MORE)
The Tygrrrr Express: Why Senator Reid is Wrong - I had the pleasure recently of interviewing Nevada Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid. I use the word pleasure because his staff was very easy to work with, and the Senator himself was nice to me when I met him. While I have said more than once that I would break bread with him, that does not change the fact that on the fundamental issue of the day, Senator Reid is wrong. He does represent the democratic party very well. He is an effective Majority Leader. However, his entire party is defective, and he himself is running the risk of being on the wrong side of history. When I asked Senator Reid about Senator John McCain, I received the following response. “I respect his service to our country. However, he is just wrong on the war and wrong on the economy.” Harry Reid will go down in history as being fundamentally wrong on one of the major historical world events. (READ MORE)
Information Dissemination: The Long View Towards the North Pole - Not everyone looking at the energy situation in the world is sitting on their hands waiting for the world to change. The Northern hemisphere needs to sit up and pay attention, because things like this don't get as much analysis as they should in the dynamic political discussions that look to the future. “Russia must be ready to fight for its national interests in the Arctic region, home to vast untouched natural resources, a military official said Tuesday. ‘After several countries contested Russia's rights for the resource-rich continental shelf in the Arctic, we have immediately started the revision of our combat training programs for military units that may be deployed in the Arctic in case of a potential conflict,’ Lt. Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, head the Defense Ministry's combat training board, told the Krasnaya Zvezda, or Red Star, newspaper.” The most common argument is also the most ridiculous one: that the legal frameworks in the UN will protect interests. The UN has dozens of legal frameworks set up to protect African's from warlords, and yet at the end of the day, the guy with the gun has the final say. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: What ceasefire? - Rockets hit Israel again today. And from the PA’s very own Fatah terrorists. “A Qassam rocket was fired Thursday afternoon from the Gaza Strip into Israel, exploding in an open area in Sderot’s industrial zone. There were no reports of injuries or damage. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah’s military wing, took responsibility for firing the rocket. Sources in the Gaza Strip believe that the firing was meant to embarrass Hamas and to harm the ceasefire efforts.” Meantime, the PA’s own prime minister tells Israel to pay no attention to the rockets raining down on southern Israel, just open the crossings anyway. (What, you expected him to tell terrorists to stop firing the rockets? Please. You must be new here.) (READ MORE)
Soccerdad: Once more unto the breach - The NYT and Washington Post both reported on the recent breach of the ceasefire by Hamas. Though both papers included the reporting in articles about PM Olmert’s political maneuverings the Times did a superior job. The Washington Post left out a significant detail in its reporter’s attempt to draw and equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. In an article focused on Ehud Olmert’s last minute political save the NYT reports on the recent attacks on southern Israel by Gaza based terrorists. “Also on Wednesday, Israel closed the Gaza border crossings for supplies in response to Palestinian rocket fire on Tuesday that was the first serious breach of a nearly week-old truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza. Islamic Jihad, a small extremist group, claimed responsibility for firing the rockets, describing the move as retaliation for an Israeli raid that killed one of its senior commanders in the West Bank, which is not covered by the cease-fire accord. But the closing was expected to be brief.” Maybe the rockets were the first “serious” breach of the ceasefire, but earlier there had been a mortar fired into Israel. (READ MORE)
Ron Winter: Are Congressional and Media Negativity Fueling PTSD 'Epidemic'? - From the dawn of humanity men have fought other men, either to protect themselves, their families and their homes, or on the other side because they were trying to take someone else's lands and homes. Some fighters have gloried in war's unrestrained excesses while others are overwhelmed. In the latter group there are subsets: people who temporarily are disabled by the sights, sounds, smells and mind-numbing violence; and those whose mental processes are permanently impaired. For those who overcome the impact of the fighting, their lives initially may be dominated by their battle experiences, but ultimately they regain control and are able to function in society with little to mark them as war veterans. For the more seriously affected, the impact of battle may never depart. (READ MORE)
Cassandra: Sacre bleu! - Whilst idly munching the remains of a leftover croissant this morning, the Editorial Staff happened to glance into the bottom of our nearly empty coffee cup. Much to our surprise, there amongst the French pressed grounds swirling snarkily back up at us, we espied a new penumbral right! But is this not the wonderful thing about a Living, Breathing Constitution? Contrary to the staid, stale prescriptions of heartless conservatives, a Living Text is free to change; free to respond to the real, human beings it is meant to serve. It protects the powerless, breathes life and compassion into the law: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges." It protects the downtrodden. This may be the defining difference between liberal and conservative views of law. A just process is not so important as ensuring equality of outcome. And of course, law should protect those who have no voice. Above all, the law must have empathy. Let's not forget that. Except when it doesn't seem to achieve any of these ends: (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism: Part II - Yesterday I discussed A. B. Yehoshua's thesis, set out in An Attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism, delineating the psychological underpinnings of anti-Semitism as related to Jewish identity emerging from a "common mental construction." Certain implications flow from such an understanding, including the fact that being Jewish, for many Jews, is a choice. As such, intermarriage rates approaching 50% are understandable, considering the difficulties historical and present, that are exacted on the Jew. A second implication is that along with all the other, well know reasons for anti-Semitism, especially the Jews ideal position