Vocal Minority

Disgrace: Sotomayor Took Sides in Drug Case, Blamed Society for the Crimes Committed by the Guilty

Obama wanted a nominee with “empathy”? Well, he’s got one all right.

Thank goodness for the internet. Otherwise we might not have known about yet another of many incidents bolstering the case against appointing Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor obliterated any suggestion that she is capable of acting as an impartial, non-political, restrained judge, when she chose to take sides in a case in which some Hispanic men (some of whom were not even American citizens) pleaded guilty of drug dealing and possession. When delivering the sentence, Sotomayor gave them the minimum sentences allowed by law, apologized that she was required to deliver a sentence at all, and then admitted to the guilty parties that it was the unfairness of American society that led to their predicament.

Light on this matter was shed by Ann Coulter in an article in Human Events … from 1997 [h/t Freeper “Extremely Extreme Extremist”]:

Human Events; 10/17/97, Vol. 53 Issue 39, p11, 2/3p, 1 bw

On July 1, 1992, Nelson Castellanos was arrested in New York City outside his apartment in Harlem and charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was holding the keys to his apartment and a white shopping bag containing about $10,000, mostly in $1 and $20 bills.

That evening, pursuant to a warrant, federal Drag Enforcement Agency (DEA) personnel searched his apartment and found over 1,200 grams of cocaine, six live rounds of ammunition, a .44 caliber revolver and incriminating notebooks. All this evidence was thrown out by District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor on the grounds that the DEA agents had not provided the magistrate with probable cause to search Castellanos’s apartment.

Sotomayor is now on the Clinton Administration’s fast track toward the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor ordered the evidence excluded in United States v. Castellanos because she claimed a DEA agent had exaggerated his reasons for supposing he would find drags in the apartment. On a few laughably minor points, Sotomayor found that the agent’s statements in the warrant request were contradicted by the (apparently) more reliable statements of a convicted criminal who had been operating undercover for the DEA.

The “troubling” and “disturbing” inconsistencies consisted of such points as: The informant said he had not identified one of Castellanos’s drug mules by name, the agent said he had; the informant said that, since turning informant, he had seen Castellanos only “going toward the door” of the apartment, but not—as the agent had claimed—that he had seen Castellanos place the keys in the keyhole of the apartment; and finally, the criminal/informant refused to pin down the date on which Castellanos approached the apartment during a particular drug buy.

Suppose the agent was wrong, even deliberately wrong, and the informant had not, for example, identified Castellanos’s mule by name.

The Supreme Court has explicitly held that, despite some errors, “if sufficient untainted evidence was presented in the warrant affidavit to establish probable cause, the warrant [i]s nevertheless valid.” There was surely sufficient “probable cause” to search Castellanos’s apartment, even if each of the informant’s claims are to be credited. Castellanos had, after all, just been arrested with about $10,000 in small bills outside the apartment where the beacon-of-truth informant had already admittedly bought drugs from Castellanos “on numerous occasions.” Willfully Pro-Criminal

Few people would have been surprised when a search of Castellanos’s apartment turned up a drug cache. Castellanos had been the focus of a lengthy DEA investigation first begun after anonymous letters arrived at the local police precinct alerting the police to Castellanos’s drug-dealing. One of Castellanos’s customers became a police informant and continued to buy drugs from Castellanos for more than six months. Some of these negotiations had been caught on audio and video tape by the DEA.

And, of course, drugs were found in Castellanos’s apartment. It is true that evidence must be excluded and criminals set free when cops actually lie about probable cause in search warrant applications, or fail to obtain a search warrant at all—even if the search produces criminal evidence.

But when the validity of the warrant turns on contradictory statements of the investigators, the fact that drugs were found in the searched apartment would seem to support the credibility of the guy who said there was probable cause that drugs would be found. To be crediting the claims of a criminal/informant after drugs were in fact found in the search, seems willfully pro-criminal.

Remarks made by Judge Sotomayor during the sentencing of various drug dealers do little to dispel that impression.

Judge Sotomayor said this to a noncitizen drug-dealer, who had just pleaded guilty to drug-dealing: “[I]t is in some respects a great tragedy for our country that instead of permitting you to serve a lesser sentence and rejoin your family at an earlier time I am required by law to give you the statutory minimum. ... [W]e all understand that you were in part a victim of the economic necessities of our society, unfortunately there are laws that I must impose.”

In sentencing Louis Gomez, who also pleaded guilty to dealing cocaine, Sotomayor said, “Louis Gomez, yours is the tragedy of our laws and the greatest one that I know. ... the one our Congressmen never thought about and don’t think about. ...

“It is no comfort to you for me to say that I am deeply, personally sorry about the sentence that I must impose, because the law requires me to do so. The only statement I can make is this is one more example of an abomination being committed before our sight. You do not deserve this, sir.”

Sotomayor is now awaiting confirmation to the federal Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. President Clinton and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) last week succeeded in pressuring Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) to move her hearing up a week, leaving ambushed Republican senators on the committee flailing about with little ammunition. It is assumed her next nomination will be to the Supreme Court—since she “looks like America.”

A few more Senate confirmations of judges like Sonia Sotomayor and America will look like the inside of a Mexican prison.

If Ann’s premonitions are correct, and Sotomayor gets appointed, then I can’t wait for the party to get started!

Adding Insult to Injury: Sharpton, Rangel, et al. Turn Cop-on-Cop Shooting Into Racial Incident

I was naturally saddened when on Friday morning the local NYC news stations reported about a NYPD officer, Andrew Dutton, mistakenly shooting another plain-clothed officer, 25-year-old Omar Edwards. The investigation seemed straightforward: Edwards, who had just gotten off-duty, was in pursuit of a thug whom he had caught trying to break into his car. Dutton, not knowing Edwards was a cop, saw him turn around with gun in hand, and he shot him. Edwards evidently did not have the chance to identify himself as a police officer.

But this story does not satisfy Al Sharpton and other black “leaders” in the NY area. Because Dutton, the shooter, was white and Edwards, the unfortunate victim, was black.

And so the race-baiting begins. Sharpton leads a march and accuses the investigation of being racially biased. The detestable tax-cheating demagogue Charlie Rangel wonders why he never hears of a white cop “accidentally” shooting other white cops. Here’s what Newsday (Long Island) reports:

Sharpton, marchers seek ‘unbiased’ probe of shooting
BY KEITH HERBERT | May 30, 2009

Drawing attention to his call for state and federal officials to investigate the fatal shooting of a black plainclothes off-duty New York City police officer by a white officer, the Rev. Al Sharpton Saturday led marchers through Harlem to the spot where the officer was killed.

Sharpton marched to 125th Street and Second Avenue with scores of people to highlight his plea for Gov. David A. Paterson or U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to intervene and investigate the shooting of Officer Omar Edwards.

Edwards, 25, was killed Thursday night in East Harlem by another officer who didn't know that Edwards was a fellow officer who, with his gun drawn, was pursuing a suspect who had broken into Edwards' car.

Andrew Dunton, 30, of Ridge, fired six shots, hitting Edwards three times, in the left arm, side and back, police said. Dunton is a four-year veteran of the force.

At the spot where Edwards was shot, Sharpton and the marchers held a one-minute vigil of silent prayer. Then Sharpton said he and his group were praying "for the right to grow up in our community and be law enforcement without fear."

"We need an impartial and unbiased investigation," Sharpton said later.

At a park dedication in Harlem Saturday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed confidence in the Manhattan district attorney.

"As with all these things, he will do an investigation, and if the federal government wants to do something that's up to them, but I think [District Attorney] Bob Morgenthau has shown over many decades that he is independent and will do a thorough and competent investigation."

Before the march, Sharpton shared the stage at the headquarters of his National Action Network, a civil-rights group, with city politicians, including Rep. Charles Rangel and City Council members John Liu, Charles Baron and Bill de Blasio.

Sharpton drew a connection between Edwards' killing and other shootings of plainclothes black and Latino officers by other officers, calling the shootings "a pattern."

Rangel said that, in his 79 years, he'd never heard of a white officer shooting another white officer.

"If we have a problem, let's face up to the problem and let's have outside help so we can tell this family that this will never happen again," Rangel said.

Along 125th Street, across from Harlem Hospital, Charles Moody, 70, of Harlem, called Edwards' killing "another situation of racial profiling and police overreacting to black men."

Saturday, Charles Billups of the Guardians Association, a fraternal organization of black police officers, was skeptical of the city Police Department's ability of investigate the killing.

"The fix is in," Billups said. "Who's going to stand for Omar?"

The New York Post has an editorial responding to Charlie Rangel supposedly warning President Obama, who was in Manhattan this weekend, to "watch his back" if he comes to Harlem. Keep it classy, Charlie.

As my wife said when she heard about this Sharpton story: Don’t they think Dutton feels bad enough already?

Such is the state of race relations in Obama’s post-racial America …

Do I Want Obama to Fail? Now More Than Ever!

If this is what Barack Obama views as success, I’d hate to see his failure.

Wait a minute … Could it be that Obama is deliberately seeing to America’s failure?

After being in Las Vegas where he was raising campaign funds for the already-kneedeep-in-bucks Harry Reid, President Golden Calf headed to Hollywood, California. At the Beverly Hills Hilton he told a crowd of fawning and swooning celebrities:

When you look at the economy right now, I think it’s safe to say that we have stepped back from the brink, that there is some calm that didn't exist before.

To the orgasmic crowd, Obama added:

Take heart of the change we’ve already brought but I want you to know, Los Angeles, you ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re going to deal with these issues. We are going to bring back a better America.

Anyone with a functioning brain should consider the first statement utterly laughable, the second utterly bone-chilling.

