World Forums

News flash.

Christian family reportedly murdered by Muslims in the USA.

According to Ted Kennedy, Dean & Eugene, Bush is to blame.

Developing...

Felix

Don't worry, I'm not in a hurry... As you might have noticed I'm rather slow in answering myself, so take as much time as you want.

Zeus wrote:Felix

Don't worry, I'm not in a hurry... As you might have noticed I'm rather slow in answering myself, so take as much time as you want.

I know. It was yourself who mentioned in one of your last posts that yuo are a Bernese!

The Slavemasters VS Condi Rice...

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12474

James Taranto

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has endorsed the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state; the full Senate is set to confirm her tomorrow, a few hours after President Bush takes the oath of office. The vote was 16-2, with Barbara Boxer, the sweetheart of the Angry Left, and John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, casting the only "no" votes. Perhaps Kerry will vote "yes" tomorrow so he can say he voted against her before voting for her.

Clinton was going around the country, touting a coming Social Security "crisis." All of his administration's economic achievements, he said in February 1998, "are threatened by the looming fiscal crisis in Social Security." There should be no new spending — or, more importantly, no tax cuts — "before we take care of the crisis in Social Security that is looming when the baby boomers retire."

"We have a great opportunity now to take action now to avert a crisis in the Social Security system," Clinton said, again in February 1998. "By 2030, there will be twice as many elderly as there are today, with only two people working for every person drawing Social Security. After 2032, contributions from payroll taxes will only cover 75 cents on the dollar of current benefits. So we must act, and act now, to save Social Security."

In September, Vice President Al Gore went to the Capitol for a Social Security pep rally with congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and others. Gore said that in coming years — by 2032 — "Social Security faces a serious fiscal crisis." Everyone in the group stayed remarkably on-message as they warned that the future was dire.

"Save Social Security first," said Gore.

"Save Social Security first," said Gephardt.

"Save Social Security first," said Kennedy.

"Save Social Security first," said Boxer.

Today Democrats oppose Social Security reform, insist it's fine and needs no fixing.

Well, if the system was so bad then and is to fine now, does it mean it has gotten so fine during the first Presidency of George Bush?

Dems, perennial laughingstocks:)

Caught a report on Bush's first term yesterday on NPR.

They quoted him early on saying: "The surplus is the people's money, not the government's."

Sounds reasonable to me, but then again…the deficit is the people's debt, not the government's.

JibJab's back with a new cartoon. This one is called The second Term.

Even Hillary plays a role.

http://www.JibJab.com

Returning to my favourite topic here (secularism in America ;) ) :

This is a very strange (at least for me) example of secularism over the top:

DMV rejects 'JOHN316' license plate

What's next? Will car owners lose their car licenses for refusing to remove a John 3:16 sticker? I know it's unlikely, but there are definitely people out there who would like this to be the case.

That's pretty stupid. What if the guy's name is John and born on March 16.

BAH--PC is rearing it's complicit head again.

bineaz,

even without this being the case, I don't see at all why this kind of religious reference should possibly be outlawed. Whereas on the other hand, there is no problem accepting that a man named Steven Schröder or a woman called Helga Jung have no chance to get their initials on their car's number plates in Germany.

In an effort to heal the wounds of a deeply divided nation, U.S. President George Bush has decided his inauguration ceremony tomorrow will include a blend of both the red and the blue oaths of office.

The hybrid, or purple, oath reads as follows: "I, George W. Bush, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Congressional Democrats immediately criticized the president's decision, calling it "a cynical ploy designed to further divide the nation on the issue of whether Bush is really a uniter, not a divider."

Reason

Reports the AP via ABC News, the Duke of Chappaquidick--a key element of what has come to be known universally as the Stupid Grandson Theory--"mangled" the name of the Democrats' greatest hope for...what exactly is not sure, but there's a lot of hope there:

Kennedy...mangled the name of the Democrats' new star, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, calling him "Osama bin...Osama...Obama."

Reader's comment:

Teddy just loves to remind us why he was only Kennedy nobody bothered to assassinate.