as universal scapegoat, the fluidity of Jewish identity threatens those with poorly defined identities (or defects in their "ego boundaries") and feeds into pre-exiting paranoid and quasi-paranoid mental states and structures. A major potential flaw in Yehoshua's thesis relates to the state of Israel. (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: FISA CLOTURE PASSES: WORLD ENDING, SAY NETROOTS - The hysterically exaggerated, intellectually dishonest portrayal of the workings of the NSA surveillance program by many on the left is something I have catalogued on this site since its existence was revealed by the New York Times way back in December of 2005. To be honest, the netroots have made themselves ridiculously easy targets for ridicule. My own reservations about the program remain. Reasonable, honest people can debate how this program skirts the law and may – depending exactly how it works which is something that to this day remains hidden – cross the line of legality. The fact that debate raged in the Justice Department over the legality of the program with many career prosecutors opposed while others supported it should demonstrate to any reasonable person that at worst, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was an extremely close call. (READ MORE)
Rhymes with Right: Impeach Anthony Kennedy - For the second time this month, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has written an opinion which says it doesn't matter what the political branches of government or the US Constitution have to day on a matter -- the Supreme Court knows better and will impose its will on the people of the United States. The first time was in granting habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees, despite Congress having acted under its authority in Article III of the Constitution to strip the Supreme Court of any jurisdiction is such cases. This time it is in a decision that decrees that the sense of the Supreme Court will be the basis for determining when the death penalty may be imposed, not the laws of the states or the US Constitution -- and that the "evolving standard" on the death penalty can only move towards greater restrictions on capital punishment, not the other direction -- and that the rape of an eight-year old is not a sufficiently serious crime to merit the ultimate sanction. (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: Our robed masters strike again - The Supreme Court's death penalty decision yesterday constitutes a raw usurpation of authority from the people of Louisiana specifically and Americans generally. The Court's outrageous decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana continues a tradition that goes back to the watershed case of Furman v. Georgia in 1972. The Kennedy case involves the extraordinarily cruel rape of an eight-year-old girl perpetrated by her stepfather. ‘‘In most cases justice is not better served by terminating the life of the perpetrator rather than confining him and preserving the possibility that he and the system will find ways to allow him to understand the enormity of his offense,’’ Justice Kennedy wrote for the five-member majority. What punishment is, to use the Court's test, "proportionate" to the offense. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Next in Bus & Driver: Obama’s position on guns - Barack Obama has been spinning like a top, and watching his positions on, well, just about everything is like watching table-tennis matches on TiVo triple fast forward. FISA, public financing, and NAFTA have all been reversed in the last couple of weeks, and Obama’s not through yet. With the Heller decision on deck at the Supreme Court, his earlier comments on gun control have gone under the bus, too: “With the Supreme Court poised to rule on Washington, D.C.’s, gun ban, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an ‘inartful’ statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional. ‘That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator’s consistent position,’ Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.” (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Cease. Fire! - Despite the ongoing assault of rockets on Israel, the Israelis are continuing to live with the fiction that a ceasefire is in place. Misguided faith in a piece of paper doesn't simply describe it. A lack of imagination does. The Israelis appear to have run out of options for leadership, and those that remain do not present any alternatives to the ongoing Palestinian rocket war. They refuse to deal with the terrorists as anything other than a group that must be eliminated. They think that they can be bargained with and negotiate a deal that gives Israel peace. Israel may see peace for a bit, but it only means that the next round of fighting will be much worse. How many rockets have to slam into Israeli towns and cities before one realizes that the ceasefire is over? How many Israelis have to die before Israel's leaders take military action against Gaza and the terrorists there and in the West Bank who are busy plotting the next round of attacks? (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Make Heller the litmus test - Specifically, demand that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama pledge not to appoint a justice who will turn the clock back 32 years on the right to protect yourself with a handgun. Oh wait. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Public financing. NAFTA. FISA. Tony Rezko. His grandmother. His church of 20 years. Obama has so many things thrown under his bus that he can barely drive. Obama’s word is as worthless as Confederate money. Still, with the Supreme Court upholding the 2nd Amendment by 1 vote, now is not the time to trust a Democratic president to appoint a judge who upholds the Constitution as it is written. And having a Republican Senate avoids appointments such as David Souter. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: An Immodest Proposition, or the Last Prejudice - Today, Spain's parliament took a historic first step in righting a wrong that has persisted for decades. Nay, centuries. Nay, millennia. Nay, decamillennia. Nay, ever since the ancestors of homo sapiens (sapiens) first branched away from our hairy brothers and sisters, cruelly pushing them back into the primordial soup with all the generosity and altruism of Bill Clinton rifling the tin cup of a blind beggar. But yesterday, at long last, the Socialist government of Spain broke the fur ceiling, granting full legal rights of life and liberty to apes: “Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans. Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.” Presumably, this would include habeas corpus. (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
Yeah I know...soon. I promise.