It took none other than El Rushbo to report on the real state of the economy. (No, libs, he wasn’t “making up” anything; he cites actual news reports from around the country. So nice try.). Here he is on yesterday’s (5/28) show:

… How can the economy said to be back from the brink, folks, when the market tanked 200 points yesterday? And how about these two stories, back-to-back, after the president says the economy is back from the brink?

“One of eight US households with a mortgage ended the first quarter late on loan payments or in the foreclosure process in a crisis that will persist for at least another year until unemployment peaks, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday. US unemployment in April reached its highest rate in more than a quarter century and is still rising, helping propel mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures to record highs.”

The economy is back from the brink? […]

“A record 12% of homeowners with a mortgage are behind on their payments or in foreclosure as the housing crisis spreads to borrowers with good credit. And the wave of foreclosures isn’t expected to crest until the end of next year,” the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. “The foreclosure rate on prime fixed-rate loans doubled in the last year, and now represents the largest share of new foreclosures. Nearly 6% of fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers with good credit were in the foreclosure process. At the same time, almost half of all adjustable-rate loans made to borrowers with shaky credit were past due or in foreclosure. The worst of the trouble continues to be centered in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, which accounted for 46 percent of new foreclosures in the country. There were no signs of improvement.”

Whoa, whoa no, no, no, no, because the president told rich Hollywood donors last night that the economy is back from the brink, and that we ain’t seen nothing yet. […]

“President Barack Obama’s recent loan modification and refinancing plan might stem some foreclosures, but not enough to significantly alter the crisis,”

says AP. President Obama’s recent loan modification and refinancing plan—there’s a website that you can go and you can apply, maybe have your mortgage taken care of and not get foreclosed. It isn’t working.

The automobile bailouts did not work.
The bailout of the banks has not worked.
The bailout of the mortgage industry has not worked.
Stemming foreclosures has not worked.

The economy is not back from the brink. None of it has worked. All of the political fixes have not worked. The sad reality is that when they don’t work, it is good news for President Obama. It’s more chaos. It is the need, he thinks, that people will have for even more government intervention and more tax increases and an ever growing government to fix the problems. He feeds off the crisis. He feeds off the chaos. At the same time he mysteriously gets accolades and credit for trying to fix the problem. …

Can we all agree the economy is not back from the brink? Can we all agree the economy is getting worse? Unemployment in April, a 25-year high.

… [SF Chronicle] running a story here on the good things happening as a result of the economic downturn. And you know what one of them is? With fewer people working, it means there are fewer people on the roads, fewer people going to work, which means there’s less traffic. Shazam! A smaller carbon footprint and easier commutes. So we’re supposed to be happy that how many millions of our fellow citizens are out of work collecting unemployment, not on the roads, not creating traffic jams.

But the economy is back from the brink, President Obama told Hollywood lefties last night.

Well, the Hollywood economy is not doing that great, gangbusters, either. There are very few sectors out there doing well. The EIB Network is doing well, but there aren’t that many sectors. There’s no GDP growth. GDP is negative growth and hasn’t turned around. Back from the brink? This is just more smoke and mirrors. He says it, must be true, he’s The Messiah. Facts on the ground say otherwise.

So there’s Barack Obama. He’s in Los Angeles, which is in one state. It’s in California, a state that is what? Tanking! A state that is falling apart; a state that may need to be bailed out; a state that is near bankrupt and he’s telling people in that state they ain’t seen nothing yet? If I’m in that state, I head for Idaho or somewhere. I’d be running for the hills. I’d have all my cash and I’d grab my gun and I would get out of there.

They ain’t seen nothing yet?

Here’s that story I was referring to earlier. It’s in USA Today:

“States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government’s first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe. Nationwide, federal agencies have awarded nearly $4 billion in contracts to help jump-start the economy since President Obama signed the massive stimulus package in February. But, with few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA Today review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System. In Michigan, for example—where years of economic tumult and a collapsing domestic auto industry have produced the nation’s worst unemployment rate—federal agencies have spent about $2 million on stimulus contracts, or 21 cents per person. In Oregon, where unemployment is almost as high, they have spent $2.12 per capita, far less than the nationwide average of nearly $13.”

But the economy is coming back from the brink!

The stimulus bill, by USA Today’s own measurement, isn’t working. In fact, it may be hurting. We get nothing but lies from this administration. We get nothing but empty promises that sound wonderful but are empty. […]

[F]rom the Sacramento Bee:

“The steady increase of mentally ill residents in California—” where they ain’t seen nothing yet, “—combined with Sacramento County’s budget woes forced the county’s main psychiatric hospital late Friday to close its doors to new patients … The doors remained closed through Tuesday—and might stay closed for several more days, officials said, until its caseload falls. Officials said the scene could repeat itself throughout the year as local and state funding continue their decline. The situation, officials and advocates say, suggests the state is at the brink of a mental health catastrophe.”

Yeah, I’d say so!

But they ain’t seen nothing yet, Barack Obama [said] last night in Hollywood.

Soon after this monologue, an angered but hardly surprised Rush concludes: With socialism you eventually run out of other people’s money.

This is why Rush calls himself “America’s real anchorman.”

Like some other pundits, I am thorough convinced that Barack Obama’s goal is to make this country crash miserably, so that millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and lost their homes and lost their investments will have no choice but to come to Nanny government (a.k.a. President Hope&Change himself) to take care of them.

That’s how you create a nation of dependent little socialists who will vote Democrat ‘til the day they die.

If Barack Obama succeeds, the country fails. That was Rush Limbaugh’s message during that whole “I hope Obama fails” non-scandal scandal.

Do I want Barack Obama to fail? Now more than ever!

Andy Roman at the Roman Around blog agrees, reprinting a January post that pretty much sums it up pretty well:

1. If President Barack Obama is resolute on reversing Bush administration measures that have served to keep this country safe from attack for over seven years, I want him to fail.

2. If the President believes that enemy combatants captured on the field of battle are due the same Constitutional rights as American citizens, I want him to fail.

3. If the President believes that “direct diplomacy” with despotic leaders of murderous regimes is the best way to keep America strong, I want him to fail.

4. If the President is willing to trod upon one of the fundamental rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence – namely, the right to life – with his illimitable support of abortion, I want him to fail.

5. If the President believes that taxpayer dollars should be used to fund abortions, I want him to fail.

6. If the President wishes to use taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research, I want him to fail.

7. If the President wishes to appoint judges to the Supreme Court who view the Constitution as a document that breathes and bends with time, I want him to fail.

8. If the President wants to infringe on my Constitutional right as a law abiding American to own a firearm, I want him to fail.

9. If the President believes that government is better equipped to solve the problems of Americans than Americans themselves, I want him to fail.

10. If the President attempts to follow through on his campaign promise to fundamentally transform the United States of America, I want him to fail.

11. If the President wishes to send me a check that I didn’t earn, paid for with other people’s hard-earned tax money, and call it a tax cut, I want him to fail.

12. If the President wishes to send a so-called stimulus check to those who did not pay federal income taxes, I want him to fail.

13. If the President believes that government bailouts of private sector businesses are the way to tend to an ailing economy, I want him to fail.

14. If the President believes that the government should set pay limits on executives of companies who receive bailout money, I want him to fail.

15. If the President believes that government spending of unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money is the way to deliver the economy from recession, I want him to fail.

16. If the President believes that the planet is in danger of catostrophic ruin due to man-made global warming, and is willing to implement so-called “green” policies that will damage this country’s economy, I want him to fail.

17. If the President wishes to undertake an unparalleled “domestic infrastructure” plan that puts untrained non-professionals on the government’s payroll with the belief that this will stimulate the economy, I want him to fail.

18. If the President believes that people who fall into the highest tax brackets in this country need to pay more taxes, I want him to fail.

19. If the President believes that the military of the United States is a venue for social engineering – such as lifting the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy – I want him to fail.

20. If the President believes that healthcare is not only a right but a moral obligation of government, I want him to fail.

21. If the President believes that it is a good idea to attack those who listen to conservative talk radio as a means of fostering unity, I want him to fail.

22. If the President supports a reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, effectively ending talk radio as we know it, I want him to fail.

23. If the President is unwilling to boldly deal with illegal immigration into the United States, and chooses to try and come up with something “comprehensive” to solve the problem, I want him to fail.

24. If the President is unwilling to take a serious look at nuclear energy as a viable and safe alternative source of energy, while wasting time focusing on wind turbines and solar paneling, I want him to fail.

25. If the President decides that he will continue his class-warfare style assault on big corporations – such as oil and pharmaceutical companies – as he did during his campaign by punishing them with higher tax rates, I want him to fail.

Not because he is black. Not because he is a liberal. Not because I seek some sort of vengance on the deranged, lunatic Bush-bashers of the past eight years.

I want him to fail because each and every one of these policies hurts my country.

Period.

Brilliant. Pass it along. Or we will end up suffering the consequences.

Diversity Lane (5/29/09): Achieving Racial Parody

The latest from Zack R. at the irrestistable Diversity Lane:

Conservative Minorities Weigh in on Sotomayor

You probably wouldn’t know it from the sycophantic Obamedia, but guess what? Not all minorities are jived about President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. They’re actually not star stuck by the “historic” nomination of this Hispanic woman. (just as, not surprisingly, they weren’t so taken by the “historic” candidacy of Barack Obama). Some actually see Sonia Sotomayor for exactly who she is: A leftist activist judge who was appointed by a leftist president hell-bent on using her to achieve in the Supreme Court whatever he can’t from his throne in the Oval Office.

Alicia Colon of the Alicia Unleashed blog has a column in the NY Sun (which is apparently back???), in which she writes:

Right now, many conservative pundits are focusing remarks she is on record as having made, in 2001, at a speech at Berkeley, California, where she said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” I’m not surprised that her Berkeley audience and many in the world of liberal academia would applaud Judge Sotomayor’s statement. It signifies their core beliefs.

