More Obama Ogling in Newsweek

From Brent Bozell:

The 2008 presidential campaign could be one of the most critical in recent history. As things now stand, it could also be one of the most tiresome. Nowhere is media snobbishness more evident than when the big picture begins with the snide liberal elitist take on America: Is the country "ready" to elect a black like Barack Obama or a woman like Hillary Clinton?

If Americans reject the icons of liberalism and vote Republican, apparently they will be proving the country is stuffed with benighted bigots who refuse to "expand America's sense of possibility." Those gauzy words came from Newsweek in its Barack-and-Hillary cover at the end of 2006. Obama's back on the cover of Newsweek again for the July 16 edition, photographed in black and white, with another question from left field: Will Obama be black enough for blacks and yet conciliatory enough for whites?

Reporters Richard Wolffe and Daren Briscoe apply all the usual goo to the Obama cause. "Many of Obama's supporters are enthralled by the content of his character -- by his earnest desire to heal the nation's political divisions and to restore America's reputation in the world." Many are also "excited by the color of his skin" and the "chance to turn the page" on American racism, Wolffe and Briscoe add, but blacks are wary that whites might go soft and self-satisfied and think the "playing field is leveled."

Here's another sappy line: "On the campaign trail, Obama doesn't seek sympathy: He evokes hope." The reporters tell the story of how once-segregated Cairo, Ill., greeted Obama warmly during his 2004 Senate campaign. Pass the Pepto, please.

It's not very difficult to demonstrate that Newsweek doesn't provide this fluffy pillow and after-dinner chocolate to every candidate. Take its March 12 cover story on Rudy Giuliani: "Giuliani can be arrogant, abrasive and imperious, an average-size man trying too hard to prove himself to be a giant."

The Cornyn Amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that in the midst of the current debate in the Senate on Iraq, the critical element missing is a serious review of the potential consequences resulting from a failed state in Iraq. The Senate is currently considering the FY 08 Defense Authorization bill, which sets funding levels for national defense programs, including a number of key military programs and projects based in Texas.



“It appears that some of my colleagues want to once again engage in political posturing at the expense of passing important legislation to provide needed funding and equipment for troops. In advocating a policy of retreat, they are seeking to abandon the central front in the war on terror and allow Iraq to become a safe haven for Al-Qaeda,” U.S. Sen. Cornyn said today



Sen. Cornyn announced that he has filed an amendment to the bill in the form of a Sense of the Senate resolution which would put every Senator on record in acknowledging the consequences of their vote for or against a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq.



Sen. Cornyn continued, “Those advocating retreat will not, or cannot, answer critical questions on the consequences of a precipitous withdrawal. For example, if we leave Iraq before the Iraqis can defend themselves, will this strengthen or weaken Al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadists in Iraq, and across the region? Will Al-Qaeda and other terrorists then follow us here to the United States? How will we address Iran’s continued support of Iraqi insurgents and terrorists now that we have definitive evidence of their involvement? Will Sunni majority nations outside of Iraq stand by and let Shiites massacre Sunnis in Iraq, or will this turn into a regional war? What is the scope of the humanitarian and refugee crisis that will ensue when the U.S. suddenly withdraws from Iraq? And perhaps the most important question that must be answered by those advocating withdrawal is — what is your plan for the ‘Way Ahead’ in Iraq and the Region? These are but a few of the many important questions that every Senator must ask of themselves during this important debate.”

This is an important political issue. If Congress takes control of the war, they should be held accountable for the results.

My Cyber Counter-jihad

An American mother and small town judge goes undercover to infiltrate al Qaida on the Internet.

Before 9-11, I had no experience with the Middle East or the Arabic language. I was a mother of three and a municipal judge in a small town in Montana. But the terrorist attacks affected me deeply. I wondered how it could happen. What kind of people could carry out such an atrocity and why? I began to read vociferously about Islam, terrorism, extremist groups, and Islamist ideology.[1] Some of the books satisfied; many did not.