LOL

Lol at the Teddy K. thing

As for social security, yeah definetly needs to be reformed, 2042 or 52 is right around the corner



http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 01,00.html

And even George Will finds the reasons given laughable... although of course he still agrees.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/geor ... come.shtml

Want more?

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi ... cZpzY0nMnU

The Wall Street Journal

Peggy Noonan

Way Too Much God
Was the president's speech a case of "mission inebriation"?

Friday, January 21, 2005

It was an interesting Inauguration Day. Washington had warmed up, the swift storm of the previous day had passed, the sky was overcast but the air wasn't painful in a wind-chill way, and the capital was full of men in cowboy hats and women in long furs. In fact, the night of the inaugural balls became known this year as The Night of the Long Furs.

Laura Bush's beauty has grown more obvious; she was chic in shades of white, and smiled warmly. The Bush daughters looked exactly as they are, beautiful and young. A well-behaved city was on its best behavior, everyone from cops to doormen to journalists eager to help visitors in any way.

For me there was some unexpected merriness. In my hotel the night before the inauguration, all the guests were evacuated at 1:45 in the morning. There were fire alarms and flashing lights on each floor, and a public address system instructed us to take the stairs, not the elevators. Hundreds of people wound up outside in the slush, eventually gathering inside the lobby, waiting to find out what next.

The staff--kindly, clucking--tried to figure out if the fire existed and, if so, where it was. Hundreds of inaugural revelers wound up observing each other. Over there on the couch was Warren Buffet in bright blue pajamas and a white hotel robe. James Baker was in trench coat and throat scarf. I remembered my keys and eyeglasses but walked out without my shoes. After a while the "all clear" came, and hundreds of us stood in line for elevators to return to our rooms. Later that morning, as I entered an elevator to go to an appointment, I said, "You all look happier than you did last night." A man said, "That was just a dream," and everyone laughed.

The inauguration itself was beautiful to see--pomp, panoply, parades, flags and cannonades. America does this well. And the most poignant moment was the manful William Rehnquist, unable to wear a tie and making his way down the long marble steps to swear in the president. The continuation of democracy is made possible by such personal gallantry.

There were some surprises, one of which was the thrill of a male voice singing "God Bless America," instead of the hyper-coloratura divas who plague our American civic life. But whoever picked the music for the inaugural ceremony itself--modern megachurch hymns, music that sounds like what they'd use for the quiet middle section of a Pixar animated film--was . . . lame. The downbeat orchestral arrangement that followed the president's speech was no doubt an attempt to avoid charges that the ceremony had a triumphalist air. But I wound up thinking: This is America. We have a lot of good songs. And we watch inaugurals in part to hear them.

Never be defensive in your choice of music.

The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.

No one will remember what the president said about domestic policy, which was the subject of the last third of the text. This may prove to have been a miscalculation.

It was a foreign-policy speech. To the extent our foreign policy is marked by a division that has been (crudely but serviceably) defined as a division between moralists and realists--the moralists taken with a romantic longing to carry democracy and justice to foreign fields, the realists motivated by what might be called cynicism and an acknowledgment of the limits of governmental power--President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise. But he did it in a way that left this Bush supporter yearning for something she does not normally yearn for, and that is: nuance.

The administration's approach to history is at odds with what has been described by a communications adviser to the president as the "reality-based community." A dumb phrase, but not a dumb thought: He meant that the administration sees history as dynamic and changeable, not static and impervious to redirection or improvement. That is the Bush administration way, and it happens to be realistic: History is dynamic and changeable. On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven.

The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."

It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. "Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people."

The speech did not deal with specifics--9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." "Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government. . . . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time." "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Powerline

More Immigration Follies

Michelle Malkin has the immigration beat covered like no one else in the media. Today she reports on an astonishing story: the Immigration and Naturalization Service has awarded a green card to an immigrant from Siberia named Eugueni Kniazev. Only one catch: Mr. Kniazev was murdered in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

That's right: the INS has no mechanism in place--still, more than three years after the September 11 attacks--to make sure that the people whose immigration status is under consideration are still alive. Which makes it pretty clear that they also have no idea whether those people are engaged in any undesirable (e.g., terrorist) activities.

