Monday, May 4, 2009
Andrew McCarthy's Letter to Attorney General Holder
Dear Attorney General Holder:
This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.
The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants -- or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clear -- most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany -- that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States ).
Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop...
[ McCarthy wrote Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad, and was the lead prosecutor in the investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- MUST READ > ]
READ MORE
Necessary 'Shortcuts'
In his press conference Wednesday night, President Obama offered a nice little sermonette on ''shortcuts.''
During the war, the Brits ran an interrogation center, ''the Cage,''in one of London's fanciest neighborhoods, where they worked over 3,573 captured Germans, sometimes brutally. The Free French movement, headquartered in London, savagely beat detainees under the nose of British authorities...
[The point? Not that anything is A-OK - but that all things are relative, and when under murderous threat 'scaring' people who know their next target(s) is hardly 'torture'.]
READ MORE
ABC's Shame
ABC runs a report showing the names and faces of two CIA contractors who may have had a role in the waterboarding of KSM and Abu Zubaydah. The network apparently outsourced this report to a freelancer named Matthew Cole, whose record in Nexis includes just three bylines -- two stories for Salon (one of which about "how Bush administration aid to Pakistan helps fund insurgents who kill U.S. troops"), and one for the San Jose Mercury News just two days after 9/11 reporting "anxiety about a backlash" among Muslims, who assure the reporter that the attack "has nothing to do with Islam."
In other words, Cole is a left-wing partisan with questionable reporting chops. This is obvious from the quality of the story tonight. Cole repeats the now throughly debunked claim that Zubaydah and KSM were waterboarded 83 and 183 times respectively. He posts video of the two refusing to answer questions in what is staged as a faux perp walk with no discernible news value other than to portray them as criminals. And, most amazingly, Cole indicts the two men for not having any experience prior to their work for the CIA -- as though being "previously involved in the U.S. military program to train pilots how to survive behind enemy lines and resist brutal tactics" isn't relevant.
ABC's conduct here, exposing two men who will now become obvious targets for terrorists and left-wing extremists, is deplorable. Will the Obama administration investigate who leaked their identities? Or is it now open-season on Americans who were only doing what their government asked of them in order to protect their country from attack?
READ MORE
[Then > Contact ABC News
.
Report: Intelligence Warns Israel is now an ‘Obstacle to Obama'
[HT:WM]
According to a classified intelligence assessment handed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama and his senior advisors wish to
“incrementally diminish U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel.”
A report in World Tribune quoted an Israeli source familiar with the intelligence assessment who said that
"Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and [those who were] until now the worst enemies of the United States. Under this policy,” ... “we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle.”
According to the report, which has not been corroborated by news sources other than World Tribune, Israeli sources said the U.S. Administration would reject Israel’s intelligence opinions on Iran and Syria while advancing the Obama plan to reconcile with the two states, although both were listed as state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. State Department.
The Israeli intelligence document reportedly predicted that Obama would maintain his policy of appeasing Iran and Syria through 2010. It determined that Obama is convinced that appeasing Iran and Syria would make a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan possible... [snip]
At the same time, the intelligence officials estimated that Obama would restrict U.S. arms exports to Israel in an effort to deny it systems that it could use in a raid on Iran or Syria. The intelligence sources said this policy was begun during the last year of the Bush administration and predicted that it would intensify under Obama....
READ MORE
Law Professor's Intifada
George Bisharat is a law professor at the University of California's Hastings Law School. Bisharat has been at the forefront of the efforts to implement an economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. Bisharat also is leading the charge to have Israelis charged with war crimes over the recent Gaza invasion.
In the New York Times, Bisharat got to repeat his charges in an article titled Israel on Trial. In the piece, Bisharat uses the disputed accounts of atrocities by Israeli soldiers, which have been revealed to be based on rumors, to argue that Israel committed war crimes.
Bisharat’s long history of anti-Israeli writings is exposed in a post at Legal Insurrection Blog by Professor William Jacobson of Cornell Law School. The post is worth a read because it sheds light on the mindset of those who use false narratives of victimization to attack Israel.