On the Web:
Daniel Henninger: Is Sour News Good News for the Dems? - It is written everywhere that the public is in a sour mood. Further, that a sour nation is swell news for the election chances of Barack Obama and the Democrats. Hard to disagree. Gas and food prices are high, the president's approval is impossibly low, housing is a national nightmare and consumer confidence is at levels not seen since 1967. With Hillary defeated, Republicans are too despondent to vote. Worse, many of their own representatives, forced to choose between killing earmarks or blowing up their control of Congress, chose spending money over holding power – the definition of a loser. This column is not about to argue that the sour-mood hypothesis is wrong and that John McCain and the GOP will shock the world. This glum summer, the conventional wisdom is looking good. (READ MORE)
Karl Rove: It's All About Obama - Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election. His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign. Consider his treatment of Jeremiah Wright. After Rev. Wright repeated his anti-American slurs at the National Press Club, Mr. Obama said their relationship was forever changed – but not because of what he'd said about America. Instead, Mr. Obama complained, "I don't think he showed much concern for me." Translation: Rev. Wright is an impediment to my ambitions. So, as it turns out, are some of Mr. Obama's previous pledges. (READ MORE)
Olivier Sarkozy & Randal Quarles: Private Equity Can Save the Banks - In recent months a major U.S. investment bank has failed and the global financial-services industry has announced over $350 billion in losses. In response, banks and other financial-services firms have had to raise close to $330 billion in new capital. It may be tempting to think the worst is over, but this is only the beginning. The International Monetary Fund recently estimated that the global financial sector can expect to realize nearly another $600 billion in losses, while some economists have projected the figure will be closer to $1 trillion. In any case, it is clear that the financial-services industry will continue to need unprecedented amounts of new capital over the rest of this year. Over the past 20 years, private equity firms have demonstrated the ability to shoulder risk and to improve the efficiency and profitability of the companies they invest in. (READ MORE)
Amir Taheri: Iran's Troubling Opposition - On Monday the British parliament removed the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) from the U.K.'s list of banned terrorist organizations. The decision upholds a Court of Appeals' ruling in May that there is no evidence linking the Iranian opposition group to terrorism, and that it should be free to recruit, organize and raise money in Britain. Western and Arab intelligence services have long appreciated the MEK for its sources deep inside Iran. The group was the first to provide evidence of Tehran's secret nuclear project. But the U.S. and Continental Europe shouldn't rush to follow London's move. Although the People's Mujahedeen has won the support of many Western politicians, it is not the force for democratic change it claims to be. The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla war in northern Iran. (READ MORE)
Condolezza Rice: Diplomacy Is Working on North Korea - North Korea will soon make a declaration of its nuclear programs, facilities and materials. This is an important, if initial, step and we will demand that it be verifiable as complete and accurate. Amidst all the focus on our diplomatic tactics, it is important to keep two broader points in mind. One, we are learning more about Pyongyang's nuclear efforts through the six-party framework than we otherwise would be. And two, this policy is our best option to achieve the strategic goal of verifiably eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons and programs. North Korea now faces a clear choice about its future. If it chooses confrontation – violating international law, pursuing nuclear weapons, and threatening the region – it will face serious consequences not only from the United States, but also from Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, as it did in 2006 after testing a nuclear device. (READ MORE)
Robert A. Nintz: Business Failures Are Not a Crime - Anyone surprised by last week's arrest of two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers must have slept through the Enron era. If Enron, WorldCom, Tyco – and the list goes on – taught us anything, it is that whenever the investing public suffers staggering losses on Wall Street, we can expect to see someone hauled off in handcuffs. The real question is not why it happened, but where it will end. Despite the complex nature of the subprime meltdown, the government has presented an indictment that reads very much like a garden-variety fraud. In essence, the case turns on the simple proposition that Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin lied to their investors about their funds' true status and prospects. That is, the government has alleged that they were telling the outside investing public one thing, while secretly harboring a far gloomier scenario. There is no question that at some point permissible spin crosses the line and becomes willful misrepresentation. (READ MORE)
David Pryce-Jones: Malevolence and the Mufti - Time and again the Arab world throws up absolute rulers who do nothing but harm, working their way into power by exploiting and imprisoning and killing as they see fit. There seems no way to stop these ruthless careerists except by deploying superior violence against them. A perfect example of the type is Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem between the world wars. Haj Amin, the subject of David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann's "Icon of Evil," was born in about 1895 into the most prominent family of Ottoman Palestine. Authoritarian by nature, he possessed the skills necessary for operating in the culture of absolutism in which he had grown up. When he was still in his early 20s, the British acquired their Mandate in Palestine as a result of World War I and in 1921 made the crucial mistake of contriving Haj Amin's election to be Mufti. (READ MORE)
George Will: Educated Policy in a Globalized World - PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Fifty years ago, Jack Kilby, who grew up in Great Bend, Kan., took the electrical engineering knowledge he acquired as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin to Dallas, to Texas Instruments, where he helped invent the modern world as we routinely experience and manipulate it. Working with improvised equipment, he created the first electronic circuit in which all the components fit on a single piece of semiconductor material half the size of a paper clip. On Sept. 12, 1958, he demonstrated this microchip, which was enormous, not micro, by today's standards. Whereas one transistor was put in a silicon chip 50 years ago, today a billion transistors can occupy the same "silicon real estate." In 1982, Kilby was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, where he is properly honored with the likes of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. (READ MORE)