There's this, too: I think we can safely assume that Mr. Kniazev applied for the change in his immigration status when he was still alive. Which means that it took the INS three and a half years, at a minimum, to respond to his request. And we know that wasn't because they were conducting such a thorough investigation. Can you imagine any enterprise outside the federal government where a person makes a request, three and a half years go by before the request is finally responded to, and this is considered acceptable performance?

A Department of Homeland Security offcial, when this fiasco was brought to his attention, responded that it is up to family members to notify the INS if an applicant for a change in status dies. Thus, while the incident was "unfortunate," the federal government makes no effort to prevent such occurrences. This answer was eerily reminiscent of the Washington election official who, explaining why it is so easy to commit voter fraud, said that "Instead of employing a rigorous screening process, they rely on people to be honest when registering or voting."

It's hard to say which is a worse mess: enforcement of immigration laws, or enforcement of voting laws.

Don't know if this account fits in this thread or the War on Terrorism thread (where I will also post it).

The arrest of more than a thousand peaceful protesters during Bush's inauguration has all the trappings of a police state action. Read the whole thing - from a detained eyewitness who managed to record the few images of this gross violation of civil iberties.

http://www.2600.com/rnc2004/

Anybody catch the gloomy faces in the mainstream media today?

I would think they would happy with the prospects of democracy in Iraq.

That is unless they have a hiddin agenda.

NAH

"The late Pat Moynihan used to joke when I asked him why liberals were so reluctant to consider changing Social Security so that it guaranteed wealth as well as income: "It's because they worry that wealth will turn Democrats into Republicans."

Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska, is the president of New School University, in New York City.

National Review

The Editorial

February 02, 2005

Pretty Please


Maybe we didn't ask nicely enough the first time around. When Howard Dean seemed to be hurtling toward the Democratic nomination in late 2003, we joined the bandwagon, running a cover emblazoned, "Please, Nominate This Man." We were being facetious, of course. We thought Dean would be a wondrous Democratic nominee for the Republican party, since he probably wouldn't have forced President Bush to break a sweat. Hence, our mock pleading. But all things considered, it is better that the Democratic party not slip entirely the surly bonds of reality, so we were happy that Democratic primary voters were sensible enough to reject the fevered left-wingery of Howard Dean.


But now he's back. And this time it isn't the supposedly unsophisticated Democratic caucus and primary voters who are swooning for Dean, but the party's insiders, the voting members of the Democratic National Committee. Freud could get an entire monograph on his theory of the "death drive" out of observing contemporary Democrats. The party is displaying an unquenchable thirst for irrelevance. Several theories have been advanced in the wake of Bush's reelection for the Democrats' troubles: a lack of seriousness on national security; an out-of-touch liberalism on social issues; an inability to sell its message in terms that connect with "red state" voters. The DNC is about to reject all these theories in favor of one of its own — all that ails the Democratic can be fixed by more of the same, only more so.

In his own northeastern liberalism, Dean makes John Kerry look like a figure out of the painting American Gothic. Dean's defenders say he governed as a moderate in Vermont. But moderation in Vermont is extremism in much of the rest of the country. And the fact is that Dean did not run as a moderate in the Democratic primaries, when he cemented his national image as a ranter against the Iraq war and tax cuts, even before his infamous Iowa scream. He was so far left on social issues that he pledged — riffing off of Bill Clinton's status as "the first black president" — to be the first gay president. DNC members counting on Dean to keep this all under wraps as he becomes a team player as chairman don't know their man.

But didn't he pioneer Internet fundraising? The post-mortems of his campaign in the media make it clear that the Internet activity grew up under Dean almost by accident, as a few web-savvy aides took advantage of the brushfire while the governor remained blissfully ignorant of the Internet and all its doings. Fundraising and organizing on the web are now irrevocably part of American politics. Kerry raised millions on the web. It doesn't take the supposed special expertise of Howard Dean.

How about organizational skills? Dean ran a laughably disorganized campaign beset by poisonous infighting of epic proportions. He flamed out in embarrassing fashion while running through $52 million in ways no one yet quite understands.