READ MORE
Wise words from Harper
The recent words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed to a gathering of Jews, members of Chabad Lubavitch, on Parliament Hill need wide circulation."Anti-Semitism is a pernicious evil that must be exposed, that must be confronted, that must be repudiated, whenever and wherever it appears. Fuelled by lies and paranoia we have learned from history it is an evil so profound, indeed as we saw in Mumbai, that it is ultimately a threat to us all."
In speaking forcefully as he did, Harper reminded Canadians how in troubled times such as the present the exclusive race-hatred against Jews, as witnessed in the hunt for killing them by Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai, can precipitate disaster for many...
[Recommended > ]
READ MORE
America will not protect us, warns Rudd
The Rudd Government has acknowledged that the supremacy of the US has begun to fade and Australia is preparing for an uncertain future in which it can no longer rely on the protection of its main ally. In a fundamental shift in defence plans, the Government has explicitly declared that US primacy in the Asia-Pacific - the bedrock of the nation's security since World War II - may be ending.
[The messages 'we' send matter.]
READ MORE
Clinton says China and Iran gains in Latin America "disturbing"
Washington - Iran and China are making ''disturbing'' gains in Latin America and Washington can no longer afford to shun leaders from nations like Venezuela and Bolivia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. '
The Obama administration is working to improve relations with Latin American nations, including Venezuela...
READ MORE
Report: U.N. spent U.S. funds on shoddy projects
.
Two United Nations agencies spent millions in U.S. money on substandard Afghanistan construction projects, including a central bank without electricity and a bridge at risk of "life threatening" collapse, according to an investigation by U.S. federal agents.
The U.N. ran a "quick impact" infrastructure program from 2003 to 2006 under a $25 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The U.N. delivered shoddy work, diverted money to other countries and then stonewalled U.S. efforts to figure out what happened, according to a report by USAID's inspector general obtained by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act."Due to the refusal of the United Nations to cooperate with this investigation, questions remain unanswered,"
the report says.
READ MORE
French Workers Shut Down Eiffel Tower: A Preview Of Socialism
A Rasmussen poll here in America has just found that only 53% Americans prefer capitalism to socialism.
Care to see what the alternative looks like?
''Strike closes Eiffel Tower; worker’s demands not known,''
No one even needs an excuse not to work in France anymore. Coming up with things like ''demands'' takes work and effort....
READ MORE
Patients 'more likely to die' when EU directive on 48-hour week is established, doctors warn
Patients will be at risk if the Government implements plans to stop doctors working more than 48 hours a week, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons warned today.
'Patient safety will be reduced, so it follows that patients are more likely to die,' said John Black, a former general surgeon at Worcestershire Royal Hospital.
The vast majority of doctors think the European Working Time Directive, due to be introduced on August 1, is dangerous, he said. [snip]
'We are also concerned for our workforce and the hours they work and we want to provide doctors with a good work life balance."
[So government now determines what's to be an acceptable work-life balance {which it will 'provide'}. Thank goodness; none of us serfs could set that for ourselves.
Europe the model? ]
READ MORE
The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism
Tea parties, 'ethical populism,' and the moral case against
There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise -- the principle at the core of American culture.
Despite President Barack Obama's early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the "tea parties" that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop up those who engaged in corporate malfeasance and mortgage fraud.
The data support the protesters' concerns. In a publication with the ironic title, "A New Era of Responsibility," the president's budget office reveals average deficits of 4.7% in the five years after this recession is over. The Congressional Budget Office predicts $9.3 trillion in new debt over the coming decade.
And what investments justify our leaving this gargantuan bill for our children and grandchildren to pay? Absurdities, in the view of many -- from bailing out General Motors and the United Auto Workers to building an environmentally friendly Frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas. On behalf of corporate welfare, political largess and powerful special interests, government spending will grow continuously in the coming years as a percentage of the economy -- as will tax collections... [snip]
This is an exhilarating time for proponents of freedom and individual opportunity. The last several years have brought malaise, in which the "conservative" politicians in power paid little more than lip service to free enterprise. Today, as in the late 1970s, we have an administration, Congress and media-academic complex openly working to change American culture in ways that most mainstream Americans will not like. Like the Carter era, this adversity offers the first opportunity in years for true cultural renewal...