I do believe, however, that there are clues as to why the judge has elected to embrace the liberal side of the bench. In an earlier speech she said, “I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit.” She said added that despite her accomplishments, “I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.”

It happens that I too have always felt a disconnect from the world of the high and mighty whenever I’ve been invited to attend fancy functions. I can imagine that it must have been difficult for a girl coming from humble beginnings in the Bronx to compete in the realm of the Ivy League. How much easier it must have been to accede to majority rule rather than to assert any conservative principles taught in a Catholic school.

What I am wondering is whether, once she gets to the Supreme Court, she will be truly liberated from all of that. Certainly her record includes statements that are far more important and even encouraging. "I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance,” she said a decade ago in her Senate confirmation hearing. “It says what it says. We should do honor to it.”

What more could we ask from a Supreme Court justice than total respect for the Constitution? If the question of abortion arises during the confirmation hearings, it will be interesting to hear how Judge Sotomayor addresses this issue. Is she a Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas Catholic or a Pelosi, Kerrey, Biden, Kennedy Catholic? And does it matter? Even the pro-life members of the bench believe their job is not to impose religious law but to interpret the Constitution.

But does the Constitution really prohibit the Congress or the state legislatures from regulating abortion? Does it really outlaw the Congress from weighing, when it considers abortion, the views of, say, Joseph Francis Cardinal Spellman, after whom the school Judge Sotomayor attended was named? If she has “never forgotten where she began,” as President Obama suggested, will those who educated her and embraced pro-life principles be recipients of, at least, her empathy? […]

Next, Neocon Latina asks a very pointed question:

Who Is Worse: Sotomayor or Imus?

Remember when Don Imus referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”? A crass comment, to be sure. But Imus was a “shock jock.” Making crass remarks was his job. And it wasn’t a comment Imus had prepared in advance—it was an off-the-cuff attempt at humor. The very same kind of “shock” humor Imus had practiced for decades.

But uttering those infamous words proved to be the downfall of Don Imus. The outrage was universal. Although he was almost immediately suspended from his job, that wasn’t enough. They wanted his head. Nothing short of an outright firing would satisfy the morally-outraged, “anti-racist” crowd. Obama himself called for Imus to be fired. Obama explained:

He didn’t just cross the line. He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women—who I hope will be athletes—that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment.

And so Imus was fired. His career was taken from him, he was publicly humiliated, and now he’s got cancer, which he claims was caused by the stress of his public ordeal.

By comparison, Judge Sotomayor seems to be getting a pass for her racist comment that Hispanic female judges are inherently “better” than white male judges. In Sotomayor’s words, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

There is simply no excusing that remark. And there was nothing off-the-cuff about it. Sotomayor delivered that line during a prepared speech at University of California, Berkeley. So she can’t claim it was a slip of the tongue. What’s more, as the New York Times has shown, Sotomayor’s remark was part of larger pattern of remarks, which demonstrate not only that she entertains anti-white, anti-male, pro-Hispanic bigotry, but also that Sotomayor believes that it is actually desirable for her biases to affect the way she decides cases.

Condemnation from Obama? Are you kidding—he nominated her for the Supreme Court.

And so I ask you, dear reader, who is worse: Sotomayor or Imus? Sotomayor appears to be a bigot, and appears to believe it is desirable for her bigotry to influence the way she decides cases. Impartiality is the most important quality for a judge. Not only is Sotomayor not impartial, but her impartiality stems from racism and sexism. Yet, she is qualified to be on the Supreme Court?

But Don “nappy-headed hos” Imus? Off with his head!

Sounds like a reasonable question to me. (Also read this provocative post, where Neocon Latina argues Sotomayor would be a “Civil Rights Set-back for Latinas.”)

Finally, Duane at Black Informant has this to say:

Judges should FOLLOW policy, not create their own. Plain and simple.

“All of the legal defense funds out there– they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life…”

If a judge is following the law, how can he or she reach a “better conclusion”?

So once again we see how King’s words conveniently get ignored by the left in times like this.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

But they were suddenly “remembered” back in 2003 when Bush nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Miguel Estrada was struck down by Democrats. Something I wrote some time ago on the argument that race guarantees a different result.

Past window dressing experiments~

Schools

We need more Blacks on the school board. Forget that. We need a Black school principal. Forget that. The school superintendent needs to be Black. Forget that. We need more Black teachers. Forget that. We need more Black male school teachers.

Did any of this drastically improve grades? Nope.

Police

We need more Black officers. Forget that. We need more Black police officers and the Chief must be Black.

Did crime go down because now supposedly Black citizens can only relate to Black officers, otherwise we act the fool? Nope.

Where race should not be the issue, the left is making it the issue. If you do not go along with the program, you will will be branded as a “racist”. Sotomayor is a “liberal”. In fact, if I wanted to add drama to her own admission, she would be classified as a “FAR left” individual.

President Obama campaigned as one who was a “moderate”. Yet I wonder how many moderates will complain about him moving too far to the left with this pick. Or will they continue to engage in public self-flagellation over how their party isn’t cool enough?

As I said a while back, “This is starting to remind me a lot of the Justice League back in the day when they added Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, and Samurai to show that the League was culturally-diverse.” Once we as kids realized that they were just as vulnerable as the other members of the Justice League, we quickly lost interest and moved on. Now that we are grown, we are still expecting different results from the same game.

I know what you’re thinking about these apostates, libs/Dems: Uncle Toms, right? Traitors to their race/ethnicity?

Here we call them rational free thinkers. Stop drinking the liberal Kool-Aid, and maybe someday you’ll be one too.

Follow-Up on the NY Times' Suppression of the Synogogue Bomb Plotters' Muslim Faith

Last Friday I posted about the four men arrested by the FBI for plotting the bombing of Bronx synogugues, and how the mainstream media was burying way at the bottom of their articles the highly relevant fact that they were of the Muslim faith. I also suggested that if the story were about a Christian plotting to bomb abortion clinics, the perpetrator’s faith would be in the first paragraph, if not in the headline itself.

This prompted a reader “Dave B” from the U.K. to comment thus:

Here is what the headline is when a christian extremist tries to blow up an abortion clinic.

"Man Arrested in Abortion Clinic Bomb Plot"

You wouldn't even know he was a christian until the 17th paragraph where they say:

"Jordi is "overzealous about the Lord," but not a violent person, Ward said."

That's the only clue he is a christian.

This news story NEVER made it to CNN (search for his name on their site, I dare you.) and only the resulting trial can be found mentioned searching on Fox News where his religious affiliation is not even hinted at, least of all mentioned.

So, run that buy me again... why is it so bad that the religious affiliation of these nutcases trying to bomb synagogues was only mentioned half way into the article?

It's just this bloggers assertion that if christians tried to bomb abortion clinics it would be all over the headline is totally false as demonstrated by the fact it HAS happened and it was NOT reported like that.

Now, I can’t vouch for Red Orbit or CNN, but in February, 2004, when this anti-abortion activist Jordi pleaded guilty to the bomb plot, Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service (used by the Miami Herald among others) wrote this:

(Publication: The Miami Herald (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service)

Publication Date: 13-FEB-04

A former Army Ranger inspired by antiabortion activists pleaded guilty Friday to devising a plot to blow up abortion clinics and gay bars nationwide.

Stephen John Jordi, an evangelical Christian from Coconut Creek, Fla., with a flaming cross tattooed on his right forearm, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted firebombing.

The plea marks the first time Jordi, 35, has admitted that he was making plans to abandon his family and pursue a terror campaign that would promote his fundamentalist beliefs.

That's the second paragraph.

So let me clarify: Even though I never said all mainstream media outlets would advertise a Christian anti-abortionist’s faith at the top, it is apparent from this Jordi example that some have, and others have not.

Let's not distract ourselves from the real issue, though: As long as the plotters of a bombing or other heinous act are Muslim, the MSM continues not to call attention to it.

In fact, there’s another strategy the NY Times has utilized, which is to note when plotters are Muslim, but only to suggest that their faith was not a factor. That is exactly what we see in the NY Times just two days ago. Clay Waters at TimesWatch writes:

Times Still Denying the Obvious About Bronx Synagogue Bomb Plot

“The authorities have made no overt claim that the four suspects -- James Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams IV and Laguerre Payen -- hatched a plot in jail or that their experiences behind bars led to their alleged acts. In fact, it is uncertain just how much of a role their faith played in their motivation.”

In the aftermath of a foiled plot by four prison converts to radical Islam to blow up two Bronx synagogues, roving reporter Daniel Wakin filed a politically correct story on whether or not Islam radicalizes inmates. Wakin tread very lightly over the issue in Sunday’s “Imams Reject Talk That Islam Radicalizes Inmates.” There’s another denial of the obvious:

The authorities have made no overt claim that the four suspects --James Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams IV and Laguerre Payen -- hatched a plot in jail or that their experiences behind bars led to their alleged acts. In fact, it is uncertain just how much of a role their faith played in their motivation.

What is clear is that the men were all initially described by the authorities and some family members as Muslim, and all had served time in prison. In the case of Mr. Cromitie, he even served time at the Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, N.Y. -- the very prison where Mr. Muhammad works. He also was said to have occasionally attended the mosque in Newburgh, where Mr. Muhammad serves as imam.

That weasel-wording sounds a lot like what Metro reporter Alan Feuer said about the plot against Fort Dix, New Jersey in May 2007 by a group of six radical Muslims:

“It is unclear what role, if any, religion played in the attack Mr. Shnewer and the five other men are charged with planning.”