The appeal of Howard Dean is simply this: He has stood up at regional meetings of (generally left-wing) DNC members and delivered versions of his usual rants, prompting members to applaud and feel good about themselves as they bask in the old-time religion. That's it. As Dean said at the New York meeting, "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for," in a typically crude statement. The spectacle of his candidacy steaming toward the chairmanship makes a mockery of New Republic editor Peter Beinart's call for a return to the moral seriousness and maturity of the Democrats circa 1948. The DNC is looking as though it can't even muster the moral seriousness and maturity of the Democrats circa January 2004, when they relegated Dean to a devastating third-place finish in Iowa. The party's congressional leadership has half-heartedly tried to create an alternative to Dean, putting forward former congressman Tim Roemer, but he was doomed by his undue regard for unborn life and his past expressed willingness to modernize Social Security.

Of course, the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee will have a large say in the future of the party. Hillary Clinton seems to realize adjustments are necessary, moving center-ward on immigration and abortion. Say what you will about them, at least the Clintons have always been willing to accommodate American realities enough to win elections. But, in the meantime, there will be Dean, who would represent another step by the Democrats into the quicksand of outdated orthodoxies and self-pleasing emotionalism. We would prefer — since it would be better for the country — that the Democrats be the kind of responsible party they were during much of the Cold War, at least prior to Vietnam. But conservative Republicans will reap all sorts of benefits from a Democratic party resolute about wandering further into the wilderness. For that reason, contemplating the possibility of Dean as DNC chairman makes part of us want to beg, "Please, please, please, select this man."

Distortion

I recall writing about this before, but it bears repeating. Liberals so hate President Bush that their values have been distorted. Ordinarily, liberals support humanitarian intervention, especially when United Nations resolutions have been flouted. Ordinarily, liberals celebrate the flowering of democracy. Ordinarily, liberals are happy to see women liberated. But if President Bush is involved in any of these events, they must be opposed. It’s not just sad; it’s sickening. Hatred is a vile, disgusting emotion. It is also one of the most powerful. Unless and until liberals escape its influence—and they show no sign of doing so—they will be politically impotent.

Liberals no longer stand for anything. They stand against President Bush. They have become reactionaries. Sometimes I think that if President Bush came out foursquare in favor of massive redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, liberals would oppose it. They simply cannot bear being on the same side as President Bush on any issue. I suppose it’s a measure of the greatness of George W. Bush as president that he so distorts the values of his opponents. He acts; they react. He walks; they nip at his heels. He leads; they yelp and whine like frustrated puppies.

Keith Burgess-Jackson

Jay Nordlinger

I must say that the Eason Jordan matter amazed me — that his resignation amazed me. In fact, I had an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Sun titled "An Amazing Thing." I had no idea it would lead to this.

For one thing, I thought that no one who might have damning things to say would talk to reporters — because few want to offend CNN, even those who think ill of it: Virtually everyone wants to appear on that network (or any network). I thought that the wagons would circle tightly, and they did, to a degree.

But not tightly enough. The recent diversification of the media made it impossible for the story to be suppressed altogether.

Two things were key, I think: First, the World Economic Forum set up a blog for its 2005 meeting, and one participant in that blog — Florida businessman Rony Abovitz — wrote up what had occurred at the relevant panel. Second, the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens was on the scene. I have a feeling that his Feb. 10 op-ed piece — in which he classified Jordan's words as "defamatory innuendo" — was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Bret was a superb editor of the Jerusalem Post, and, back home for only a short while, he's already kicking booty.

And the U.S. blog community in general? A blessing, a boon — an alternative, prod, and corrective to an often unjust media establishment.

As I mentioned in that Sun op-ed piece, I'm not sure I'm too happy about Jordan's fall. I think that Eason Jordan is the right chief news executive for CNN, even as Christiane Amanpour is the right foreign correspondent, and Judy Woodruff the right domestic voice. I mean, the anchorman of CBS News ought to attend Democratic fundraisers. He ought to peddle false documents — declaring his sources "unimpeachable" — when trying to defeat a Republican president.

You know what I mean, right? Let them be flagrant, these people, rather than sly.

If CNN's chief news executive can't withhold truth about Saddam Hussein or slander the U.S. military, what can he do?

You know?



