Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

The malicious campaign run by the coalition of leftist academics, internationalists and Islamists against Israel continues unabated.

We know that in the U.S. and elsewhere, speeches by current or former Israeli officials are disrupted, and there have been organized boycotts of Israeli academics.

Now they even are going after musicians:

A lunchtime concert in central London by a renowned classical quartet became a platform for protests against Israel in the latest manifestation of how culture has become enmeshed in the bitter politics of the Middle East.

Within the first 10 minutes of the performance by the Jerusalem Quartet at the Wigmore Hall a woman stood up to "sing out" her condemnation of Israeli policy, setting the pattern for interruptions by people strategically positioned among the audience.

The result was that BBC Radio 3's live recording of the concert had to be broken off under extraordinary scenes with the musicians engaged in a debate on stage with the protesters over the conduct of Israel in the Occupied Territories.

Only Israelis are singled out for such treatment base on nationality and religion, and there is a direct connection to anti-Semitic violence throughout Europe.

Unlike the fictional wave of right wing violence in this country, there is a real wave of anti-Semitic violence sweeping Europe.

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I previously posted about Jamie Gorelick's hiring as a lobbyist for Sallie Mae, the student loan agency. After the debacles she created by raising the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence services, and at Fannie Mae, I thought she was doing quite well for herself.

Thanks to Doug Ross (who coined the phrase "Mistress of Disaster") for reminding me of Gorelick's role as a Sallie Mae lobbyist, and how she failed miserably since the federal government now has taken over the student loan business directly.

Failure in Washington seems to be a selling point, not an impediment.

What else is Gorelick up to? She's representing a coalition pushing for a rewrite of online privacy laws:

The groups plan to announce four principles, buttressed by legal analyses including one by Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general now in private practice at a Washington, D.C., law firm, according to one source. The principles apply only to government access to data stored by Internet and telecommunications companies and do not regulate the private sector or private litigants.

What possibly could go wrong?

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H/t Israellycool, which posts the following challenge: "See if you can spot when a palestinian state existed."

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The claim by the Joint Committee on Taxation that the health care mandate penalty was not enforceable by the IRS made a lot of news, but that claim made no sense to me.

The Senate bill (at p. 336) says that the health care mandate penalty “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.”

Chapter 68B is part of subtitle F, so it made no sense to me why the JCT said (at p. 37) “The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code.”

Not being a tax lawyer, I was hesitant to go out on a limb and say the JCT was flat out wrong, but I feel a little more comfortable now saying the JCT was wrong because some tax professors agree with my assessment that the JCT was wrong.

While there are some limitations on collection procedures, the mandate is enforceable by the IRS.

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Here is how Tucker Carlson described the purpose behind the Daily Caller (emphasis mine):

Tucker Carlson announced plans to launch DailyCaller.com, a conservative-leaning news site that will aim to be an answer to the Huffington Post....

Mr. Carlson told reporters and bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., that the site would focus on coverage of President Barack Obama’s administration. “There just aren’t enough people covering this administration and telling the people what’s going on,” he said.

The site will take on the form of a general interest newspaper, he said, and will even attempt to be faster than the popular and speedy Drudge Report. Mr. Carlson also said that DailyCaller would not be a place to discuss the future of the Republican Party. “I’m interested in that conversation, but it will not take place in our site,” he told reporters.

Yet the only story of "substance" broken so far by the Daily Caller was the expense of $2000 by the RNC at a strip club, for which a staffer has been fired.

While this may be a legitimate news issue, it hardly fits the Daily Caller's mission statement, to balance out the lack of journalistic examination of the Obama administration.

The mainstream media and left-wing blogosphere (including Huffington Post) are all over every move the RNC and Republicans make, while ignoring and covering up any and all possible problems in Democrat land.

Daily Caller may have earned a news cycle by piling on, but it hasn't earned any respect. From anyone.

Update: Here's what a hard-hitting conservative counterweight to HuffPo looks like:

Update 7-20-2010: The Daily Caller has proven its worth, Yes, Liberal Journalists Did Manipulate The 2008 Election.

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The anti-Zionist fringe nut who threatened to kill Eric Cantor was an Obama supporter and campaign contributor.

You know exactly what I mean when I say, "Can you imagine if Norman Leboon threatened to kill Obama and Leboon were a McCain or Tea Party contributor?"

We would never hear the end of it.

We will hear the end of Leboon's Obama-love because Leboon's craziness and threatened violence in no way reflected on Obama. You can't choose your supporters. (And it does appear that Leboon fell out of love with Obama too.)