In fact, on the very day I did my initial post (Friday the 22nd), NY Times writer Michael Wilson expressed a logic-defying uncertainty whether the perpetrators were Muslim to begin with. This despite the fact that the article itself had them shouting “Allahu Akbar” and one of them recently starting to grow a beard and read the Koran.

The Times also denied a religious connection in its Friday front-page story on the Bronx synagogue plot:

“Law enforcement officials initially said the four men were Muslims, but their religious backgrounds remained uncertain Thursday.”

How effing stupid do these politically correct Times writers think we are? Apparently, very.

It's Getting Hot in Here ...

Via Drudge:

Climate conference sex boom
Copenhagen’s sex trade did brisk business during the recent business climate conference.

Diversity Lane (5/27/09): Par for the Course

The latest from Zack R. at the impressive Diversity Lane:

Sotomayor, the White House, and the Media: Let the Identity Politics Game Begin

This evening the following posts appear at the top of the Real Clear Politics blog:

May 26th, 2009
Predictably Regrettable
Posted by Tom Bevan

Mike Memoli reports that at today’s briefing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called early criticism of Sonia Sotomayor “regrettably predictable.” Is Gibbs implying that any criticism of President Obama’s nominee is “regrettable,” or only that which occurs during some unspecified period following the announcement?

And would Gibbs therefore characterize then Senator Obama’s criticisms of Justices Alito and Roberts—both of whom voted against in the end—as “regrettably predictable” as well?

Excellent question, Mr. Bevan. Unfortunately the mainstream media is not going to ponder it. Gibbs has no plans to address conservative/Republican criticism of Sotomayor based on her record. According to him, there’s no reason to: Gibbs is clearly implying that any opposition from the right will be based on Sotomayor’s gender and, more importantly, ethnicity.

And Gibbs is not alone. Now consider this charge against Republicans:

May 26th, 2009
GOP Race Gauntlet on Sotomayor
Posted by David Paul Kuhn

At the top of the 3 p.m. hour came a hint for Republicans of the race gauntlet ahead.

On MSNBC, Nora O'Donnell led the hour with the news “breaking now” of “surprising reaction” that “some on the right are already critical of the woman that would be the nation's first Hispanic American on the high court.”

These are the subtle media comments that infuriate conservatives. Conservative opposition to Sonia Sotomayor is framed not as a dispute over policy and worldviews—liberal vs. conservative legal disputes—but opposition to her as a Latina.

Oh really, Mr. Kuhn? SC Justice Clarence Thomas and former AG Alberto Gonzales must not have gotten the memo. 

In case you didn’t get that charge of racism against Republicans loud and clear, Kuhn’s post appeared right over this one:

May 26th, 2009
Sotomayor's More Universal Identity Politics
Posted by David Paul Kuhn

Much will be said today about the optics of Sonia Sotomayor. Drudge gets to the point with the large headline: OBAMA PICKS LATINA. …

First of all, Mr. Kuhn, Hispanic is not a race. Second of all, I challenge you to cite a single example of a conservative opposing Sotomayer over her ethnicity. You won’t be able to find one. Just like you wouldn’t find an example of conservative opposition to Obama’s presidency because of his race (no matter what the fact-allergic Jeneane Garofalo says).

On the contrary, Mr. Kuhn, it is you and your ilk who are the racists (or whatever you’d like to call it). You approve of Sotomayer specifically because she is a Latina.

The problem, which people like David Paul Kuhn are actually quite aware, is all the right-wing arguments to oppose Sonia Sotomayor are reasoned, principled, and valid. Which is why the Left in Washington and the media have to make it all about identity politics. 

What’s regrettably predictable is that the mainstream media will not focus on Ms. Sotomayor’s record, such as when she threw out a discrimination case in which the plaintiffs were white firefighters who didn’t get promoted even though they passed the required tests, while black applicants who failed the tests were promoted.

What’s regrettably predictable is that they will not focus on Ms. Sotomayor’s statements, such as “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”—a statement which Rush Limbaugh correctly describes as racist— and “[The] court of appeals is where policy is made”

What’s regrettably predictable is that they will not focus on Ms. Sotomayor’s alliances. As Matthew Vadum at the American Spectator informs us, Sotomayor served on the board of a George Soros-funded LatinoJustice PRLDEF:

Along with groups such as the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), LatinoJustice fought a war of attrition against President George W. Bush’s 2001 nomination of conservative Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born immigrant, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Democrats in the Senate filibustered the nomination and a weary Estrada withdrew from consideration in 2003.

Hmm. How does that fit into Kuhn’s bizarro conservatives-are-racists universe?

So, the media will focus on “regrettably predictable” criticism from the right. That will put the Republicans—those who will fight the appointment at least—on the defensive. Out of fear and political correctness, no serious opposition to Sotomayor will be built. The entire debate about appointing Sotomayor to the Supreme Court will have nothing to do with her judicial restraint, or her views on how personal background and policy preferences affect what should be impartial Constitution-based opinions. It will be about her gender and ethnicity. Period. 

Just as the Obama and the media planned.

Becuae the goal of all this caterwauling about right-wing criticism is simple: Just as they helped Barack Obama get elected President of the United States, they will ultimately help Sonia Sotomayor get appointed. Thus, we will have another liberal activist judge initially nominated by a Republican president (thanks, George H.W. Bush) ascend to the highest court of the land.

Welcome to the future, suckers.

Other blogs on the issue: The Provocateur, Black Informant, Bookworm Room, Don Surber.

Sexual Orientation vs. Same Religion: A Question for Parents

Apparently, Lindsey Lohan is a lesbian. I did not know this and my wife is addicted to celebrity news mags!

Anyway, I was just catching up on my El Rushbo podcasts from last week and was amused by an article he read about Lindsey Lohan: 

“ ‘Lindsay Lohan to Marry Samantha Ronson and Convert to Judaism.’ 

If reports are to be believed, Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan is planning to get married to on/off girlfriend Samantha Ronson.

Lohan and Ronson had parted ways after a hotel bust up in March, however, sources claim that the couple is back together and Lohan has even proposed. The Mean Girls star is also said to be considering converting to Judaism to marry her lesbian lover. According to the National Enquirer, wedding talk angered Ronson’s Jewish family - so Catholic Lohan has offered to convert. ‘Lindsay says Sam’s promised she’ll persuade her family to accept this, and they won’t wait to see if California changes their gay marriage legislation, but will travel to one of the states where it is legal to say their I do’s.’”

Rush’s astute take to the article was this:

Okay, here’s what gets me about it. Run through this again. Lindsay Lohan has a lesbian lover, Samantha Ronson, has proposed, going to get married. Fine, nobody has a problem with that, zip, zero, nada. Oh, yeah, cool, let’s do it! Let’s find a state where it’s legal. 

The thorn in this is that Lohan’s a Catholic! And they want a religious ceremony? Well, I don’t even know if that’s the case. The thorn in this whole story for the parents is, “Oh, sure, my daughter’s going to marry a woman. Yay, let’s have a party! Wait, she’s Catholic? Nuh-uh, I ain’t going for that! You mean you couldn’t find a nice Jewish girl?”

I completely understand Rush’s surprised response to this. I actually have once asked the parents (not terribly political, but probably center-left) of a single adult female which life partner they would prefer their daughter be with: a non-Jewish male or a gay Jewish female. After a few seconds, they both chose the Jewish lesbian.

I recall another example of this “I don’t care who you marry, as long as they’re Jewish!” phenomenon, albeit fictional. It comes from an early episode of the 80’s sitcom “Too Close for Comfort” (I have the first two seasons on DVD and I’m not ashamed to say it!). A homeless person arrives at the main characters’ house (the Rush’s) looking for their downstairs neighbor, whom he visits only once a year to share Thanksgiving dinner. Viewers of the show know that the downstairs neighbor (Rafkin) was a transvestite and is now deceased. Henry Rush (played by the late, talented Ted Knight) informs the homeless person of Rafkin’s death but doesn’t want to make matters worse by telling him his friend was not really a woman. Finally, at the end of the episode, Henry lets the cat out of the bag that Rafkin was a transvestite. The homeless person responds, “That’s it? Oy, thanks God. For a minute there I thought you were gonna tell me she wasn’t Jewish!”

So, if you’re a parent, what would be more preferable to you, if your child were dating someone of the opposite sex but a different religion, or someone of the same sex but the same religion?

Environmentalism 101: Save the Planet. Kill the People

The environmentalist movement has been really busy this past week. Helps when you have friends in the U.N., as well as in the White House.

First, back in February I wrote about how a decades-long ban on DDT resulted in millions of otherwise preventable malaria deaths in the Third World. A reader subsequently corrected me, explaining that the World Health Organization lifted the ban in 2006. This has, unsurprising to no one, significantly reduced the number of worldwide malaria deaths.

Well, dear reader, so much for that. The environmentalist movement has now forced the WHO’s hand to reenact the ban, as the WSJ reported this past week:

Malaria, Politics and DDT
The U.N. bows to the anti-insecticide lobby.

In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world’s poor will suffer as a result.

The U.N. now plans to advocate for drastic reductions in the use of DDT, which kills or repels the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The aim “is to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner,” said WHO and the U.N. Environment Program in a statement on May 6. […]

WHO is not saying that DDT shouldn’t be used. But by revoking its stamp of approval, it sends a clear message to donors and afflicted countries that it prefers more politically correct interventions, even if they don’t work as well. In recent years, countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia have started or expanded DDT spraying, often with the help of outside aid groups. But these governments are also eager to remain in the U.N.’s good graces, and donors typically are less interested in funding interventions that WHO discourages.

“Sadly, WHO’s about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists,” says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. “Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don’t benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes.”