P.S. We do, Jay:)

Powerline

The Times Does Geometry

We've had a lot of fun at the expense of the New York Times' Corrections section, pointing out how it exposes the lack of basic, high school-level knowledge of history, literature, arithmetic and science on the part of the paper's reporters and editors. Today's Corrections section takes on the mysteries of geometry:

The Keeping Score column in SportsSunday on Jan. 23, about a mathematical formula for projecting the winner of the Super Bowl, misstated the application of the Pythagorean theorem, which the formula resembles. The theorem determines the length of the third side of a right triangle when the length of the two other sides is known; it is not used to determine the sum of the angles in a right triangle.
The Times is still searching for the elusive "formula" that governs the sum of the angles of a triangle.

Remember: These people think they are entitled to exercise power because they're smarter than you!

LOL

Rocky Mountain News


Campos: Freedom unused is abused
February 15, 2005

Over the past few days I've been bombarded with e-mails regarding the Ward Churchill scandal. Many have expressed astonishment at how someone like Churchill could have been hired in the first place, let alone tenured and made chair of a department.

It's a good question, but it's not one that any of the academics who've written me have asked. We already know the answer.

One of the many ironies of this scandal that threatens to undermine academic freedom is that it couldn't have happened if those who decided to hire, tenure and promote Churchill had taken advantage of academic freedom themselves.

The privileges created by tenure are supposed to insulate faculty from political pressures in general and censorship in particular. Yet those of us in the academy, if we were candid, would have to admit that few places are more riddled with the distorting effects of politics and censorship than university faculties.

Academics claim to despise censorship, but the truth is we do a remarkably good job of censoring ourselves. This is especially true in regard to affirmative action. Who among us can claim to have spoken up every time a job candidate almost as preposterous as Churchill was submitted for our consideration? Things like the Churchill fiasco are made possible by a web of lies kept intact by a conspiracy of silence.

The University of Colorado hired Churchill onto its faculty because he claimed to be an American Indian. Anyone who has the slightest familiarity with research universities can glance at his résumé and state this with something close to complete confidence.

Churchill thus represents the reductio ad absurdum of the contemporary university's willingness to subordinate all other values to affirmative action. When such a grotesque fraud - a white man pretending to be an Indian, an intellectual charlatan spewing polemical garbage festooned with phony footnotes, a shameless demagogue fabricating imaginary historical incidents to justify his pathological hatreds, an apparent plagiarist who steals and distorts the work of real scholars - manages to scam his way into a full professorship at what is still a serious research university, we know the practice of affirmative action has hit rock bottom. Or at least we can hope so.

As someone of generally liberal political inclinations, I support affirmative action in principle. (And I have surely benefited from it in practice: My parents came to this country from Mexico in the year of my birth, and I spoke no English when I started school.) In theory, the argument that aggressively seeking out persons of diverse backgrounds can enrich the intellectual life of the university has great force.

Affirmative action is based, in part, on the idea that it will help us understand the viewpoints of the conquered as well as those of the conqueror, of the weak as well as the strong, of those far from power as well as those who wield it.

Too often, these sentiments are abused by those who sacrifice intellectual integrity while engaging in the most extreme forms of preferential hiring. Ward Churchill's career provides a lurid illustration of what can happen - indeed, of what we know will happen - when academic standards are prostituted in the name of increasing diversity.

Tenure and academic freedom are hard to defend if they don't provide us who benefit from them with the minimal degree of courage necessary to say, when confronted by someone like Churchill, enough is enough.

If even the extraordinary protections of tenure don't lead us to condemn a fraud of this magnitude in unmistakable and unapologetic terms, then we don't deserve them. What else is academic freedom for?


Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.

Supreme Court declares murder of children unconstitutional

The US Supreme Court has declared that murder of children is "cruel and unusual punishment" and therefore unconstitutional. Courts can still order the murder of adults, though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4308881.stm

Very good news, indeed.

Up until now, US were in a very elite group: Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia.

In an unrelated news: Canada opts-out from the US Missile Shield program. Bravo, Martin.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/02/24/ ... index.html

Good, though I think the Canadian-American alliance against continental security is cause for concern:

"Martin, ending nearly two years of debate over whether Canada should participate in the development or operation of the multibillion-dollar program, said Ottawa would remain a close ally of Washington in the fight against global terrorism and continental security."