In November 2001, I saw a news report about how terrorists and their sympathizers communicated on websites and Internet message boards and how limited government agencies were in their ability to monitor these web communications. This news report showed me how extensively Al-Qaeda used the Internet to orchestrate 9-11 and how out of touch our intelligence agencies were regarding this Internet activity. Apparently, there were not procedures in place for tracking communications and activity on the Al-Qaeda websites and Internet forums at the time.

The Internet address named in the news report was "www.alneda.com." I wrote it down and proceeded to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I entered another world when I logged on to that site for the first time. I did not know Arabic, so I clicked away at random, looking at featured pictures depicting such things as dead bodies lying around in the aftermath of a car bombing and other atrocities.

Read the rest.

NAPPY-HEADED HOAX: Ann Coulter on the "Duke Rape" case

Ann is doing a victory lap, and who can forgive her. The sins of the media are quickly put down the media memory hole. But thanks to the Internet, that no longer works so well.

Excepts:

The New York Times alone has mentioned the Scottsboro Boys case from the 1930s nearly 20 times since 2002 (expanding the "news" part of "newspaper" just a bit), so I think I'm entitled to spend at least one more week luxuriating in the Duke lacrosse players' total vindication and the exposure of a Southern liberal prosecutor as a corrupt hack.

Twenty years ago, disbarred Duke prosecutor Mike Nifong would have been Time magazine's Man of the Year. Vanity Fair would have photographed him sitting in a Porsche under the headline: "Speaking Truth to Power."

One hundred years ago, he would have been lynching innocent black men. Southern liberals have stayed the same; only their victims have changed.

To watch the complete destruction of this foolish and evil man, Michael Nifong — despite the mainstream media's best efforts to portray him as a modern-day Atticus Finch — is as great a moment as the annihilation of Dan Rather. Katie Couric's self-immolation is just a bonus — when it rains, it pours!
[...]
The accuser's history of making false accusations of gang rape, the players' alibis and the prosecutor's lies were all known to The New York Times when it reported on Aug. 25, 2006, that "while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury." By "body of evidence," the Times was apparently referring to a smattering of racial and sexual stereotypes earnestly believed in Hollywood and in newsrooms across America in defiance of the facts.

The Times article also noted, "In several important areas, the full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense." The "stronger" evidence consisted of obvious lies told by the prosecution and lustily repeated by the Times.

Shockingly, even when the jig was up, and the attorney general of North Carolina announced that the accused were innocent, much of the mainstream media continued to withhold the accuser's name.
[...]
From my research, it appears that CBS News named Crystal Gail Mangum and showed her picture. (Of course, this being CBS, the picture may have been forged.) But the only time her name came out on CNN was by non-CNN employees during live press conferences and one time when a guest slipped it in — you should pardon the expression — during a discussion of Nifong's disbarment hearing, unaware of CNN's policy of protecting the names of women who make false accusations of rape.

The New York Times has yet to name the woman who falsely accused three men of committing a brutal gang rape.

The Times "public editor" described the paper's delusional coverage of the Duke case after the first several weeks as "basically fair." The Times Sports editor, Tom Jolly, said he was "very comfortable" with the coverage, saying the case had two main elements: "One was the allegation of rape; the other was the general behavior of a high-level sports team at a prestigious university." That's when you know your newspaper might have a wee hint of a liberal bias: when even the sportswriters are left-wing crackpots.

Apparently, the Times editor did not see this possibility as an "element" of the case: A liberal prosecutor incites a racial conflagration weeks before an election in a heavily black voting district by using the incredible claims of a stripper to falsely accuse three innocent white men of gang rape.

Al Gore And NBC: Birds Of A Feather

We can be grateful to the innate wisdom of the people of the world that the Al Gore Climate Change show was a ratings flop, but was the NBC devotion to it a political contribution?

From the Investor Business Daily:

Was what Al Gore called "the largest global entertainment event in all of human history" also the largest in-kind political contribution? And where's the Fairness Doctrine when you need it?