Larry Elder: How Can a "Fellow Black Republican" Oppose Obama? - Mr. Elder, I am shocked that you oppose Barack Obama and belong to the Republican Party. We must get over ourselves and realize there is room at the top for everyone and we must get there by helping each other -- instead of agreeing with policies and old politics that are proven not to work. To endorse John McCain, a person who will not make it easier for the underprivileged, is just too much. How can a fellow black American feel this way? Your Former Supporter Dear Former Supporter, Do you have any Republican friends, let alone black ones? If so, how many of them want to make it harder "for the underprivileged"? You also might want to familiarize yourself with the history of the Democratic and Republican parties, and see which party has stood up longer for the rights of people of color. Do you know that Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution... (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: The Imitators: Part III - Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies." Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies." Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests-- including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival. In the course of the twentieth century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth... (READ MORE)
Mary Katharine Ham: The Revival of Good Ol' American Competition - When the champions of the comeback season of “American Gladiators” won their titles, there were no touchdown dances, trash talkers, or T.O. temper tantrums in the Gladiator Arena—the strobe-lit home of the muscled, tanned forbears of today’s reality TV. Instead, 32-year-old Monica Carlson hugged her twin daughters while her husband beamed, “I couldn’t be more proud,” said Chad. “It’s a great, special moment for her and for our family.” Evan Dollard, the 25-year-old male champion, dedicated the win to his mom. “I wanted this to be a special moment for my family, my friends, everybody watching at home—Especially for my mom,” who died of cancer before he started the competition. “I love her. I was doing that for her,” he said. The runners-up—one a teacher and coach, the other a fitness trainer, both of whom work with teenagers—congratulated the winners and thanked their families for support. (READ MORE)
Andrew Buttaro: Ignorance is a Tough Sell: Review of Willful Blindness - Just over a week ago, the Supreme Court struck down a bipartisan agreement governing the treatment of terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. Defying the will of the executive branch and Congress, the court ruled that those detained in custody can challenge their status in American courts. Writing for the 5 to 4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy opined, “the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” Justice Antonin Scalia fiercely dissented, arguing that the United States was “at war with radical Islamists,” and that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.” “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” he warned. So Andrew McCarthy is nothing if not timely with the publication of his new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of a Jihad. Within its pages he wrestles with the legal issues surrounding the war on terror. (READ MORE)
Ken Blackwell: The Energy Quagmire - America is in a worsening energy crisis, and the increasing consumer costs associated with it are wreaking economic havoc on American families. Tackling this crisis has fallen prey to presidential politics and looms large as a top-shelf issue in this fall's election. Gas prices have topped $4 a gallon, and prices are soaring across all sectors of the economy because of the impact of fuel prices on businesses. Families are hurting. It's worse than just having to cut back on family vacations and travel, or not being able to visit each other. It's sapping money out of the paychecks of families, money that would otherwise go to funding non-public schools, college, retirement, buying or paying off a home loan, or getting out of credit card debt. Energy prices are undermining family independence. Voters are demanding action and the presidential candidates are scurrying around in response. (READ MORE)
Dick Morris & Eileen McGann: Obama's New Strategy - Have you noticed a change in Barack Obama’s campaign? Instead of avoiding controversies over values, religion and race, he seems to welcome them and wade into the debates with an increasing enthusiasm. Characterizing how the Republicans will attack him, he predicted that they would criticize his “funny name” and add “and by the way, did you notice that he’s black?” Obama used to go out of his way to avoid this kind of reference, but now he brings it on. Deliberately. Why? Obama and the conservative right are mutually trying to keep the debate about his candidacy on the existential level — is he the hope for America’s future or a Manchurian Candidate, a kind of sleeper agent sent to destroy our democracy? That debate, which pits Obama’s rhetoric against the Rev. Wright’s rantings, is a contest that could go on all day, and Obama would win it. It is simply a bridge too far to believe that Obama is that evil and that invidious. (READ MORE)
Debra J. Saunders: The GOP Made Obama Do It - It was no surprise when Barack Obama flipped on public financing last week. When it suited his goals last year, he pledged, "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." When it didn't suit his goals, he ditched the pledge. And get this: Apparently he did it because the Republicans made him do it. Obama has raised an impressive $296 million to date -- dwarfing John McCain's $122 million. He stands to raise a lot of money -- certainly more than the $84 million he would have received from the federal presidential public financing system -- for the nine weeks following the Democratic convention. So forget "change we can believe in." I cannot get as indignant as some critics seem to be. After all, public financing never was about reforming politics. It always was about helping Democrats get into the White House... (READ MORE)