An Open Letter To The United States Senate

Following the example of CQ reader Erp, I wrote a letter to Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, and copied all 98 other Senators to express my outrage over the direction that the FEC has been forced to take in regulating political speech on the Internet. I encourage you to get involved and do the same, in your own words, in order to serve notice that we will not allow them to silence us.

To the honorable Senators McCain and Feingold, et al:

I have read with considerable dismay the effect that your recent lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, upheld by Judge Colleen Kollar-Ketelly, will have on political speech on the Internet. I write a political media-watchdog blog, Captain's Quarters, which enjoys a not-insubstantial daily readership. No one pays me to do this; I operate my site and write on topics purely from personal convictions and a deep desire to improve the world around me and make the nation stronger. I can unequivocally say the same about my many colleagues in the "blogosphere", both liberal and conservative.

Now we understand from Bradley Smith, one of the FEC commissioners, that your lawsuit forcing them to regulate speech on the Internet will have the effect of turning our efforts into in-kind contributions, especially when we provide hyperlinks back to candidate sites for referencing their positions and excerpt text from their on-line documents. Hyperlinks allow our readers to check our references to ensure our accuracy and context, and perform the hygienic task of holding our politicians accountable for their campaign practices. All of this not only should fall under the protection of the First Amendment, but it should be the primary reason for the First Amendment -- to protect and encourage free political speech and foster genuine debate.

Your legislation and the accompanying lawsuit that forced the FEC to regulate Internet political speech threaten all of that. If my links to political sites such as Georgewbush.com and Johnkerry.com counted as contributions and I was forced to accept responsibility for the cash value that the FEC designated to them, I would have been charged with several misdemeanors and possibly felonies, as I provided many such links during the past election cycle. During this cycle, my blog published over 680 essays on the presidential election. In fact, I linked to Senator Kerry's site four times as often as President Bush's site, which would have meant to the FEC that I was a major contributor to his campaign -- when in fact I opposed Senator Kerry and supported President Bush. These regulations would have forced me to retain the services of a full-time accountant and retain an attorney to understand when and where I overcontributed. At the very least, the burden of proof would be on me to make the FEC believe that my blog does not constitute in-kind contributions subject to the limits imposed on both hard and soft money contributions.

The effect of this would have been to force me to shut down my blog, or convert it to something else. In fact, it would have caused me less legal heartache to convert my site to a porn blog and do nothing but post hard-core pictures all day long. In the twisted environment of the McCain-Feingold Act, that kind of website would enjoy greater First Amendment protection than my political speech, a result for which every single Senator should feel shame and outrage.

Each of you should read the Constitution you swore to uphold and defend, and reflect on the unequivocal language of our forefathers:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

We may debate about the effect of unregulated cash on our electoral system, but if this new FEC effort comes to pass, the only people debating will be the corporate-owned media and the politicians. The rest of us will have been effectively bound and gagged, unable to contribute in any way thanks to the efforts of those who fear their own constituents. You can be assured that none of us in the blogosphere will fail to recognize those who do not act to defend our rights to free and unfettered political speech, and regardless of political party, none of us will rest until those voices of repression are stripped of office by the voters they hold in such low regard.

I, for one, will not be daunted by your attempts to stifle us. My many friends and colleagues on both sides of the political aisle stand as ready as I to defend the Constitution. We demand a hearing on McCain-Feingold, with open testimony before the press and our colleagues, and we demand action to reform or repeal this dangerous and un-American muzzle on political speech.

We await your response, sirs.

Edward Morrissey
Captain's Quarters

Back in their pomp

Mar 10th 2005 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

Times are very good for America's least-loved foreign-policy makers. But their apotheosis may not last

BILL KRISTOL tells a nice story about a chance encounter in a shopping mall. Mr Kristol is a neo-conservative prince, the son of one of the movement's founders, and a ubiquitous talking head on Fox News. But even neo-conservative princes have to go shopping. One weekend found him wandering the glitzy corridors of Tyson's Corner, in northern Virginia. A young man accosted him and confessed that he, too, was a neo-conservative. He then paused for a moment before adding that he wasn't quite sure what neo-conservatism was.