Considering that here in the U.S. the Peacock Network's three-hour Gore infomercial on global warming lost out in the ratings to "Cops" and "America's Funniest Home Videos," Gore's claim may be open to question. Live Earth, in fact, may have been America's funniest home video. Ever.

But thanks in large part to the 75 hours of free airtime that NBC gave Gore on its various stations, starting with NBC and including CNBC, Bravo, the Sundance channel, Universal HD and Telemundo, Gore may now be the 800-pound gorilla this political season.

Gore insists he's not running for president. Yet, as we have wondered before, why would a man who insists that global warming is the biggest threat to mankind, bigger than nuclear terror, not want control of the reins of a major world polluter and chief resister to Kyoto?

Dan Harrison, an NBC corporate senior vice president, called the Gore effort "an initiative we believe in" -- the "we" presumably including corporate parent General Electric. (NYSE:GE) Yet he insisted: "I don't think climate change is a political issue."

From the other side of his mouth, Harrison opined: "If it's a political issue, it's whether the political will exists to address that change. We know we need to do something, and this is a way to heighten awareness."

So he considers it NBC's mission to generate that political will in an election cycle in support of a man who once ran for president.

NBC and GE have other interests in hyping climate change. Let's not forget GE is the parent of NBC and stands to make a wad of cash from selling alternative energy products from wind turbines to solar panels to those compact fluorescent bulbs containing mercury.

So when Gore prances on stage to demand we stop building coal-fired plants, that's music to GE's corporate ears.

"The case for mistrusting Muslims" (and what it means to us in terms of immigration)

Theodore Dalrymple has a piece in the LA Times that addresses the issue of Muslims in Britain.

A friend who met me at the airport said something that must by now be true of many ordinary British people. Just as we used to wonder, on meeting Germans of a certain age, what they had done during World War II, so she wondered, when she found herself next to a young Muslim on a bus or a train, what he thought of the various bombings perpetrated by his co-religionists and whether he might be a bomber. She found herself looking for the nearest exit, as we are all enjoined to do by flight attendants before the plane takes off, in case of the need for swift exit.

There are reasonable grounds for suspicion, of course. Surveys — for whatever they are worth — show a surprising, and horrifying, degree of sympathy, if not outright support, for the bombers on the part of the young Muslim population of Britain. They show that a large number of Muslims in Britain want the implementation of Sharia law and think that murdering British Jews is justified simply because they are Jews. And when an atrocity is perpetrated by a Muslim, they evince no passion remotely comparable to that aroused by, say, the work of Salman Rushdie.

Mark Steyn cuts to the quick.

...the economic rationale for mass immigration turned out to be bogus: Muslims came in huge numbers to do "the jobs Britons won't do" and be textile workers in northern English towns. Thirty years later, there are no textile mills, but those northern English towns are Muslim.

The economic argument for mass immigration is always reductionist, simply because people do not think of themselves as solely (or even principally) economic entities. The government may see immigrants as textile workers or bus drivers or even neurosurgeons, but what matters is how those individuals see themselves - and as Europe has discovered a significant segment of that population has embraced a core identity unrelated to textile mills, NHS hospitals or any other economic enterprise.

Many of the people who supported the immigration/amnesty bill no doubt view the Mexicans coming here as a permanent source of cheap manual labor; much like black slaves, only without the fugitive slave laws. But that's not how they view themselves. People are not parts of a machine doing the the unquestioning bidding of the people who think they control the levers of power. This "machine" turns on its master. Assimilation into American culture - and there is an American culture - has fixed that problem in previous generations. Unfortunately, the culture is now not now geared to the "melting pot" but to the creation of separate islands, distinct and different, with their own customs and their own language. This is a recipe for disaster.

Not a lot of life at Live Earth.

This is funny:

“If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[bleepers]!” Madonna railed from the stage at London's Live Earth concert Saturday. “If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!”

You just can't beat that. What else could capture the canned juvenilia of a 48-year-old centimillionaire — who owns nine homes and has a “carbon footprint” nearly 100 times larger than the norm — hectoring a bunch of well-off, aging hipsters to show their Earth-love by jumping up and down like children? I suppose she could have said, “Now put your right foot in / Take your right foot out / Right foot in / Then you shake it all about…. That's what climate change is all about.”