It’s no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There’s no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health. But that didn’t stop green groups like the Pesticide Action Network from urging the public to celebrate World Malaria Day last month by telling “the U.S. to protect children and families from malaria without spraying pesticides like DDT inside people’s homes.”

“We must take a position based on the science and the data,” said WHO’s malaria chief, Arata Kochi, in 2006. “One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.” Mr. Kochi was right then, even if other WHO officials are now bowing to pressure to pretend otherwise.

Disgusting, Now, it’s easy for those of us in America to mentally sweep these deaths under the rug. It’s happening way on the other side of world, after all.

Not to worry. Here’s an environmentalist tragedy that has hit home for over 30 years, and is about to hit even harder, if President Obama gets his way.

What am I referring to? An imposition of unreasonable and unsafe fuel economy standards on American cars. Fuel economy isn’t a bad thing, right? Of course not, but it depends how you achieve it. And that’s the problem: Due to the CAFÉ standards that have been around since the mid-1970’s, car companies have been manufacturing lighter, and therefore less safe, cars. The result of this has been determined to be an upwards of 50,000 preventable traffic accident deaths.

So what does President Obama want to do? Enforce stricter CAFÉ standards!

Kneale: New CAFE Menu Will Give Detroit Heart Attack
By: Dennis Kneale, CNBC Media & Technology Editor | 20 May 2009

… The White House’s new and tougher gas-mileage rules force a 42 percent increase in new cars’ miles-per-gallon, and a 30 percent rise for trucks, by 2016. All to curb gasoline usage by 1.6 percent—by the year 2020.

Will someone please tell me what the hell we’re thinking here?

This amounts to one of the most severe and sweeping enviro-reforms ever mounted by government. And look Ma—no hands in Congress had to lift a finger to vote. This is all bureaucracy, baby, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Obama said yesterday that the new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) rules would fuel Detroit on a (dubious) crusade to develop and sell greener cars. (Ahem, at a time of still-cheap gasoline.) […]

So let me point out some fatal flaws in this green decree:

It will result in Americans driving more not less. When we get better mileage, we drive more than usual, negating much of the savings, says Penn State’s Andrew N. Kleit, who has written widely on the topic.

The key to better mileage is lighter-weight cars—in which people die more often in traffic accidents. Since CAFÉ passed in 1975, smaller cars have killed almost 50,000 more people than otherwise would have died on the roads, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported in 2002. CAFE kills up to 3,900 extra people each year, a study by Harvard and the Brookings Institition states. It finds that for every 100 pounds less that an auto weighs, up to 780 more people die in traffic accidents in a year.

It will add $600 to the price of a car, further worsening the Big 3’s already sizable cost disadvantage. Toyota, Honda and Hyundai already pretty much meet the stricter standards.

It will force Detroit to build wimpy li’l cars most consumers don’t want to buy. CAFÉ rules long have distorted industry production. Automakers churn out loss-leader subcompacts purely to lower the average mileage for their entire fleet, freeing them to make higher-profit SUVs. At Ford, the F-150 truck provided 120% of profits, back when it had profits.

Citing this article on Thursday, the ever-astute Rush Limbaugh notices that the 3,900 accident deaths per year is more than the overall combat deaths in Iraq—which the Leftists in the Democrat Party and the media have milked for all their worth:

Now, the liberals told us American deaths, not just combat, but American deaths since the war began March 19th of '03, 4,296, the combat deaths, 3,444. 3,900 deaths on the highways additional because of CAFE standards. 

Maybe the networks will start reading off the names of those Americans killed as a result of CAFE standards at the end of their broadcasts. CAFE standards that Barack Obama ordered as a commander-in-chief would order troops into battle. His decision, the car czar in chief, has just signed the death warrants of thousands and thousands of innocent Americans. 

I doubt families will get letters of condolence. …

Folks, the environmental movement is awash in the blood of countless dead. And they don’t care.

Because remember: The primary concern of the green movement not bettering the lives of human beings; it is rescuing Mother Earth from human beings.

People are expendable for the environmental movement. Period.

P.S. The Stop the ACLU blog reports that Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry are in China to discuss CO2 and man-made global warming. (Yes, they're out of the country on Memorial Day.)

Diversity Lane (5/25/09): Flagging Enthusiasm, Karma Monoxide

The latest from Zack R. at the irrepressible Diversity Lane:

Hey Barry, How's That Bringing the World Together Thing Going? [UPDATED]

Remember how we were told that George W. Bush’s foreign policy was alienating our allies, enraging our enemies, and making America less safe? Remember how we were promised that with the wave of his golden tongue, His Majesty Barack Obama would bring the world together and quell all the enemies Bush riled up for eight years?

Then why do we get stories like these in one weekend?

North Korea tests nuclear weapon ‘as powerful as Hiroshima bomb’
Country risks further international isolation as underground nuclear explosion triggers earthquake
Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Tania Branigan in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 May 2009 11.59 BST

North Korea today risked further international isolation after it claimed to have successfully tested a nuclear weapon as powerful as the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The test comes less than two months after the North enraged the US and its allies by test firing a long-range ballistic missile. [...]

Iran sends warships to Gulf of Aden – navy
Mon May 25, 2009 5:43pm IST

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has sent six warships to international waters, including the Gulf of Aden, to show its ability to confront any foreign threats, its naval commander said on Monday.

Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, quoted by the ISNA news agency, made the announcement five days after Iran said it test-fired a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles), putting Israel and U.S. bases in the area within reach. [...]

Netanyahu defies Obama on Israeli settlement freeze
24 May 2009 18:11:36 GMT
By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM, May 24 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rebuffed U.S. calls for a full settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank and vowed not to accept limits on building of Jewish enclaves within Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s defiant stance set the stage for a possible showdown with U.S. President Barack Obama, who, in talks with the new Israeli prime minister in Washington last week, pressed for a halt to all settlement activity, including natural growth, as called for under a long-stalled peace “road map”. [...]

British banks revolt against Obama tax plan
British banks and stockbrokers may refuse to take on American clients if new international tax proposals outlined by President Obama are passed.
By Louise Armitstead
Last Updated: 12:02AM BST 24 May 2009

The decision, which would make it hard for Americans in London to open bank accounts and trade shares, is being discussed by executives at Britain’s banks and brokers who say it could become too expensive to service American clients. The proposals, which were unveiled as part of the president’s first budget, are designed to clamp-down on American tax evaders abroad. However bank bosses say they are being asked to take on the task of collecting American taxes at a cost and legal liability that are inexpedient.

Andy Thompson of Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers (APCIMS) said: “The cost and administration of the US tax regime is causing UK investment firms to consider disinvesting in US shares on behalf of their clients. This is not right and emphasises that the administration of a tax regime on a global scale without any flexibility damages the very economy it is trying to protect.”

One executive at a top UK bank who didn’t want to be named for fear of angering the IRS [So this is what it’s come down to, people? Unbelievable] said: “It’s just about manageable under the current system - and that’s because we’re big. The danger to us is suddenly being hauled over the coals by the IRS for a client that hasn’t paid proper taxes. The audit costs will soar. We’ll have to pay it but I know plenty of smaller players won’t.” [...]

Hmmm, everything seemingly is spinning out of control. And it sure is hell ain’t Bush’s fault.

This is what happens, my Obama-worshiping liberal-Democrat friends, when you threaten your allies and appease your enemies.

Idiots.

UPDATE: One more! [h/t Sweetness & Light]:

Iran’s Ahmadinejad rejects Western nuclear proposal
Mon May 25, 2009 1:34pm EDT
By Parisa Hafezi and Zahra Hosseinian

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected a Western proposal for it to “freeze” its nuclear work in return for no new sanctions and ruled out any talks with major powers on the issue.

The comments by the conservative president, who is seeking a second term in a June 12 election, are likely to further disappoint the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, which is seeking to engage Iran diplomatically. […]

Whoa whoa whoa. Hold on there. Conservative president? Are they kidding me? You mean conservative like Dick Cheney? Rush Limbaugh? Call me paranoid, but isn’t that the comparison they’re trying to put in readers’ minds. A’jad’s a conservative like Barack Obama is “progressive.” I.e., he ain’t. A’jad’s no “conservative president.” He’s a fricking thug dictator. Just because he’s a radical Islamist doesn’t make him conservative.

Next, A’jad’s “seeking a second term”? Like in a U.S.-style election and everything? Who’s the “liberal” he’s running against?

Thoughts for Memorial Day

A friend emailed this oldie but goodie for Memorial Day [UPDATED: typos fixed and author cited]

It is the 

SOLDIER, not the 

preacher, 

who has 

given us freedom of religion.

It is the 

SOLDIER, not the 

reporter, 

who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the 

SOLDIER, not the 

poet, 

who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the 

SOLDIER, not the 

campus organizer, 

who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the 

SOLDIER, not the 

lawyer, 

who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the 

SOLDIER, not the 

politician, 

Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the

SOLDIER 

who salutes the flag,

who serves beneath the flag,

and whose coffin is draped by the flag,

who allows the protester to burn the flag.

It is the 

SOLDIER 

who serves under the Flag,

and whose coffin is draped by the flag,

who allows the protester to burn the flag.

- Charles M. Province

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD, AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

Liberal Hypocrisy: Obama Lectures Us to Support the Troops

You know what I like best about holidays like Memorial Day? Watching Leftists having to pretend to love and support their country. Case in point: President Hope&Change himself.

I almost hate to say it, but it’s the truth: Barack Obama is a hypocrite of the highest order.