Donald Lambro: Offshore Drilling a Potent Issue for McCain - WASHINGTON -- America's paralysis over the oil crisis is a textbook example of the ideological divide that has polarized our politics and hurt our economy in the process. Reducing the price of $135-a-barrel oil and $4-a-gallon gasoline is not that hard to do. This is not brain surgery or nuclear physics. We have it within our power to bring down the price of both by tapping into our vast resources and technology -- now. That's what Sen. John McCain is proposing to do. Last week, he called for ending the ban against drilling on the outer continental shelf to extract the billions of barrels of oil that lie beneath the ocean and licensing new refineries to turn it into gasoline. Both would not only boost U.S. oil and gas supplies, they would bring down the price of both -- and faster than his critics say. (READ MORE)
Cal Thomas: If You Build It, They Won't Come - On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the appeal lodged by environmental groups that focused on a two-mile stretch of border fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The fence, which has been built since the petition was filed, is a vital part of the Bush administration's drive to secure the border between the United States and Mexico. The Supreme Court's decision is a welcome and needed victory in the war against illegal immigration and efforts to preserve the unique character that is America. The environmentalists based part of their challenge on claims the fence would harm the mating habits of two types of wildcats. To them, it is more important to allow wildcats to procreate than to control our borders and demand that everyone who comes here obey our laws. We must obey their laws. Google "Driving in Mexico" and see all of the paperwork that is required to enter that country. (READ MORE)
Amanda Carpenter: SCOTUS: No Execution for Child Rape - The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal to execute persons convicted of child-rape in a 5-4 decision Wednesday. "The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion. The ruling broke on party lines, the liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer siding with Kenney. In their decision, the liberal justices ruled that a Louisiana law that sent 43 year-old man named Patrick Kennedy to death row in 2003 for raping his 8-year old stepdaughter was “cruel and unusual punishment.” “It is the judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an increasing number of other states that these harms justify the death penalty,'' conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent. “The court provides no cogent explanation why this legislative judgment should be overridden.'' (READ MORE)
Richard Fernandez: The death of penalties - The Scotus Blog covers the Supreme Court’s decision that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for the crime of raping a child. “The broad declaration that death sentences should be reserved “for crimes that take the life of the victim” will apply, the Court said, to crimes against individuals — thus leaving intact, for example, a possible death sentence for treason.” Justice Kennedy argued that one reason “for nullifying a death sentence for raping a child was that the child victim gets enlisted, perhaps repeatedly, to recount the crime, forcing on the child ‘a moral choice’ that the youngster is not mature enough to make.” (READ MORE)
John Hawkins: Support Of Amnesty Costs Chris Cannon His Job - Congressman Chris Cannon is extremely conservative, was mentioned in some corners as a potential veep choice for John McCain, and he has even made an effort to reach out to bloggers -- which is something 95% of his fellow Republicans in DC don't bother to do. Still, I'm absolutely thrilled that he lost a primary election yesterday to Jason Chaffetz for a simple reason; Cannon is pro-amnesty and in my book, there is no such thing as a good Republican legislator who's pro-amnesty. Put another way, if Ronald Reagan rose from the grave and ran for Congress, I would back his primary opponent if Zombie Reagan were pro-amnesty. Obviously, as you'll see from reading this excerpt from the Washington Times, a lot of other conservatives feel the same way: (READ MORE)
The Tygrrrr Express: Why Senator Reid is Wrong - I had the pleasure recently of interviewing Nevada Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid. I use the word pleasure because his staff was very easy to work with, and the Senator himself was nice to me when I met him. While I have said more than once that I would break bread with him, that does not change the fact that on the fundamental issue of the day, Senator Reid is wrong. He does represent the democratic party very well. He is an effective Majority Leader. However, his entire party is defective, and he himself is running the risk of being on the wrong side of history. When I asked Senator Reid about Senator John McCain, I received the following response. “I respect his service to our country. However, he is just wrong on the war and wrong on the economy.” Harry Reid will go down in history as being fundamentally wrong on one of the major historical world events. (READ MORE)
Information Dissemination: The Long View Towards the North Pole - Not everyone looking at the energy situation in the world is sitting on their hands waiting for the world to change. The Northern hemisphere needs to sit up and pay attention, because things like this don't get as much analysis as they should in the dynamic political discussions that look to the future. “Russia must be ready to fight for its national interests in the Arctic region, home to vast untouched natural resources, a military official said Tuesday. ‘After several countries contested Russia's rights for the resource-rich continental shelf in the Arctic, we have immediately started the revision of our combat training programs for military units that may be deployed in the Arctic in case of a potential conflict,’ Lt. Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, head the Defense Ministry's combat training board, told the Krasnaya Zvezda, or Red Star, newspaper.” The most common argument is also the most ridiculous one: that the legal frameworks in the UN will protect interests. The UN has dozens of legal frameworks set up to protect African's from warlords, and yet at the end of the day, the guy with the gun has the final say. (READ MORE)
Meryl Yourish: What ceasefire? - Rockets hit Israel again today. And from the PA’s very own Fatah terrorists. “A Qassam rocket was fired Thursday afternoon from the Gaza Strip into Israel, exploding in an open area in Sderot’s industrial zone. There were no reports of injuries or damage. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Fatah’s military wing, took responsibility for firing the rocket. Sources in the Gaza Strip believe that the firing was meant to embarrass Hamas and to harm the ceasefire efforts.” Meantime, the PA’s own prime minister tells Israel to pay no attention to the rockets raining down on southern Israel, just open the crossings anyway. (What, you expected him to tell terrorists to stop firing the rockets? Please. You must be new here.) (READ MORE)