Read the rest.

The War on Britain's Jews

From Little Green Footballs.

Patriotism Alert: Airman Shot In Heart By Anti-War Protestor; MSM Covers Up Anti-War Motive

Want to know the kicker? The MSM is covering up the anti-war lunatic's motive, refusing to inform the public why he shot the airman.

this 22 year old guy walked up to him and asked him if he lived in the house. When Jon said yes, the guy said “not any more” and shot him point blank in the chest. He tried to shoot him again, but his gun jammed. Jonathan made it into the house. The guy then shot himself. Turns out the guy left a couple of suicide notes stating how much he hated the military and he wanted to go out making a statement, so he chose to make his statement on Independence Day trying to kill a soldier.
The most the MSM will say is that he was "angry at the government." Angry in what way? They're not telling. They know, but they've decided the public doesn't need to know such trifling details.

From the American Thinker:

An Air Force airman was shot by antiwar protestor on July 4th, but the establishment media and liberal blogs yawn. Airman Jonathan Schrieken, 22, is fighting for his life after being shot in the heart by a gunman intending to make an antiwar statement, while standing outside his home near McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey on July 4th. Airman Schrieken, a loadmaster with the 6th Airlift Squadron based at McGuire, remains in critical condition at a Camden, New Jersey hospital.

The antiwar gunman, Matthew J. Marren, killed himself after shooting Schrieken and left two suicide notes explaining that he was "mad at the government".


Meanwhile, the establishment media ignores the story. The initial Associated Press report on the incident never mentioned Marren's motive for shooting Schrieken. The first media outlet to discuss Marren's intent to make an antiwar statement on the 4th of July by killing a member of our military was Phillyburbs.com, and the story has only gained national attention after a post over the weekend at LittleGreenFootballs.com.


A member of Marren's family described to Phillyburbs.com his reasons behind the attack:

Marren's aunt, Terina Henderson of Trion, Ga., said she spoke to Marren's mother yesterday who told her Marren left two notes, one in his home and one in his car, indicating he was upset with the government.

She said she did not know the exact wording in the notes, but said Marren was "mad at the government and wanted to make a statement ... that's why he did what he did on the Fourth of July."
Over at LGF, a friend of the Schrieken family described the attack:

He had been on leave here in Ohio and got back to his home off base and was unpacking stuff from his car when this 22 year old guy walked up to him and asked him if he lived in the house. When Jon said yes, the guy said "not any more" and shot him point blank in the chest. He tried to shoot him again, but his gun jammed. Jonathan made it into the house. The guy then shot himself.
This makes it clear that Marren had nothing short of murder on his mind. Providentially, the gun jammed, allowing for Schrieken to escape into his house, where he lived with several other Airmen.


If Airman Schrieken had been an abortionist or homosexual, this story would be front page news for the New York Times and the lead story on CBS News with Katie Couric for at least the next month. But since Schrieken is serving in the military, even his hometown newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, has ignored this story.


Predictably, a law enforcement spokesman says that Marren's suicide notes "were indicative of an individual suffering from mental-health problems", but that raises the question of how anyone could identify anyone suffering from mental-health problems amidst those devoted to bizarre conspiracy theories and the virulent anti-Americanism of the antiwar movement. If anything, Marren would have fit right in unnoticed.


It is also worth noting that Marren was merely following the logic of the anti-war movement's standard public rhetoric. Their language is laced with suggestive undertones justifying attacks against our military, calling our armed forces fighting the War on Terror "baby-killers", constantly invoking the specter of Abu Ghraib, and citing their grossly inflated statistics of civilians accidentally killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such reckless and unbalanced rhetoric (they're not quite as adept at keeping statistics on those murdered by terrorists) fuels the hatred that drives someone like Marren to violence against a member of our own military.