This is not an isolated example of enthusiasm for the creed. The neo-conservatives are back in their pomp after a dismal year. The essence of neo-conservative foreign policy (to clear up the young man's confusion) is a mixture of hawkishness and idealism: hawkishness on projecting American power abroad, but idealism when it comes to using that power to spread good things like freedom and democracy. The neo-cons have no doubt that their vision has been vindicated by recent events in the Middle East. Would democracy be stirring in the region if Mr Bush hadn't chosen to topple the Taliban and Saddam Hussein? “Three cheers for the Bush doctrine”, says Charles Krauthammer, a leading neo-con journalist, in Time magazine; “Neo-cons may get the last laugh”, says Max Boot in the Los Angeles Times; “Let us now praise Paul Wolfowitz”, adds David Brooks in the New York Times.

Many of the fiercest critics of “neo-conservative foreign policy” are being forced to back-pedal. Mr Krauthammer quotes Jon Stewart, the presenter of Comedy Central's wildly popular mock news programme: “What if Bush has been right about this all along? I feel that my world view will not sustain itself and I may...implode.” There has been a good deal of imploding already among anti-war Democrats, with even Ted Kennedy proclaiming that George Bush deserves credit for the stirrings in the Middle East (see article).

The neo-conservatives are also taking heart from two other developments. The first is Mr Bush's decision this week to nominate John Bolton as America's ambassador to the United Nations. Mr Bolton is more “con” than “neo-con”. (Cons, for example, were against keeping troops in Iraq after the end of the war.) But at the least he is one of the neo-conservatives' favourite conservatives. He shares their distrust of multilateral institutions, with their airy-fairy waffle and their predilection for impinging on American sovereignty. He described his signing of a document formally notifying Kofi Annan of America's intention, in effect, to withdraw from the International Criminal Court as “the happiest moment of my government service”. Two of the neo-cons' great heroes, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, were both at their finest as UN-bashing ambassadors to the UN; Mr Bolton is well placed to follow in their footsteps.

The second development is the administration's growing worries about China. In the early days of the administration the neo-cons were as preoccupied with that country as anything else. They then felt that they had lost the battle over China when America produced such a feeble response to the collision of an American surveillance plane with a Chinese fighter-jet over China in April 2001. But Europe's decision to lift its embargo on selling arms to China has left them feeling doubly vindicated, both in their worries about Beijing's military ambitions and in their impatience with Europe's claims to moral superiority.

It would be a stretch, however, to conclude from all this that neo-conservative voices will be the loudest in future foreign-policy debates. That influence is contingent on events in the Middle East, which are certain to be messy and confused. It is worth remembering how low the neo-conservatives sank in the run up to the November election. Not only did anti-war Democrats attack them, but Republican realists denounced them for their naivety. Bill Buckley, the patron saint of the conservative movement, agreed that “their ambitions in Iraq seem to be leading to their self-destruction”.

Look at the staffing of the second Bush administration, and it hardly seems as if the neo-conservatives will exercise unqualified influence. They are no doubt pleased to see the back of two of their leading critics, Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, and Richard Armitage, his deputy. But they are also losing two of their fiercest champions in Washington: Douglas Feith, the under-secretary of defence for policy, and John Bolton. However much they may crow about Mr Bolton's ability to foul the UN nest in Manhattan, they would much rather have had him in the heart of Washington, at the State Department or the Pentagon.

Neo-conservatives are also ambivalent about Condoleezza Rice, the new secretary of state. Her neo-con defenders point out that she is much closer to Mr Bush than Colin Powell ever was, and much keener on using American power abroad. They argue that neo-conservative ends can be achieved by “realist” means such as diplomacy. But others are not so sure. They note that Ms Rice is a protégé of Brent Scowcroft, one of the leading Republican critics of the war. And they see her filling the State Department with fellow realists, led by Robert Zoellick, her new deputy.