Wouldn't it be nice if it worked that way when the politics were reversed.

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... from writing assinine and over-heated columns comparing Tea Party participants to storm troopers (emphasis mine):

We are 100 yards, no more than that, from the front entrance to the school.

There is a stop sign here, and underneath the word "Stop" someone has spray-painted "Obama."

Stop Obama.

Why has somebody done it? Because in the current climate, people have been convinced they can. Or, more likely, that they should....

This is no longer about political dissent. It is about storm trooper sound bites, and hate. This isn't the kind of honest debate on which our system of government has been built. It is vile, back-alley fighting, getting worse by the day, with no end in sight. People say that opposition to all Presidents, even the most unpopular white ones, sounds like this. No, it doesn't.

The stop signs in my neighborhood in Rhode Island are painted "Stop Bush." The most vile attacks on George Bush have been the subject of prior posts (see image above for an example).

Mike Lupica needs to get a grip on reality and history. Or stop writing.

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The FBI has indicted Norman LeBoon Sr. of Philadelphia on charges of threatening Congressman Eric Cantor. LeBoon appears to be motivated by anti-Israeli sentiment, and a general paranoia reflected in anti-government rants.

Here is a video "Norman LeBoon Sr" made attacking Israel's conduct in Gaza:


Israel Starving Babies with Blockade - The best video clips are here

LeBoon was a known anti-Israeli agitator, and was proud of the fact that he had been noticed as such (note, this guy is crazed, so don't take anything he says about his following as truth):


Israel's Enemy or Friend? Norman LeBoon Sr. The Future is Coming! - Watch more funny videos here

"Norman LeBoon" also was a plaintiff in a case against Verizon alleging illegal cooperation with the government in surveillance:

Upon reading an article in USA Today alleging government spying on American communications, Philadelphia resident Norman LeBoon wondered if communications on his Verizon land line were being shared with the government. After a string of e-mails, LeBoon says he finally reached “Ellen” in customer service, who had this to say: “I can tell you, Mr. LeBoon, that your records have been shared with the government, but that’s between you and me. ... They [Verizon] are going to deny it because of national security. The government is denying it and we have to deny it, too. Around here we are saying that Verizon has ‘plausible deniability.’ ”

LeBoon is part of a class-action suit against the major telecommunications companies brought by lawyers Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer. Their case is remarkable not only in that it references such blatant admissions by Verizon employees, but also because the two lawyers claim to have evidence that AT&T was approached by the National Security Agency before 9/11 as part of the aforementioned Project Groundbreaker, which gave the government access to an unprecedented amount of the personal data of American citizens.

Update: Leboon was an Obama campaign contributer, but it does not matter.

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If Repeal were a candidate, she would win in a landslide (emphasis mine):

One week after the House of Representatives passed the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, 54% of the nation's likely voters still favor repealing the new law. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42% oppose repeal.

Those figures are virtually unchanged from last week. They include 44% who Strongly Favor repeal and 34% who Strongly Oppose it.

Repeal is favored by 84% of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters.

Among white Democrats, 25% favor repeal, but only one percent (1%) of black Democrats share that view.

54% overall, 59% among independents, and even 25% of white Democrats. Tri-partisanship in action. Now we just need to make it quad-partisan by bringing black Democrats on board.

Repeal represents the coalition of the willing, so be willing to do it.

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Never change:

For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!

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Don't ever say this was unexpected:

So Obama is flirting with a future budget crisis. Moody's emphasizes two warning signs: rising debt and loss of confidence that government will deal with it. Obama fulfills both. The parallels with the recent financial crisis are striking. Bankers and rating agencies engaged in wishful thinking to rationalize self-interest. Obama does the same. No one can tell when or whether a crisis will come. There is no magic tipping point. But Obama is raising the chances.

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The United States has a hard time getting a sanctions resolution against Iran through the U.N. Security Council because Iran has two protectors (Russian and China) among the five permanent members with veto power.

Israel has only one reliable veto-wielding friend on the Security Council, the U.S.

That protection may be on the verge of going the way of the special relationship, as the BBC is reporting that the U.S. has signaled an intention to abstain on an anti-Israeli resolution regarding East Jerusalem:

The US is considering abstaining from a possible UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, sources suggest to the BBC.

The possibility surfaced at talks in Paris last week between a senior US official and Qatar's foreign minister.

The official said the US would "seriously consider abstaining" if the issue of Israeli settlements was put to the vote, a diplomat told the BBC.