I am so tired of this arrogant, sanctimonious individual who has the nerve to lecture the American people about what we should be doing, when he himself has no intention on heeding any of his own advice. He’s a hyprocrite when he lectures about “tightening our belts,” about “making sacrifices,” about pursuing careers that are less about the money and more about “caring.” But today on Memorial Day, the Traitor in Chief has the nerve to say this:

In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama said people can honor veterans by sending a letter or care package to troops overseas, volunteering at health clinics or taking supplies to a homeless veterans center. He said it could also mean something as simple as saying “thank you” to a veteran walking by on the street.

“We have a responsibility to serve all of them as well as they serve all of us,” Obama said. “And yet, all too often in recent years and decades, we, as a nation, have failed to live up to that responsibility. We have failed to give them the support they need or pay them the respect they deserve.

Just hold it right there, you class A creep. Just who exactly do you think hasn’t “in recent years and decades failed to live up to the responsibility of supporting our veterans? Republicans? Bzzt. Wrongo. Conservatives? Wrong again. Gun- and religion-clinging rednecks in fly-over country? Nope.

Try looking in the mirror, and then look at all your friends and supporters, and you might just be onto something.

Michelle Malkin doesn’t let President Perfect get away with his statement for a second:

Who is this “we?” Let’s name names:

Tell it to Janet Napolitano.

Tell it to the Gen. Betray Us smear merchants at Move On.

Tell it to the anti-military academics at Penn State and Columbia and every other ivy-covered institution.

Tell it to the anti-military recruiter thugs on campuses across the country.

Tell it to all the Winter Soldier fakers and phonies.

Permit me add to that list:

Tell it to Democrat Harry “The war is lost” Reid.

Tell it to Democrat Jack “Marines murdered civilians in cold blood” Murtha.

Tell it to Democrat John “Our troops terrorize women and children in the dark of night” Kerry.

Tell it to Democrat Dick “Our troops are like Nazis and Soviets in their gulags” Durbin.

Tell it to liberal/Democrat dominated colleges that prohibit an ROTC program on their campi.

Tell it to liberal/Democrat dominated Hollywood which cranks out film after film bashing our troops.

Tell it to liberal/Democrat dominated mainstream media outlets, especially the New York Times, which has given aid and comfort to our military’s enemies by (1) painting them in a bad light, (2) demoralizing them by negatively spinning their mission, (3) downplaying victories and exaggerating setbacks (two words: Abu Ghraib), and (4) publicizing sensitive classified information on their front pages which obviously makes it harder for our troops to defeat the enemy and puts them more in harm’s way.

Oh, and tell it yourself, too. With the multiple generations of debt you're putting our country in with your “stimulus” bill, you decide to cut defense funding. Not to mention your scheme to make veterans pay for service-related injuries with their own private insurance.

Your “I support the troops too” act may dupe your loyal tongue-wagging followers, but they don’t fool me.

Oh, one more thing, Mr. President. Memorial Day honors the war dead, not living veterans. There’s another holiday for that called Veteran’s Day. (No, it’s true. Look it up.) You screwed that up two years in a row, genius.

What an absolute embarrassment.

Article of Note: An American Credo for Memorial Day (D. Feder)

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

This piece by “Rite Jew” Don Feder was at yesterday’s Jewish World Review:

An American credo
By Don Feder

On the day when we memorialize those who gave their lives so America would endure, we should ask what it means a citizen of this republic.

Here are the thoughts of one American, a credo for the coming millennia.

I am an American. I was conceived at Plymouth, born in Lexington and Concord, and reached maturity at Philadelphia.

I went through the fires of Shiloh, Gualdacanal, the Chosin Resovoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand other battlefields, and emerged rededicated to the ideals on which America was founded.

I am an American. Ever ready to defend my liberty and independence, to make any sacrifice and bear any burden - still, I seek no quarrel.

I march to the sound of the guns out of necessity alone. I fight not for glory or territory, or to make others bend to my will, but to vindicate my rights and preserve my freedom.

I am an American. I’m proud of my past. Words like Valley Forge, Gettysburg Address and Pearl Harbor — names like Washington, Jackson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt — make my blood stir.

Glancing behind me, I see generations of men and women who labored and struggled, lived and died to let me stand where I am today — who cleared the land, planted the crops, built the factories, raised the cities and made the discoveries that created a civilization which all the silent, suffering ranks of slaves, serfs and subjects who came before them could never imagine.

I am an American. While recognizing the errors that were made in nation-building (has a nation ever been built exclusively on light?), I proclaim America’s past glorious indeed, a boon to humanity, and consider myself among the blessed of the earth to share this nation’s destiny.

I am an American. Liberty is my birthright. To speak my mind, choose my leaders and legislators, defend my home and family, and worship the Creator in my fashion — these are not privileges, but G-d-given rights. Governments can respect or deny them; they cannot change them.

I am an American. I have no rulers. Those who make, interpret and enforce our laws are servants. When they no longer recognize that verity, their authority loses legitimacy.

I am an American. My rights are a sacred trust to be exercised in the cause of justice and virtue. They are not the playthings of a spoiled child or mechanisms of self-indulgence.

I am an American. English is my language. Our ancestors arrived on these shores speaking everything from Chinese to Yiddish. It was English that united us, that allowed us to overcome age-old antagonisms.

From the Mayflower Compact to the latest piece of legislation introduced in Congress, our history and heritage are written in the tongue of the Magna Carta and the King James Bible.

I am an American. I have no distinctive race, religion or ethnicity. I am black, white, yellow, brown and red — Catholic, Protestant, Jew and Hindu. I came here from the hamlets of Old England, the bogs of Ireland, Napoli’s sunny shore, the Pale of Settlement and the villages of Vietnam. American isn’t a color or creed, but a state of mind.

I am an American. I welcome immigrants who are here to work and build, who identify with our past and ideals, who were spiritual Americans before they landed. Broken English is fine, as long as faith remains unbroken. An American speaks with the heart as much as the lips.

I am an American. My ism is Americanism. I reject all dogmas and ideologies. Collectivism, racism, militarism and imperialism have no place here. The rot that’s eaten away at the soul of so many nations and cultures must be fiercely resisted.

I am an American. I recognize only one loyalty higher than allegiance to our flag — faith in G-d. I acknowledge that America and G-d, the physical and the spiritual, are inseparable. America was founded by people of faith and grew to greatness by His grace. I pray that we will always be the instruments of His will.

I am an American. I weep over the fact that American history is no longer taught in our schools. In its place is a worldly, cynical skepticism inculcated by authors and educators at war with our basic values.

I am an American. I cringe at the collection of connivers, cowards, clowns and quacks that passes for our political leadership. I wonder that so many of my compatriots have no idea what America means and show no gratitude for the blessings that are theirs.

I am an American. My ranks grow thin; the night closes in. Whether I will be the last of my kind or the vanguard of their resurgence, only time will tell.

And let us say: Amen!

Liberal Media Bias: MSNBC Reports Mancow Waterboarded, Leaves Out the Important Stuff

So guess what? Conservative shock jock Mancow tried waterboarding—and he hated it.

This is news to Ryan Pollyea at the MSNBC website:

Mancow Waterboarded, Admits It’s Torture
By Ryan Pollyea
NBCChicago.com

Shock jocks shock.

And so it went Friday morning when WLS radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller decided to subject himself to the controversial practice of waterboarding live on his show.

Mancow decided to tackle the divisive issue head on—actually it was head down, while restrained and reclining.

“I want to find out if it’s torture,” Mancow told his listeners Friday morning, adding that he hoped his on-air test would help prove that waterboarding did not, in fact, constitute torture. […]

With a Chicago Fire Department paramedic on hand, Mancow was placed on a 7-foot long table, his legs were elevated, and his feet were tied up.

Turns out the stunt wasn’t so funny. Witnesses said Muller thrashed on the table, and even instantly threw the toy cow he was holding as his emergency tool to signify when he wanted the experiment to stop. He only lasted 6 or 7 seconds.

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,”Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

“I wanted to prove it wasn’t torture,” Mancow said. “They cut off our heads, we put water on their face...I got voted to do this but I really thought ‘I’m going to laugh this off.’ “

Last year, Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens endured the same experiment -- and came to a similar conclusion. The conservative writer said he found the treatment terrifying, and was haunted by it for months afterward. [Um, Christopher Hitchens is not a conservative, liar. He is an athiest, was on Forbes list of the 25 Most Influential Liberals in U.S. Media. He supports the War in Iraq. So? That doesn’t make him a conservative.]

“Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture,” Hitchens concluded in the article.

Some important pieces of info left out of this article:

First, Pollyea didn’t report whether, if Mancow were demanded to give accurate information while being waterboarded, would he have been forthcoming? In other words, does waterboarding work?

Second, after being waterboarded, was Mancow asked what he considers worse: being waterboarded (as Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was) or having your head sawed off alive (as was done to Daniel Pearl by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed)

Finally, he didn’t determine whether Mancow’s experience made him change his mind about whether it should be continued on hardened terrorist detainees.

The thing about the “waterboarding = torture?” debate is that nobody ever said that it was a walk in the park. Sean Hannity never suggested it. Neither did Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, or Dennis Prager. It’s meant to be extremely uncomfortable. Otherwise, how do we expect people to be afraid of it? But whether Mancow or Hitchens want to call it torture, it is still light years better than having your hands, your tongue, your head sliced off. Because that’s what our enemies would do to you and you don’t have to be detained in a prison for them to do it. 

Besides, for me, personally, it was never an issue of whether waterboarding constitutes torture. If we use it to get information from terrorist scum who are trying to kill my family and yours, what difference does it make? None at all. What’s important to me is whether it’s effective and whether it’s being used it on the right people. This isn’t a g*ddamned game, people; it’s a war. And the enemy isn’t tiring of the desire to waste you any time soon. I don’t lose any sleep over waterboarding of terrorists, and I don’t worry about having lost our moral bearings because of it. You know what will make me lose sleep and worry about having lost our moral bearings? Whether the next 9/11 could have been prevented if only we had waterboarded these bastards.