Soccerdad: Once more unto the breach - The NYT and Washington Post both reported on the recent breach of the ceasefire by Hamas. Though both papers included the reporting in articles about PM Olmert’s political maneuverings the Times did a superior job. The Washington Post left out a significant detail in its reporter’s attempt to draw and equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. In an article focused on Ehud Olmert’s last minute political save the NYT reports on the recent attacks on southern Israel by Gaza based terrorists. “Also on Wednesday, Israel closed the Gaza border crossings for supplies in response to Palestinian rocket fire on Tuesday that was the first serious breach of a nearly week-old truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza. Islamic Jihad, a small extremist group, claimed responsibility for firing the rockets, describing the move as retaliation for an Israeli raid that killed one of its senior commanders in the West Bank, which is not covered by the cease-fire accord. But the closing was expected to be brief.” Maybe the rockets were the first “serious” breach of the ceasefire, but earlier there had been a mortar fired into Israel. (READ MORE)
Ron Winter: Are Congressional and Media Negativity Fueling PTSD 'Epidemic'? - From the dawn of humanity men have fought other men, either to protect themselves, their families and their homes, or on the other side because they were trying to take someone else's lands and homes. Some fighters have gloried in war's unrestrained excesses while others are overwhelmed. In the latter group there are subsets: people who temporarily are disabled by the sights, sounds, smells and mind-numbing violence; and those whose mental processes are permanently impaired. For those who overcome the impact of the fighting, their lives initially may be dominated by their battle experiences, but ultimately they regain control and are able to function in society with little to mark them as war veterans. For the more seriously affected, the impact of battle may never depart. (READ MORE)
Cassandra: Sacre bleu! - Whilst idly munching the remains of a leftover croissant this morning, the Editorial Staff happened to glance into the bottom of our nearly empty coffee cup. Much to our surprise, there amongst the French pressed grounds swirling snarkily back up at us, we espied a new penumbral right! But is this not the wonderful thing about a Living, Breathing Constitution? Contrary to the staid, stale prescriptions of heartless conservatives, a Living Text is free to change; free to respond to the real, human beings it is meant to serve. It protects the powerless, breathes life and compassion into the law: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges." It protects the downtrodden. This may be the defining difference between liberal and conservative views of law. A just process is not so important as ensuring equality of outcome. And of course, law should protect those who have no voice. Above all, the law must have empathy. Let's not forget that. Except when it doesn't seem to achieve any of these ends: (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism: Part II - Yesterday I discussed A. B. Yehoshua's thesis, set out in An Attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism, delineating the psychological underpinnings of anti-Semitism as related to Jewish identity emerging from a "common mental construction." Certain implications flow from such an understanding, including the fact that being Jewish, for many Jews, is a choice. As such, intermarriage rates approaching 50% are understandable, considering the difficulties historical and present, that are exacted on the Jew. A second implication is that along with all the other, well know reasons for anti-Semitism, especially the Jews ideal position as universal scapegoat, the fluidity of Jewish identity threatens those with poorly defined identities (or defects in their "ego boundaries") and feeds into pre-exiting paranoid and quasi-paranoid mental states and structures. A major potential flaw in Yehoshua's thesis relates to the state of Israel. (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: FISA CLOTURE PASSES: WORLD ENDING, SAY NETROOTS - The hysterically exaggerated, intellectually dishonest portrayal of the workings of the NSA surveillance program by many on the left is something I have catalogued on this site since its existence was revealed by the New York Times way back in December of 2005. To be honest, the netroots have made themselves ridiculously easy targets for ridicule. My own reservations about the program remain. Reasonable, honest people can debate how this program skirts the law and may – depending exactly how it works which is something that to this day remains hidden – cross the line of legality. The fact that debate raged in the Justice Department over the legality of the program with many career prosecutors opposed while others supported it should demonstrate to any reasonable person that at worst, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was an extremely close call. (READ MORE)
Rhymes with Right: Impeach Anthony Kennedy - For the second time this month, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has written an opinion which says it doesn't matter what the political branches of government or the US Constitution have to day on a matter -- the Supreme Court knows better and will impose its will on the people of the United States. The first time was in granting habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees, despite Congress having acted under its authority in Article III of the Constitution to strip the Supreme Court of any jurisdiction is such cases. This time it is in a decision that decrees that the sense of the Supreme Court will be the basis for determining when the death penalty may be imposed, not the laws of the states or the US Constitution -- and that the "evolving standard" on the death penalty can only move towards greater restrictions on capital punishment, not the other direction -- and that the rape of an eight-year old is not a sufficiently serious crime to merit the ultimate sanction. (READ MORE)