[Ok, I guess there could be an up-side to living in interesting times - for our children's' sake let's all rise to the occassion, shall we? Starting here > Highly recommended > ]
READ MORE
Behind the Chrysler bankruptcy
Chrysler is going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, despite the Obama administration’s efforts to keep it out. The problem was that a group of small bondholders rejected the deal that car czar Steven Rattner and his deputy (and it seems the real dealmaker) Ron Bloom.
The bondholders made a good point. They are secured creditors, and in our bankruptcy law secured creditors get paid off in full before unsecured creditors get anything. That’s a sound legal principle: why would secured creditors lend anyone anything unless they can get their security back if the loan isn’t paid off? In this case, the small bondholders were willing to settle for only 60% of what they were owed. But, they complain, the government wouldn’t negotiate directly with them, but only through JPMorganChase, which (unwillingly) took TARP money on October 13 and thus is under pressure to do what the government wants.
Translation into politispeak: The government squeezed the small bondholders too hard in order to protect the United Auto Workers, which of course has over the years been a bounteous source of money (and manpower) for the Democratic party. The government can muscle the big banks, but it can’t (at least not yet) muscle creditors whom it hasn’t forced to take its money.
READ MORE
Agenda will ruin U.S. for years
Let's face it, most of you fell in love with Obama for one of two reasons. He either seemed like this new type of politician who was going to ride into Washington and bring about reform and change, or he simply wasn't George W. Bush. Either way, you bought into something quite different than what you got... [snip]
All this and more is not enough to dissuade Obama supporters or the media (two interchangeable terms). What might get their attention in the long run, however, is the economy; especially the precipitous drop in the stock market since his election. Now to hear Obama tell it, it was all an inherited problem from "you know who."
For all the hype about how smart Obama is, it's clear to many that when it comes to business, he has gone out of his way to make the engine of this country the whipping boy for all our problems. Many Americans, of course, like this tone from the White House, since it's easy to hate "Big Oil," "Big Drug," "Big Banks."
When socialist governments need someone to blame, they use this tactic to divert attention from the real culprits - greedy politicians...
READ MORE
Get ready for Obama’s coming hyperinflation
Santayana’s maxim — those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it — has grown threadbare from heavy use. But it unavoidably comes to mind this week, as President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill blithely put the final touches on the chief executive’s proposed 2010 federal budget.
With an unprecedented deficit that’s approaching $2 trillion, this budget proposal is a surefire prescription for hyperinflation. ...
READ MORE
A scientist forces Al Gore to back down
For years, Al Gore has predicted that man's sins of carbon dioxide will bring calamity and apocalypse. He cited an increase in natural disasters.
Gore quietly dropped the contention that the increase is connected to manmade global warming this week after being called on it by Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado.
"Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation," reported Andrew Revkin on a blog for the New York Times.
"The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels."
This was not happenstance. Pielke called Gore on his assertions. The link between manmade activity and natural disasters has not been established.
CRED, the source cited by Gore, even said so...
[But it was Gore who was a guest at Obama's Stare-at-the-Union address...]
READ MORE
Green hysteria shackles our economic growth
[HT:NP]
I am surprised so many people in Europe, the US and elsewhere have come to support policies underpinned by hysteria over global warming, particularly cap-and-trade legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions and subsidies for "green" energy sources.
I am convinced this is a misguided strategy - not only because of the uncertainty about the dangers that global warming might pose, but also because of the certainty of the damage that policies aimed at mitigation will cause.
I am amazed to see people going along with the currently fashionable political argument that policies such as cap-and-trade, government mandates and subsidies for renewable energy can actually benefit an economy. It is claimed that government, working together with business, will create "a new energy economy", that the businesses involved will profit and that everyone will be better off.
This is a fantasy. Cap-and-trade can only 'work' by raising energy prices. Consumers who are forced to pay higher prices for energy will have less money to spend on other things. While the individual companies that provide the higher-priced "green" energy may do well, the net economic effect will be negative...
READ MORE
Cap and Trade a ‘Declaration of War,’
The congressional Democrats’ cap-and-trade plan to tax carbon emissions could cost every American family as much as $3,100 a year and is equivalent to a “declaration of war on the Midwest,” Republican lawmakers told CNSNews.com this week.
But Democrats say the plan can be accomplished without imposing a net cost on the American people...