The limits of neo-conservative influence may well be shown by Iran. It is axiomatic in neo-con circles that Iran cannot be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons by a combination of diplomacy and bribery. But Mr Bush is at pains to point out that the White House is not preparing for war in Iran. And the Pentagon has made it clear that it is already overstretched by Iraq. The days when Richard Perle could sum up American foreign policy with the resonant phrase, “Who's next?” are long gone.

The neo-conservatives have every reason to be feeling good about themselves at the moment. But if they think that their current good fortune will translate into a permanent lock on Mr Bush's foreign policy making, they are much mistaken.


P.S. It appears that the Economist is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, Neocons are too influential. On the other, they don't possess a "lock". Weren't we telling you so? LOL

European nuance at its best:)

Captain's Quarters

US Quits The Consular Notification Provisions Of Vienna Convention

In a surprise move, the Bush administration withdrew Monday from the portion of the Vienna Convention that requires consular notification and assistance to foreigners detained by its signatories. The Washington Post reports that Condoleezza Rice sent Kofi Annan the news on March 7th, presumably in response to the World Court's insistence on assuming jurisdiction on American death-penalty cases:

The Bush administration has decided to pull out of an international agreement that opponents of the death penalty have used to fight the sentences of foreigners on death row in the United States, officials said yesterday.
In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969.

The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed abroad.


Before we see the outrage boil over from the left on this issue over Bush and his unilateralism, it's important to see the bigger picture. In the first place, the protocol only applies to those who signed onto that specific clause in the Vienna Convention, which constitute less than 30% of the overall signatories to Vienna. Brazil, Spain, and the multilateralists scolds in Canada never did sign onto the consular notification clause, as the Post notes. Second, the first time anyone attempted to apply it was in 1979, when the Iranian government took our embassy and held our staff hostage for 444 days. The World Court sided with us in 1979, and look how effective that was to getting the situation resolved.

That doesn't mean that the move is without risk, especially to Americans traveling abroad. However, the risk was always more real before this than we imagined, perhaps because of our lack of understanding about how little support this clause received internationally all along. Putting that up against the loss of sovereignty for our state courts, which must answer to the World Court where even the federal court cannot impose itself, makes this a qualified good trade. The internationalization of our court system, which got an unfortunate boost this month from our Supreme Court in a death-penalty case, means that the system that Americans run to govern Americans would increasingly be taken from our control and managed by the United Nations, at least in terms of death-penalty cases. I oppose capital punishment, but that doesn't mean I want the UN to dictate our laws and run our court system.

Bush has sent a message to the world that we will brook no further interference in our sovereign government, especially with the independent judiciary. The method in which the World Court implemented this clause required the executive branch to interfere with the judiciary in an inappropriate manner, or for the judiciary to start separate foreign-policy contacts, neither of which passes Constitutional muster. Those separations of power have served us well for over two centuries, and they shouldn't be sacrified on the altar of multilateralism.

P.S. Two thumbs up, George and Condi

Thumbs down on Bush. What it shows is that as soon as some international body rules against US, there goes US participation.

The message is clear: If you do not serve our interests, we do not much care for you.

What a freaking asshole.

P.S. Where was this talk about sovereignty when a sovereign country was invaded by United States almost two years ago, to consternation, anger and outright protest to almost the entire world.

You got that right - if you don't serve our interests, we have no use for you. We'll be better off looking after our own interests with all the might at our disposal.

You don't like it? Feel free reducing yourself to a sorry pile of a whining liberal:)

Mate

I am sure you remember to what great lengths the unhinged Left went to portray George Bush's grandfather as a man who financed Adolf Hitler's rise to power, a few years ago. It was all a slanderous hoax, not even the New York Times, the paper of record for schizophrenic dowds and krugmans, would publish it.

So I am equally sure you'll enjoy this, from "The Right Nation" book by the Economist's America-based journalists, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge:


"The first family member to hold high political office was George W.'s grandfather, Prescott Bush. Prescott was the very image of a patrician: immensely tall, a gifted athlete and a stickler for proper behavior. Exactly the sort of chap you might expect to find in the marbled corridors of the Senate. At Yale, he excelled at golf, tennis and baseball, sang with the All-Time Whiffenproof Quartet and joined the college's most exclusive secret society, the Skull and