Scott Johnson: Our robed masters strike again - The Supreme Court's death penalty decision yesterday constitutes a raw usurpation of authority from the people of Louisiana specifically and Americans generally. The Court's outrageous decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana continues a tradition that goes back to the watershed case of Furman v. Georgia in 1972. The Kennedy case involves the extraordinarily cruel rape of an eight-year-old girl perpetrated by her stepfather. ‘‘In most cases justice is not better served by terminating the life of the perpetrator rather than confining him and preserving the possibility that he and the system will find ways to allow him to understand the enormity of his offense,’’ Justice Kennedy wrote for the five-member majority. What punishment is, to use the Court's test, "proportionate" to the offense. (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Next in Bus & Driver: Obama’s position on guns - Barack Obama has been spinning like a top, and watching his positions on, well, just about everything is like watching table-tennis matches on TiVo triple fast forward. FISA, public financing, and NAFTA have all been reversed in the last couple of weeks, and Obama’s not through yet. With the Heller decision on deck at the Supreme Court, his earlier comments on gun control have gone under the bus, too: “With the Supreme Court poised to rule on Washington, D.C.’s, gun ban, the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an ‘inartful’ statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional. ‘That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator’s consistent position,’ Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.” (READ MORE)
Lawhawk: Cease. Fire! - Despite the ongoing assault of rockets on Israel, the Israelis are continuing to live with the fiction that a ceasefire is in place. Misguided faith in a piece of paper doesn't simply describe it. A lack of imagination does. The Israelis appear to have run out of options for leadership, and those that remain do not present any alternatives to the ongoing Palestinian rocket war. They refuse to deal with the terrorists as anything other than a group that must be eliminated. They think that they can be bargained with and negotiate a deal that gives Israel peace. Israel may see peace for a bit, but it only means that the next round of fighting will be much worse. How many rockets have to slam into Israeli towns and cities before one realizes that the ceasefire is over? How many Israelis have to die before Israel's leaders take military action against Gaza and the terrorists there and in the West Bank who are busy plotting the next round of attacks? (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Make Heller the litmus test - Specifically, demand that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama pledge not to appoint a justice who will turn the clock back 32 years on the right to protect yourself with a handgun. Oh wait. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Public financing. NAFTA. FISA. Tony Rezko. His grandmother. His church of 20 years. Obama has so many things thrown under his bus that he can barely drive. Obama’s word is as worthless as Confederate money. Still, with the Supreme Court upholding the 2nd Amendment by 1 vote, now is not the time to trust a Democratic president to appoint a judge who upholds the Constitution as it is written. And having a Republican Senate avoids appointments such as David Souter. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: An Immodest Proposition, or the Last Prejudice - Today, Spain's parliament took a historic first step in righting a wrong that has persisted for decades. Nay, centuries. Nay, millennia. Nay, decamillennia. Nay, ever since the ancestors of homo sapiens (sapiens) first branched away from our hairy brothers and sisters, cruelly pushing them back into the primordial soup with all the generosity and altruism of Bill Clinton rifling the tin cup of a blind beggar. But yesterday, at long last, the Socialist government of Spain broke the fur ceiling, granting full legal rights of life and liberty to apes: “Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans. Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.” Presumably, this would include habeas corpus. (READ MORE)
Have an interesting post or know of a "must read?" Then send a trackback here and let us all know about it. Or you can send me an email with a link to the post and I'll update the Recon.
June 25, 2008
Wednesday Hero - SSgt. Jude Voss
This Weeks Hero Was Suggested by Mary Ann
Staff Sgt. Jude Voss
1st Battalion, 3d Special Forces Group (Airborne)
His courage illustrates a combat truth to these veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam: Soldiers aren’t thinking about glory or ideals in the midst of a battle. They fight for the men to the left and right of them.
And that's just what SSgt. Jude Voss did in September of 2006 when, without consideration to his safety, SSgt. Voss ran through enemy fire and the burning, smoking debris of a truck to rescue Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube. Sgt. Stube was in a bad way. Uniform burning and legs busted, but because of the actions of SSgt. Voss he is alive today.
Because of his actions that day, SSgt. Voss was nominated for and received the Silver Star Medal for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action. "I did what everybody out there would do" Voss said. "I was just the closest guy."
You can read SSgt. Voss's story here.
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Have Every Right To Dream Heroic Dreams. Those Who Say That We're In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don't Know Where To Look
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
1st Battalion, 3d Special Forces Group (Airborne)
His courage illustrates a combat truth to these veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam: Soldiers aren’t thinking about glory or ideals in the midst of a battle. They fight for the men to the left and right of them.
And that's just what SSgt. Jude Voss did in September of 2006 when, without consideration to his safety, SSgt. Voss ran through enemy fire and the burning, smoking debris of a truck to rescue Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube. Sgt. Stube was in a bad way. Uniform burning and legs busted, but because of the actions of SSgt. Voss he is alive today.
Because of his actions that day, SSgt. Voss was nominated for and received the Silver Star Medal for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action. "I did what everybody out there would do" Voss said. "I was just the closest guy."
You can read SSgt. Voss's story here.
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Have Every Right To Dream Heroic Dreams. Those Who Say That We're In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don't Know Where To Look
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.
Park Service Refuses to Say Who Broke the Circle
The planned Flight 93 memorial is described as a circle "broken in two places," with the unbroken part forming a giant Mecca-oriented crescent (originally called the Crescent of Embrace).
Since last week, the Park Service has been inundated with hundreds of emails, demanding to know WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle.
It can only be the terrorists. The circle is a symbol of peace, and only the terrorists can be charged with breaking the peace on 9/11.