[They look right at us an say it - and the press will allow them to get away with it. Are you fooled?]
READ MORE
Drug smugglers allegedly move into N.M. town
.
COLUMBUS, N.M. - This dusty little border town with almost no visible means of support has been seeing something of a boom in the past year: Brand-new Lincoln Navigators and Cadillac Escalades with flashy wheel rims are parked just off the bleak main drag. Homes are selling quickly, sometimes for cash.
The source of this sudden wealth? An influx of Mexican drug smugglers, investigators say...
READ MORE
Plan Would Deploy Guard Near Mexico
The Pentagon and Homeland Security Department are developing contingency plans to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border under a $350 million initiative that would expand the U.S. military's role in the drug war, according to Obama administration officials.
The circumstances under which the troops could be deployed have not been determined, the officials said.
[Meanwhile, the fence?]
READ MORE
Amnesty? Senator Schumer Chairs Comprehensive Immigration Reform Hearing Today
Senator “Chuck” Schumer (D. N.Y.) will chair a hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform later today, called “Can We Do It and How?”
If past is prologue, with Mr. Schumer crafting immigration reform expect amnesty and a policy that may ultimately hurt America...
[Get ready, they're about to try it again.]
READ MORE
Academe Has Deformed Students' Character
The perspicacious Peter Wood asks how our system of higher education has formed students' character, and his response is not for the faint of heart:
So is the character of students shaped by our system of higher education best summarized as conformist? To a large extent, yes. The progressive left is counting on a vast, quiescent consensus among the college-educated, a consensus sufficient to end the culture wars and usher in a reign of one-sided agreement on all important issues. The left’s near total domination of education at all levels, including colleges and universities, has given it ample opportunity to instill its basic values. These include a settled hatred of Western civilization, an elevation of identity groups and corresponding devaluation of common humanity, and a preference for the homogeneous group over the free-spirited individual.
Along with the conformity comes a warmth-seeking, affirmation-thirsty need for the therapeutic. College graduates today have been used to a life of self-esteem-enhancing bromides. They seldom see difficulty as valuable in its own right. Grandstanding comes more easily to these folks than doing; and accomplishment without an audience is almost unthinkable.
The character that contemporary American education seems most to foster is also a person unmoored to any abiding sense of reality. He or she is ambitious, dissatisfied, and vaguely angry. College has made it a settled fact that America is a profoundly unfair society, but that the “structural inequalities” run so deep that there is little that can be done about them. This allows the alternatives of resentful passivity or frenetic pursuit of symbolic protests and acts of atonement. Often you see both in the same person. Lethargically pessimistic one day, stridently assertive the next.
If character is destiny — and Wood's analysis on the mark — can the end of America as we've known and cherished it be far behind?
READ MORE
Time’s Liberal Bias Taught in Schools
As if school kids didn't get enough liberal propaganda. Whether parents know it or not, millions of students across the country have been receiving biased news magazines in the classroom. Without adult guidance, children are at risk to take as fact the consistently liberal views of Time magazine.
Through Great American Opportunities, people can order magazine subscriptions and earn Time for Kids subscriptions for the school of their choice. Kindergarten through sixth-graders will then receive this publication free of charge.
According to its website, "The Time For Kids Program helps schools receive the best in current weekly classroom news magazines for students in grades K-6 at no cost. TFK delivers three weekly news magazines to over 3.9 million students."
This program comes from a magazine that has published articles on how kids are bad for the environment. As CMI noted previously, Time's article on May 8 described this environmental problem...
[Parents, do you know what your kids a being 'taught' in school?]
READ MORE
Right-Wing College Group Riles Students on Campuses Nationwide*
The conservative political group Youth for Western Civilization is currently organized on at least seven university campuses. According to its Web site, the group hopes to inspire Western youth on the "basis of pride in their American and Western heritage," counter and ultimately defeat "leftism on campus" and create a social movement in which a right-wing subculture is an alternative to what it calls a "poisonous and bigoted" campus climate.
"A great part of college is definitely meeting people of different backgrounds, but a multicultural ideology teaches that we should appreciate things just because they're different from our culture with no regards to the quality of the culture and that all cultures are inherently equal," said Trevor Williams, president of YWC's Vanderbilt chapter. "I absolutely disagree."