Antiwar supporters will no doubt disclaim any responsibility for Marren's attack, but in any other circumstance involving someone engaged in a politically incorrect crime, Leftists would not hesitate to point their fingers at the conservative movement. One might recall the attack on "right-wing talk radio" following Matthew Shepherd's murder and Hillary Clinton's indictment of the same after the Oklahoma City bombing. Add to that the attacks by the ACLU and others on the pro-life movement after the shootings of two abortion doctors in the 1990s.


But now that someone has acted on the antiwar movement's anti-military rhetoric, don't expect to hear any apologies from Cindy Sheehan, International A.N.S.W.E.R., Daily Kos, or Rep. John Murtha. And certainly don't expect the establishment media to give this heart-rending story the coverage it deserves.


I hope that Airman Schrieken will quickly and fully recover from his injuries. Realistically, his injuries may very well force him out of the military. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Schrieken family.

Thomas Sowell: Random Thoughts

Bill Clinton's attack on President Bush's commuting of Scooter Libby's prison sentence qualifies Clinton for the Guinness Book of World Records in chutzpa.

Whenever I hear terrorists referred to in the media as "militants," it is a painful reminder that we have degenerated to the point where we no longer even have the courage to talk straight.

Does anybody seriously believe that "hate speech" prohibitions will be applied to Muslims demonizing Jews, to blacks demonizing whites, or to women demonizing men?

Before we panic about "global warming," we should take a look at six-day weather forecasts and see how much they change during those six days -- quite aside from how much they differ from what the weather actually turns out to be.

Wisdom and cleverness are very different things. My nominations for the three wisest presidents would be Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan. For the three cleverest -- FDR, Nixon and Clinton.

In politics, there are few skills more richly rewarded than the ability to misstate issues in a way that will sound plausible and attractive.

Most of the time, I don't feel any different from the way I felt when I was 50 years younger. But that doesn't mean that I can actually do whatever I did when I was 50 years younger.

Bearish voters get Senate's goat

On the eve of Independence Day, the people of this great republic declared their independence from the United States Senate under the stirring battle-cry, "No legislation without explanation!" The geniuses who'd cooked up the "comprehensive" immigration bill's "grand bargain" behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the strong impression they regarded it as an affront to be required by the impertinent whippersnappers of the citizenry to address the actual content of the legislation.
[...]
For "the world's greatest deliberative body,'' this was a much more ominous popular insurrection than the conservative backlash against the president's nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Time and again, the remote insulated emirs were offered the opportunity to rise above their condescension and declined to do so. Sen. John McCain (R-Maverickistan) confidently asserted that he'd worked hard on this bill and knew it better than all these no-account nonentities riled up about it and then had to have it explained to him -- by bloggers on a conference call -- that he'd misunderstood a key provision of his own legislation: There was no requirement for illegal immigrants to pay back taxes. Their amnesty would come tax-free. Blustering senators who claimed to have drafted this thing had to be told what was in it by critics who'd actually taken the trouble to look at it.

Mark Steyn: British bomb plot and Michael Moore-style health care

There are many things wrong with U.S. health care, as there inevitably are with any health care system. The question is whether America wants to go down the British-Canadian-Cuban route, to name three government medical systems that Michael Moore admires in his new film "Sicko." Cuba, of course, is a totalitarian state, and even Hollywood celebrities, though they like to visit, wouldn't want to live there. (Incidentally, the best health treatment available on Cuba is at Gitmo.) The United Kingdom, by contrast, is a free society, but last week's incendiary Jeep Cherokee at Glasgow Airport has shone a rare light on the curious character of its government health system.

Of the eight persons arrested as of Friday in the terrorist plot, seven are doctors with the National Health Service (the eighth is the wife of one, and a lab technician at the same hospital). The bombs failed to go off because a medical syringe malfunctioned. I don't mean it malfunctioned as a syringe (even in the crumbling NHS, the syringes usually work) but as a triggering mechanism, to which it had been adapted, though evidently not too efficiently.

Does government health care inevitably lead to homicidal doctors who can't wait to leap into a flaming SUV and drive it through the check-in counter? No. But government health care does lead to a dependence on medical staff imported from other countries.