So, I think this MSNBC article strengthened, not weakened, the case for waterboarding. Based on Mancow’s experiment, let them continue. Get all the info we can get from this terrorist scum. 

Then unleash them like the rabid dogs they are in Nancy Pelosi’s district. What are peacenik San Franciscans gonna do? Kill them?

UPDATE: Chicago Ray gives his two cents on the Mancow waterboarding.

Liberal Fascism: When "The People" Have Spoken, the Gov't Says, "$^&# the People"

Isn’t being a liberal in power great?

I have to tell you, I was surprised by the results of the California ballot initiatives. Why would the citizens of one of the most blue states in the union decline an opportunity to raise their taxes? But sure enough, not one, but all tax-increasing propositions on the table were flatly rejected by the citizens of the Golden State. Proposition 1A lost in every single county, including Nancy Pelosi’s Bay Area district.

But this is a bittersweet victory. California is run by Leftists, including that disappointment Leftist with the “R” next to his name, Arnold “the fake Republican” Schwartzenegger. To a liberal in power, “The people have spoken” only applies to vote results that they approve. When “the people have spoken” against a liberal government’s agenda, the government says, “F**k the people.” Case in point: The same-sex marriage vote from earlier this year. (I’m not making a judgment about same-sex marriage; I’m just noting that “the people” spoke out against it, but the Ninth Circuit said, “F**k the people.”

So now that even blue California said five times, “No new taxes!!!” Ahnold and the bureaucracy has to go to Plan B: subverting the will of the people. How? By threatening Californians to cut things that government should first and foremost be funding—at the expense of the state’s most vulnerable citizens: children and the needy.

These examples are enumerated at the Black Informant blog:

When government does not get its way, the most vulnerable get targeted

The people of the state of California yesterday to crush propositions that would have raised state taxes. Led by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, this was a last ditch attempt to put taxpayers on the hook for a state bureaucracy that is still growing despite being in the middle of a recession.

Despite freeze, state hired 33,000 workers (2003)
Despite budget shortfall, state government is still hiring (2008)
Editorial: Belt-tightening? State workforce still growing (2009)

Bottom line, despite the fact that the private sector has trimmed thousands of jobs during slow economies, government doesn’t know how to stop growing. And those same workers who have been laid off in the private sector are still on the hook to cover the salaries and benefits of state workers.

This is more than just a game, this is a full blown racket. And like a street gang or the Mafia, if you do not go along with the bully government, something close to you will get hurt.

Right in the middle of the Santa Barbara fires, Gov. Schwarzenegger decided to scare the people of California by saying the following:

“We owe it to the people of California to tell what the consequences are,” he said, adding, “Fire protection, without any doubt, will suffer if the measures don’t pass.”

So if you don’t vote our way, California will burn.

Next target? The children.

Poison-control funds on chopping block

“Don’t count on California’s Poison Control System for help if your child swallows something dangerous—because after September, the state may become the only one in the nation without such services after this week’s special election results, state officials said Wednesday.”

Next target? The poor.

Governor plans to completely eliminate welfare for families

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to completely eliminate the state’s welfare program for families, medical insurance for low-income children and Cal Grants cash assistance to college and university students.”

Too bad the poor and children come before things like massive building projects for schools that are not needed.

No word on cutting wasteful spending like the following~

“…how General Services and the Department of Corrections and rehabilitation wasted $580,000 by leasing office space for four years that wasn’t being used.

A second chapter tells how General Services wasted $3,000 by paying a private vendor for emergency preparedness training in Los Angeles, even though the California Highway Patrol provides the training free of charge.” (more…)

No word on cutting the process of cutting bad teachers who are covered by union bureaucracy. Meanwhile, taxpayers are stuck paying the salaries, health insurance and health benefits of teachers who are doing nothing.

How detestable. This is the governmental equivalent of holding a low-income child at gunpoint and saying, “Hand over your wallet or she gets it!”

I’m not from California, but being from the corrupt Democrat stronghold of New Jersey is good enough to know what Californians are up against. Ahnold and the bureaucrats will get their tax increases one way or another.

Isn’t being a liberal in power great?

Liberal Media Bias: Burying the Obvious in the Riverdale Bomb Plot Story

FYI: FOLLOW-UP POST (5/28) HERE

Let’s say a bomb plot on an abortion clinic had been foiled by the FBI. I would make a stimulus-package-sized wager that the religious and/or ideological affiliation of the perpetrators would be mentioned in the first sentence of articles in the New York Times and other mainstream news outlets, if not in the headline itself:

“Abortion Clinic Bomb Plot by Christian Right-Wingers Foiled!”

We’d then be greeted by pages of analysis and editorializing about how these radicals—like Timothy McVeigh, according to Bill Clinton—had their minds poisoned by the “hate speech” of Rush Limbaugh and other radio talkers. Rallies would take place denouncing the intolerance of the religious right. (Because, naturally, the actions of a couple nuts with bombs extend to the hundred million plus religious Christians who reside in this country.) President Obama would impose the “Fairness” Doctrine the next day in order to ensure that right-wing Christian “hatemongers” like Rush never poison the airwaves again to foment the hate in the hearts of these bomb plotters. (As Rahmbo says, you never want to let a crisis go to waste.)

Now, let’s turn to reality: The other day, four Muslim men were foiled in attempting to blow up two houses of Jewish worship, as well as shoot a plane down with a “Stinger” missile. If their plot had succeeded, it would have been another of a long list of Muslim attacks on non-Muslims around the globe, including the U.S.

So where does the NY Times mention the perpetrators’ Muslim connection? The ninth paragraph.

Where does the CNN website mention it? Tenth paragraph. And not as a factual, but in the context of “police said.”

WSJ’s Best of the Web documents this egregious example of what journoes call “burying the lede”:

At the end of the ninth paragraph [in the NYT] comes the revelation that the suspects “are all Muslim, a law enforcement official said.”

According to Rod Dreher of BeliefNet.com, “This is what is called ‘burying the lede.’ Some editor in that newsroom found this to be an inconvenient truth, and tried to hide it. You can practically hear the Times cringing when it has to disclose this fact, which most fair-minded readers would find rather pertinent.”

Max Boot at Commentary adds:

Who were these four, I wondered? Could they be Chrysler shareholders upset that they are getting stiffed in bailout proceedings? ACLU lawyers mad that President Obama has refused to release interrogation photos? Possibly Greenwich hedge-fund managers furious about plans to regulate their industries? Or maybe just random nuts who like to set off bombs for the fun of it? Nope. It turns out--get ready for it--the suspects were … Muslims.

We have some familiarity with the rhetorical device known as sarcasm, and our instincts tell us that Boot is employing it here. We surmise that as he read the Times story, he fully expected the suspects would turn out to be Muslim and was not the least bit surprised when they did. If we are right, and if Boot is typical, then our analysis makes nonsense of Dreher’s assertion that the Times was “burying the lede.”

A newsman’s saw has it that “Dog Bites Man” isn’t news; “Man Bites Dog” is news. What makes an event newsworthy is, in part, its unexpectedness or departure from the ordinary. A terror-plot bust is still front-page news, for which we should count our blessings. If the suspects turned out to be ACLU lawyers, hedge-fund managers or random nuts--or, for that matter adherents to any faith or ideology other than radical Islam--that would have belonged in the first paragraph or two.

That the suspects are Muslim is pertinent and certainly belonged in the story. If the Times had left the fact out completely, as this CNN story does [As I mention, the CNN does mention it once, in the 10th paragraph], it would have been fair to criticize it for betraying journalistic principles in favor of political correctness. But treating it as the lede would have been like beginning the item you are now reading, “Conservative bloggers criticized the New York Times today ...”

It is this head-in-the-sand mentality of the media is unfortunately shared by President Obama, who has demonstrated quite clearly that he has a 9/10 mentality toward fighting radical Islamic terrorism. This kind of thinking is going to get a lot of heretofore uninformed Americans killed.

And when it does, I’m sure the NY Times will be the first to blame the dominance of Bush-era right-wing Christian intolerance.

(P.S. The Associated Press, which has been caught in its own media bias, mentions the Muslim religion of the bomb plotters in the second paragraph.)

UPDATE: I don't know what I did to deserve this, but this post got linked from AnnCoulter.com and AnnCoulter.org! A million thanks, and if you're visiting VM from over there, welcome.

FOLLOW-UP POST POST (5/28) HERE

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (5/22/09): Obama-Cheney Speech Edition

Much was already said about the Obama-Cheney dual speeches yesterday, so I’m providing my favorite analyses here. No sense trying to reinvent the wheel. So read, learn, and enjoy. And then go and educate your Bush/Cheney-hating liberal friends.

The Buck Stops Elsewhere
By the Editors (National Review Online)

President Obama wants you to know that nothing is ever his fault. He gave a speech on national-security matters Thursday the gist of which was: George W. Bush left me a mess, and I’m doing the best I can to clean it up. A more forthright theme would have been: Radical Islam has thrust the United States into a defensive war, and it’s now my duty to protect the nation — despite legal complications created by left-wing lawyers, many of whom are now working in my administration. […]

True to his September 10 philosophy, President Obama declared on Thursday that the civilian courts were “tough enough” to convict terrorists. That has never been the question. The problems are that the criminal-justice system cannot apprehend many terrorists (only 29 terrorists, mostly low-level, were prosecuted during the eight years of attacks leading up to 9/11), and that the few trials it manages become intelligence troves for the many thousands of terrorists remaining at large. Bush’s counterterrorism policies, particularly as supplemented by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the above-mentioned Military Commissions Act of 2006, afforded captured alien combatants an unprecedented degree of due process — far beyond that accorded at the Nuremberg Tribunals that President Obama is fond of citing as a testament to the “rule of law.” This due process includes a right of appeal to the civilian federal courts (which was expanded in 2008 by the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded Boumediene decision). 