Thus the planned memorial shows the terrorists breaking our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant Mecca oriented crescent (which remains completely intact in the so-called redesign). In other words, it's one giant: "ALLAHU AKBAR!" (heard on Flight 93's flight recorder as the doomed flight careened towards the ground).
Superintendent Hanley's reply
Our emailers are getting a lengthy response from Memorial Project Superintendent Joanne Hanley that fails to address the question of who broke the circle. She mentions the question, then heads off in another direction:
You also had questions about "who broke the circle." The natural topography of the site upon which the memorial sits is in the shape of a bowl, or a circle. This "circle of embrace" follows the geography, and points your attention down to the Sacred Ground, the crash site where the 40 heroes of Flight 93 gave their lives combating the terrorists. The trees surrounding this "circle of embrace" are missing, or broken, in two places; first, where the flight path of the plane came overhead (which is the location of the planned memorial overlook and visitor center) and second, where the plane crashed at the Sacred Ground (depicted by a ceremonial gate and pathway into the Sacred Ground).No, the topography is NOT a bowl. The upper arm of the crescent starts 100 vertical feet above the crash site while the lower arm circles 50 vertical feet below the crash site. Beyond misrepresenting the topography, all Hanley does is admit that the circle is broken at the point where the flight path crosses it, without ever addressing the simple question of WHO is being depicted as breaking the circle?
This circle-breaking theme is the Park Service's OWN explanation for the crescent design (passed on from architect Paul Murdoch), and they refuse to even THINK about what it means.
Park Service Director Mary Bomar is even more oblivious
Director Bomar also received our emails. The response she is sending out does not even acknowledge the question of who breaks the circle:
Thank you for your e mail of June 24, 2008, concerning the Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service (NPS) is aware of these concerns, and took steps in 2005 to investigate this issue. Please be assured that we are all committed to having a national memorial that conveys the full honor due to the heroes of Flight 93, not to the terrorists. Our priority now is to move forward with the building of the memorial, and to continue to commemorate those heroes who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.Actually it was in 2006 that the office of Mary Bomar herself (then a regional director of the Park Service)"took steps," utterly fraudulent steps, "to investigate this issue."
You may want to visit the park's website for more in-depth information at: www.nps.gov/flni.
Mary A. Bomar, Director, National Park Service
The Park Service's own consulting expert, a professor of Sharia law at Indiana University named Kevin Jaques, admitted that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent is similar to the Mecca-direction indicator (called a mihrab) around which every mosque is built, but he assured the Park Service that there was no need to worry because no one has ever seen a mihrab anywhere near this BIG before:
Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at [sic] the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.This is the information that Mary Bomar had in her hands TWO YEARS AGO: a blatantly dishonest excuse for not being concerned about what was admitted to be the geometric equivalent of the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built, only bigger than any ever seen before by a factor of a hundred. "Don't worry. It might be recognizable as a mihrab to people on jetliners like Flight 93 flying overhead, but from the ground? Pshaw!"
Every iota of the Mary Bomar's phony "investigation" was just as blatantly fraudulent. (Extended expose here.)
Daily American reporter decides to mark our emails as spam and block the senders
Hundreds of people emailing the Park Service demanding to know who broke the circle is NEWS. To pass this news on to the Pennsylvania press, several reporters and press outlets were cc'ed, in hopes that they would do their jobs and ask Park Service officials what answers they are giving.
When Daily American reporter Vicki Rock was asked by telephone if she was following up with the Park Service, she said:
... we pay no attention to mass emails like the people have been sending us. And I block them from emailing me again.As if the Daily American has EVER been the subject of any kind of email campaign before. These emails are NOT spam. They are from individual Americans, taking time out from their day to warn about an enemy plot that Vicki Rock should have exposed long ago.
It takes literally two minutes to fact-check the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent. (Just print out a graphic of the direction to Mecca from Somerset as calculated by Islam.com, place it over the crescent site-plan on your computer screen, and VOILA.) How come this reporter has never done it? And why is she treating news (that people are demanding a simple answer to a devastating question), as a hostile action against herself?
Same answer to both questions. She sees herself as a defender of the Memorial Project and the crescent design. Maintaining that defense requires willful blindness to voluminous evidence of terrorist memorializing intent. The press is as much involved in this behavior as Joanne Hanley and Mary Bomar and the other Project Partners. (Advisory Commission member Tim Baird said last year that ALL of the Project Partners know about the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent.)
Compared to this, seeing a reporter poke her own eyes out, trying to blind herself permanently to news about people confronting the Memorial Project, is hardly even strange.
Another letter?
We can keep on dumping emails on the Memorial Project if we want. Our petition to stop the memorial asks if signatories want to join an email list for doing things like forwarding emails to targeted individuals. Most are clicking "yes," and the present campaign has as yet only tapped the first few thousand signatories.
Perhaps it is time for another letter, pointing out that:
Misrepresenting the topography of the crash site to be a bowl does nothing to answer the question of WHO BROKE THE CIRCLE. (Press people can read about the non-answers from Superintendent Hanley and Director Bomar here.)Go ahead if you have a mind to. (Email link here.)
To join our blogbursts, just send your blog's url.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)