Some 40 percent of Britain's practicing doctors were trained overseas – and that percentage will increase, as older native doctors retire, and younger immigrant doctors take their place.
[...]
When the president talks about needing immigrants to do "the jobs Americans won't do," most of us assume he means seasonal fruit pickers and the maid who turns down your hotel bed and leaves the little chocolate on it. But in the United Kingdom the jobs Britons won't do has somehow come to encompass the medical profession.
[...]
Back at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, three doctors were under arrest, and the bomb squad performed a controlled explosion on a vehicle in the parking lot. Pulled from the flaming Cherokee, Dr. Kafeel Ahmed is now being treated for 90 percent burns in his own hospital by the very colleagues he sought to kill. But at one level he and Dr. Asha and Dr. Abdulla don't need to blow up anything at all. The fact that the National Health Service – the "envy of the world" in every British politician's absurdly parochial cliché – has to hire Wahhabist doctors with no background checks tells you everything about where the country's heading.

It's not media bias if you believe in it?

Dan Harrison, an NBC senior vice president, does not back away from the message. He calls the Gore effort "an initiative we believe in," including parent company General Electric. "I really don't think climate change is a political issue," Harrison says.

Really?
Green is the new yellow. Except that I think Hearst and the Yellow Journalists knew what they were doing. These guys are so clueless that they really believe there's nothing political about causes they agree with. Or maybe I'm giving them too much, er, credit.

How to Fight Bias in the Media

Dutch conservative takes his revenge on Liberal media.

When conservative columnist Joshua Livestro was confronted with censorship at the Dutch public broadcasting corporation, he didn’t get mad – he got even.

When I was invited to appear as a right-wing columnist on Dutch public broadcasting corporation NPS’ main Sunday politics show Buitenhof my friends had warned me that it was a recipe for disaster.
[...]

By the end of the season, I had all the evidence I needed. So when after my final column I was told that the editors had decided that “unfortunately” my efforts would no longer be required next season, I sprang into action.

I phoned my editor at Holland’s largest circulation newspaper, the solidly conservative De Telegraaf (I write the foreign affairs column there). Within a matter of minutes, we hatched a two-part plan.

Stage one was a hard-hitting column combined with front-page splash in which I revealed the censorship and political bias with which I’d been confronted during my time at the program. With their response inevitably focusing on my not meeting their exacting standards (what else could they say? They were hardly going to admit to being biased), I was then going to use phase two to leak minutes of editorial board meetings and e-mails from individual editors which refuted that claim.

The minutes were always brief, but what little they did mention was invariably favorable. One column was called ‘funny’, another ‘good’, a third ‘nice and short, forceful’. E-mails from individual editors were equally supportive. “Nice column! I completely agree!”, editor Barbara Coolen wrote about one of them. “Good analysis, good subject,” was Van Friesland’s comment on another one.

By the time these quotes – as well as the censored columns, which I offered to a newly founded Dutch conservative magazine called Opinio (www.opinio.nu) – had made their way through the Dutch blogosphere, it was “game over” for Buitenhof. What started with a minor problem – getting rid of an unwanted columnist whose views just didn’t fit in with the cozy progressive consensus – ended in a week from hell: Members of Parliament asking questions about censorship in public broadcasting, newspaper editorials and columnists rounding on the Buitenhof editors, inboxes filling up with e-mails from members of the public complaining about the misappropriation of their tax money, and the management of NPS and its sister station NOS being forced publicly to defend themselves against charges of bias.

So, you ask, at the end of all this, do I feel good about what I’ve done? Good? I feel great! And would I do it all again exactly the same way I’ve done it now?

You bet I would.