But students who lean left are not welcoming their new neighbor. Those opposed to YWC say its message teeters on hate speech and has no place at institutions of higher learning... [snip]
Officials at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which identifies and tracks hate groups in the U.S., told FOXNews.com that the YWC is not currently on its list, but some of the group's views are "suspect," including the notion that Western civilization is somehow superior. [?!?]
"We're definitely monitoring them," said SPLC spokewoman Heidi Beirich. "We will look at them for hate group status."
[America are we paying attention? This institutional lack of tolerance for any political view not of the left, with potential criminal ramifications, is something that should outrage us all.
*Re: 'Nationwide': 7 campuses out of >1600 Universities listed at http://www.allaboutuni.com/index.php - yup, that's an epidemic all right.]
READ MORE
FCC Announces May 7 'Diversity Committee' Meeting - Behold a New 'Fairness' Doctrine
Behold one of the new "Fairness" Doctrines - "media diversity" - coming soon to a radio station near you.
President Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the names of the thirty-one members of their Advisory Committee On Diversity For Communications In The Digital Age. This May 7 gathering is made up of a laundry list of left-wing grievance groups, with a smattering of radio and television companies included to break up the monotony.
Not a single conservative organization is taking part in this Commission - more than a dozen Leftist groups are. A little ironic for a "diversity" panel, is it not?
Chairing the meeting is Henry Rivera, a former FCC Commissioner who was (and presumably still is) a strong proponent of the Censorship Doctrine, also mis-known as the "Fairness" Doctrine.
On February 26, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin - one of the myriad past "Fairness" Doctrine champions - sponsored an amendment, passed via a 57-41 Party-line vote, which forces the FCC to "take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to 'ensure' that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest."
The proponents of station owner affirmative action are the same Leftists who were so ardently in favor of reinstating the Doctrine. One can thusly be forgiven for seeing this as an alternative route for the Left to reach their long-sought original destination - the silencing of conservative and Christian talk radio via governmental regulatory fiat.
And it's not just our imagination - it's also our lying eyes. The Center for American Progress is a left-wing hack outfit headed by former Clinton Administration and Obama Transition Team adviser John Podesta. And they released on January 22, 2007 a report entitled "Local Media Diversity Matters - Measure Media Diversity According to Democratic Values, Not Market Values."
If they can succeed in making it impossible for talk radio to operate as a business, talk radio will cease to operate. Leftist problem solved.
"Media diversity" is just the latest Leftist attempt to get this done.
READ MORE
[Then >
please join me in working against it by joining MRC's Free Speech Alliance - and as always, pass it on...]
.
What Would Happen If Government Tried to Build an iPhone?
A: It would cost roughly six times as much and not work.
The census decided that one of these crazy new smartphone/PDAs that all the hepcats are using would help in their counting. But simply writing a new piece of software for an existing Blackberry or iPhone was way too elegant a solution. So the governent threw millions at a military contractor and produced 525,000 of what looks like the Trabant of smartphones. The bottom line:In other words, the relatively lame device my friendly enumerator was carrying, which cost $600 million, doesn’t actually work well enough to use for its intended purpose, is still being used in the field, perhaps so that it can be readied for 2020? Anyone believe that we’ll be able to do better than a half-pound, paperback-book sized plastic brick within ten years?
[Cryalot {Chrysler-Fiat} anyone?]
READ MORE
Meet the happy-faced spider sure to make you smile
This amazing happy-faced spider found in Hawaii is bound to leave you beaming from ear to ear. The tiny insect, which measures just a few millimetres across, has developed bizarre markings which look just like a smiling face.
Spider expert and geneticist Dr Geoff Oxford, 62, from the University of York, said studying happy-face spiders was a real joy.
"I must admit when I turned over the first leaf and saw one it certainly brought a smile to my face."
READ MORE
Sex on Queen's lawn at Windsor Castle
A couple were arrested after being caught having sexual intercourse on the Queen's lawn outside Windsor Castle. The pair, in their early thirties, stripped on a private grass bank at the castle, where Her Majesty was in residence.
They were watched by crowds of tourists. Several Japanese tourists filmed the couple for up to twenty minutes before they were arrested by armed Royal Protection Squad officers...
READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