So it was strange to hear President Obama on Thursday, castigating the military-commission system that he has chosen to revive with only cosmetic changes. It is true, as the president points out, that the commission system has convicted only three terrorists of war crimes, but this is in no small part because the trials have been endlessly delayed by legal maneuvering from some of the very lawyers who now hold important positions in Obama’s administration. Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, for example, represented Osama bin Laden’s confidant Salim Hamdan in the Supreme Court case that derailed the commissions until Congress reversed the Court. Harold Koh, the attorney Obama has nominated to be State Department legal adviser, filed an amicus brief in behalf of the detainees in the same case. Attorney General Eric Holder’s old firm has represented at least 18 enemy combatants. Because of the thick web of relationships between terrorism suspects, Holder, and other like-minded lawyers he has recruited, the Justice Department has been forced to set up elaborate protocols for recusing prosecutors, including the attorney general himself, from various national-security cases. 

And it was President Obama himself who delayed commissions for 21 terrorists back in January — some of whose trials were imminent. But instead of reinstating those proceedings, the president is delaying them still further, while his administration makes trivial procedural tweaks that will allow him to pretend his policies constitute a real departure from those of his predecessor.

The president insisted in his speech that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and enhanced interrogation techniques (which he characteristically referred to as “torture,” a term both legally inaccurate and morally obtuse) increased terrorist recruitment. In fact the leading driver of terrorist recruitment is successful terrorist attacks. That is what convinces the fence-sitters that radical Islam can win, and that Osama bin Laden is correct when he argues that the United States is a weak horse that will retreat when things get tough enough. The counterterrorism policies of the Bush administration prevented new terrorist attacks and assured the world’s bin Ladens that the United States was committed to their defeat. We hope that assurance still holds; if it does, it is only because President Obama, for all his unseemly disparagement of his predecessor, has picked up the tools George W. Bush left him and made them his own.

Obama’s Speech in Historical Context
PETER WEHNER - 05.21.2009 - 5:24 PM

I have read president Obama’s speech and was struck by several things. Among them is that for a man who insists on not wanting to re-litigate the last eight years, he has certainly done a splendid job of doing just that.

President Obama’s core complaint is the Bush Administration “went off course” and was guilty of undermining the rule of law. It failed to “use our values as a compass” and broke faith with the Constitution and basic human rights. And of course the main offense was waterboarding, which was used against exactly three known al Qaeda terrorists and was then discontinued. This is, in the world according to Obama, the main legacy and the overriding achievement of the Bush presidency.

But if Mr. Obama wants to tear into past presidents for violations of the Constitution and basic human rights during war time, perhaps he should start with those whom he must surely consider the worst violators of our Constitution and our values: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. […]

Professor [of Harvard, Jack] Goldsmith methodically examines eleven essential elements of the Bush approach to counter-terrorism and concludes, “at the end of the day, Obama practices will be much closer to late Bush practices than almost anyone expected in January 2009.”

To take just one example, on the matter of habeas corpus, Goldsmith writes this:

During the campaign, former professor Obama spoke eloquently about the importance ofhabeas corpus review of executive detentions of enemy soldiers. Habeas corpus is “the foundation of Anglo-American law” and “the essence of who we are,” he said. But his administration has applied this principle in the same narrow fashion as the late Bush administration. It has argued that Guantanamo detainees can challenge the “fact, duration, or location” of confinement on habeas review, but not their “conditions of confinement.” It has maintained that “the Geneva Conventions are not judicially enforceable by private individuals” in habeas proceedings. And it has made clear its belief that the limited habeas rights it recognizes for the two hundred or so detainees on Guantanamo Bay do not extend to the 600 or so detainees in Bagram Air Base. This latter position might prove more controversial for President Obama than for President Bush. The new president’s enlarged military commitment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, combined with the forthcoming closure of Guantanamo, means that the number of suspects detained in Bagram — without charge or trial and without access to lawyers or habeasrights — is likely to increase, perhaps dramatically.

How exactly does President Obama square his policy of not extending even limitedhabeas rights to detainees in Bagram Air Base with, say, his speech today? […]

Still politicizing our security
By David Limbaugh
May 22, 2009

Democratic strategist Bob Shrum says the charge that Democrats are playing politics with national security is "a smear." Democratic strategist Bob Beckel said: "I've never heard a more slanderous, disgraceful performance by a former vice president or president than I just listened to. The idea that Dick Cheney would suggest that the Obama administration was putting, for political purposes, at risk the security of the United States of America and lives of American people is outrageous."

No, Bob(s), what's outrageous is that the charges ring true. Why else, besides politics, would Obama and other Democrats have lambasted and discredited the Bush administration for years over its WOT policies and then adopt many of those very same policies, from extraordinary rendition to the NSA warrantless surveillance program to recognizing that the laws of war permit the U.S. to capture enemy combatants and detain them without trial until the conclusion of hostilities to the use of cosmetically modified military commissions, which Obama had earlier called a "legal black hole"?

If rank partisanship hasn't been at play here, how does one reconcile the Democrats' demagoguery against Bush to close Gitmo come hell or high water with congressional Democrats' present refusal to fund Gitmo's closure until Obama presents a plan concerning placement of the prisoners?

Apart from recognizing it as a partisan witch hunt, how do you explain why the Obama-Holder Justice Department condemned enhanced interrogation techniques as torture, to the point that it considered prosecuting Bush officials and its Justice Department lawyers for authorizing and recommending them, yet endorsed the Bush position on torture just weeks ago, in Demjanjuk v. Holder? How do you explain the approval of these very techniques by the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when briefed by the CIA and the Bush administration?

And the money question: If, indeed, Barack Obama is so convinced that enhanced interrogation methods violate our values and the rule of law, how do you rationally explain his reservation of the authority to reinstitute the practice?

Democratic strategists are free to dramatize their manufactured indignation over the charge of subordinating our national security for political gain, but their chickens are coming home to roost. Their inconsistent, untenable, reckless positions have been exposed, and they've tied themselves in knots.

Obama, Hubris and Cheney

Jed Babbin
05/22/2009

President Obama’s Thursday speech was simply breathtaking. It was an hubristic exhibition, another chapter in his effort to permanently label the Republicans the “Party of George W. Bush.”

Standing in the hall of the National Archives, Obama began by claiming the Constitution as his ancestor. His sophistry soared, claiming that it was our values that had defeated our enemies throughout history, their soldiers surrendering to ours because they knew we would treat them better than their own governments. That statement he would not dare repeat on the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg, Normandy, or Iwo Jima, in Baghdad or the mountains of Afghanistan. Then saying he didn’t want to relitigate the past, Mr. Obama presented the longest and most comprehensive condemnation of the Bush administration ever. […]

President Obama is an ideological absolutist. Vice President Cheney’s ideology is tempered by experience. There will, I hope, be more of these Obama vs. Cheney matchups. Score this round Cheney 1, Hubris 0.

Selling Insecurity
Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, May 22, 2009

Obama was more forthright – if not more convincing – in his assessment of Guantanamo’s impact on the larger war on terror. “The record is clear,” the president said, “rather than keep us safer, the prison atGuantanamo has weakened American national security.”

Even from Obama’s own remarks, though, this was anything but clear. The president noted, for instance, that Guantanamo is home to terrorists who remain a threat to the United States, including “people who have received extensive explosives training at al-Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.”

That echoes earlier findings by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point that 73 percent of Gitmo detainees are a “demonstrated threat” to Americans, while 95 percent were at the least a “potential threat.” Since Guantanamo is the reason that these detainees have not been able to carry out additional terrorist attacks, it defies common sense to claim that the prison has “weakened” national security.

Beyond shoddy logic, Obama’s speech also had serious practical flaws. Obama pointed out that his “review team” has approved 50 detainees to be transferred from Guantanamo. What he could not say is where these detainees would be transferred, alluding vaguely to “discussions with a number of other countries.”

That was no coincidence. European countries have been unwilling to take in detainees, even if it means an expedited end to the detention center they have denounced as an affront to human rights. Britain andFrance, for example, have agreed to accept just one prisoner each. As Cheney observed in his AEI speech, Obama may have won “applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo,” but “the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists. So what happens then?”

What indeed. Sending the detainees back to their countries of origin is no solution. Of the 240 prisoners who remain at Guantanamo, nearly 100 are from Yemen, whose policy of dealing with detainees through “rehabilitation” programs, paired with its popularity as a destination for ex-Guantánamo inmates eager to rejoin terrorist groups like al-Qaeda, makes it a singularly poor choice to accept the detainees. It’s no wonder that the most effective point made by Cheney yesterday concerned the difficulty of the choices facing the government as it works to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil.

While the president’s rhetoric often suggests otherwise, that reality may be dawning on the Obama administration. In this connection, perhaps the best that can be said of the president’s address is that his actions don’t match his words. As Harvard law professor and former Bush official Jack Goldsmith [also cited in the Wehner article above] observed in the New Republic this week, on a host of national security issues – from military detention, military commissions, and targeted killings, to habeas corpus rights, rendition and surveillance programs – the Obama administration’s policies are largely indistinguishable from the policies in the later years of the Bush administration. “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging,” Goldsmith wrote.

The Guantanamo debate is a case in point. Yesterday’s dueling speeches were a clash of styles more than substance. True, Obama continues to attack the Bush administration’s record on national security, often unfairly. But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, President Obama has paid his predecessors the ultimate compliment.