James Lileks on the French Revolution

At least I’m not easily depressed. (Link goes to opinion piece about the author's disinclination to celebrate the fourth because of that whole "independence" thing, and desire for Darth Vader to speak truth to power at an Anti-Cheney rally that will use the power of Paris Hilton and rap stars to bring the nation together again. The author also wishes we would storm some sort of Bastille next week. I’ve noticed that most people who romanticize the French Revolution are a little unclear on the details, particularly how it turned out. They seem to think it resulted in two strokes of the guillotine – the king, who obviously deserved it, and Marie Antoinette, who kinda-sorta deserved it because she was disconnected from the people and said they should eat cake, tee hee. Bitch! (Unless you're holding her up as a victim of 18th century social norms imposed by the oligarchical phallocracy, in which case: Martyr!) The fact that it all dissolved into the worst sort of Utopian drivel, sectarian quarrles, nasty radical egalitarianism and the rise of ideologically-inspired state terror – well, yes, but they meant well. So did Vader, depending on your viewpoint. My favorite line:

Maybe we need Bono and Brad and Angelina there, to focus on the crisis in America and not the crisis in Africa, at least for a few months.

It's like a neutron star of inanity, that line; like a neutron star, it collapses into a dot so dense that the editor's pen is forever stuck on the event horizon, unable to move forward and cross it out.

Jihadists against climate change

Boy, even these incendiary docs are getting with the beat:

TERROR suspect Kafeel Ahmed asked his family to pray for him hours before he crashed a burning Jeep into Glasgow Airport...

Police in India were yesterday questioning his father Maqboo, mother Zakia, both doctors, and student sister Sadia about the phone calls. In the first message on May 5, according to the Times of India newspaper, Ahmed said: "I am involved in a large-scale confidential project. It is about global warming. I cannot reveal the details.

"The project has to be started in the United Kingdom. Various people from various countries are involved in this.."

His poor family. They figured he must have been referring to Live Earth and sat through 14 hours expecting to see him, Dr Mohammed, Dr Muhammed, Dr Mohammad and Dr Muhammad as back-up singers to Cat Stevens.

Ayatollah al-Gore has a lot to answer for - though, in fairness, Glasgow Airport did record record temperatures the other day.

Why Intellectuals Like Genocide

An excellent essay by Theodore Dalrymple on the intellectuals' love affair with genocide.

Australia confronts human beings with their existential responsibility to make happiness for themselves, and this is sometimes a hard responsibility to face up to. For if you are unhappy in a country like Australia, you have to consider the possibility that the problem lies with you rather than with the conditions that surround you.

This is a disagreeable thing, particularly for an intelligentsia, which is deprived by it of a providential role for itself. What does an intelligentsia do when a country is already as satisfactory in its political arrangements and social institutions as any country has ever been? Intelligentsias do not like the kind of small problems that day to day existence inevitably throws up, such as termites in the woodwork or conflict at work over desk-space: they like to get their intellectual teeth into weightier, meatier problems.

What could be a weightier problem than a prosperous, fortunate country that was founded upon genocide? Clearly, if it was so founded, an intelligentsia is urgently needed to help it emerge from the dark moral labyrinth in which it exists, hitherto blindly. For only an intelligentsia is sufficiently used to thinking in abstractions to be qualified to act as guide to the nation.

It's all About ME!

Here's a primal scream that appeared in today's WaPo. It's from a woman in Arlington, Va., whose Marine son is headed for Iraq in a few weeks. She's upset, and who can blame her? She's doubly upset since she thinks the war is senseless, and I understand that. She's triply upset because she wrote a Master's thesis some years ago at Columbia about Iraqi Kurds, and there she begins to lose me. And then she tells us about the view from her old office (of Arlington Cemetery), and about her grim feelings when she hears flyovers for the funerals there. Indeed, the whole thing is not about him at all, but about her. Her feelings, her politics, her history. There's really nothing about him at all (nor about his father, for that matter), except for dark thoughts about what might become of him.

The Son - Roasted - As the Main Course

The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11-years-old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man's words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, "What did he say?" Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

These are the people the NY Times and the Democrats want us to surrender to.

Text of White House Letter to Congress on Executive Privilege

Dear Chairman Leahy and Chairman Conyers:

I write in response to your letter of June 29, 2007.

Let me begin by conveying a note of concern over your letter's tone and apparent direction in dealing with a situation of this gravity. We are troubled to read the letter's charge that the President's "assertion of Executive Privilege belies any good faith attempt to determine where privilege truly does and does not apply." Although we each speak on behalf of different branches of government, and perhaps for that reason cannot help having different perspectives on the matter, it is hoped you will agree, upon further reflection, that it is incorrect to say that the President's assertion of Executive Privilege was performed without "good faith."

As the letter from the Acting Attorney General explained in considerable detail, the assertion of Executive Privilege here is intended to protect a fundamental interest of the Presidency: the necessity that a President receive candid advice from his advisors and that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the President, with each other, and with others inside and outside the Executive Branch. In the present setting, where the President's authority to appoint and remove U.S. Attorneys is at stake, the institutional interest of the Executive Branch is very strong. The Acting Attorney General's letter clearly identifies the subject matter of the deliberations and communications at issue and provides an extensive treatment of the issues implicated by the subpoenas and the legal basis for the President's assertion of Executive Privilege.

Your letter does not dispute these principles. It does not take issue with the practical fact that, in order to fulfill his constitutional functions, the President, no less than Members of Congress and federal judges, needs the protection of a principle that shields his close advisors from open-ended inquiry by another branch of government. The letter does not challenge the exclusive character of the President's appointment and removal power, nor does the letter attempt to establish a constitutional basis for the Committees' inquiry into this matter. Although the letter sets forth certain generalizations relating to Congress's investigatory authority, it does not explain how that authority extends to White House communications about the possible dismissal and replacement of U.S. Attorneys. And, even if Congress's authority might be deemed to extend that far, the question remains whether the Committees have demonstrated that the information sought here is demonstrably critical to the responsible fulfillment of the Committees' legislative functions.

In response to your inquiry concerning the mechanics of the President's assertion of the privilege, you may be assured that the President's assertion here comports with prior practices in similar contexts, and that it has been appropriately documented. I do hope that your Committees will appreciate that I write on behalf of the President and therefore understand that my letter of June 28, 2007 precisely expresses the President's position on this matter.

Your letter also "direct[s]" the President to provide certain additional information to the Committees before 10:00 a.m. on July 9, 2007. The letter goes on to say that a very detailed "privilege log" is necessary "to facilitate ruling on" claims of Executive Privilege and your letter thereafter announces an intention to "take the necessary steps to rule on [the President's executive] privilege claims." We are aware of no authority by which a congressional committee may "direct" the Executive to undertake the task of creating and providing an extensive description of every document covered by an assertion of Executive Privilege. Given the descriptions of the materials in question that have already been provided, this demand is unreasonable because it represents a substantial incursion into Presidential prerogatives and because, in view of the open-ended scope of the Committees' inquiry, it would impose a burden of very significant proportions.

One final observation underscores the preordained futility of any White House compliance with this demand. When your letter states that your Committees "will take the necessary steps to rule on [the President's] privilege claims and appropriately enforce our subpoenas" and that the Committees will enforce their subpoenas "[w]hether or not [they] have the benefit of the information" (emphasis added), only one conclusion is evident: the Committees have already prejudged the question, regardless of the production of any privilege log. In such circumstances, we will not be undertaking such a project, even as a further accommodation.

As noted in my previous letter, as we remain at the present impasse, the President feels compelled to assert Executive Privilege with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers covering White House consideration, deliberations or communications, whether internal or external, relating to the possible dismissal or appointment of United States Attorneys, including consideration of possible responses to congressional and media inquiries on the United States Attorneys matter, consistent with the advice provided by the Acting Attorney General. The President has instructed me to notify you and the counsel for Ms. Taylor and Ms. Miers of his decision and to inform counsel of his direction to Ms. Taylor and Ms. Miers not to provide this testimony.

I renew again the President's offer: in the absence of subpoenas he remains willing to provide you with information as previously offered. And I likewise convey the President's request that further interbranch relations in this matter be distinguished by respect for the constitutional principles of both institutions and marked by a presumption of goodwill on all sides.

Respectfully yours,

Fred F. Fielding
Counsel to the President