US officials in Washington have not confirmed the report.

It is likely that the US is considering how to maintain pressure, and a UN resolution would be one way, says BBC state department correspondent Kim Ghattas.

The US usually blocks Security Council resolutions criticising Israel.

If true, this would mark a very dangerous development because U.N. resolutions, even if not containing explicit sanctions, are one of the primary tools for delegitimizing Israel. Depending upon the wording of the resolution, the damage could be severe.

This could be the change Israel's enemies were hoping for.

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Barack Obama's insistence that Israel cease all building in Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, calling such neighborhoods "settlements," raises an interesting question. Who are the settlers in Jerusalem?

A good example of the lack of clarity over Palestinian claims to Jerusalem is found in prominent Palestinian-American spokesman George Bisharat.

Bisharat is a Professor at Hastings College of Law, and a leader of the movement to delegitize Israel as a Jewish state and in place create a single state encompassing what now is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Bisharat compares the Jewish claim to the land of Israel as a homeland to a rapist and the Palestinian resistance to that of the victimized woman. (Video, at 7:25). Bisharat repeatedly refers to Jews "taking another people's country" (Video at 9:00) even though there never was a country called Palestine or a separate national entity for the Arabs of Palestinian.

Yet much of Bisharat's family narrative is exaggerated, at a minimum. I previously documented Bisharat's claim that his father was forced to abandon an art show at a Jewish-owned art gallery due to his father having spoken up for Palestinian rights. That claim, made by Bisharat long after both his father and the gallery owner had died, leaving no witnesses, was disputed by people affiliated with the gallery.

Bisharat regularly and for decades has played upon his family history as forming his narrative of Israel's lack of legitimacy, and his call for a single state encompassing what now is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza (emphasis mine):

...[M]emory can provide a blueprint for the future -- a vision of a solution to seek, or an outcome to avoid. My Palestinian father grew up in Jerusalem before Israel was founded and the Palestinians expelled, when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in peace and mutual respect. Recalling that past provides a vision for an alternative future -- one involving equal rights and tolerance, rather than the domination of one ethno-religious group over others.

The loss of the family home in Jerusalem (in a section within Israel's pre-1967 borders) is a particularly important part of Bisharat's narrative. Here is Bisharat's recollection of his 1977 visit to Jerusalem to his ancestral home:

When I went to Jerusalem in 1977, I had only a photograph of the home, and a general description of its location from my grandmother. It was summer, hot and dusty, and I paced back and forth through the neighborhood inspecting each of the houses, occasionally asking for directions. All the street names had been changed to those of Zionist leaders and figures from Jewish history, and the hospital that my grandmother had described as a landmark apparently no longer existed. As I was resting against a wall in the shade, I saw a home that resembled Papa's. As I hurried across the street, I could just make out the name in the tile: Villa Harun ar-Rashid. I guess Golda's sandblasters had been a little rushed.

TENSION AND FEAR. I was immediately flooded with emotion -- anger, sadness, and most of all -- tension, tinged with fear. I walked through the garden toward the front staircase, putting my hand on the stone banister, as I knew Papa and my own father must have done countless times. I rang the bell.

After a long wait, an elderly woman opened the door. I explained my visit by saying that my grandfather had built the home, displayed my American passport, and asked if I could briefly see the interior. Virtually her first words were: "The family (meaning my family) never lived here."

Bisharat visited again with his family in 2000 (emphasis mine):

In 2000, we made this same pilgrimage as a family. As we stood across the street, I recounted the story of Golda Meir's defacement of the tiles to my son and daughter. I was overcome. Instantly my little son embraced my leg, then my daughter hugged my waist, and finally my wife my upper body, and briefly, we stood there huddled together, tears streaking all our faces....

The front door swung open and a man smilingly offered: "May I help you?" .... But when I said that my father's family had lived in the home, he was incredulous. This time, I was not surprised as he protested, still congenially: "But the family never lived here." He had gleaned this from a newspaper article, he maintained. Repeatedly, he insisted, it seemed a half dozen times: "The family never lived here."

Of course, the family did live there, notwithstanding the denials, justifications, and obfuscations we have faced. So did hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians "live there." The keys to their homes there still adorn the walls of apartments, houses, rooms, and refugee hovels throughout the world. We have not disappeared, nor have we forgotten, our existence a reminder that one people's liberation was founded on another's dispossession....

Recently I found my daughter lingering over photos of my father as a boy in his Jerusalem home. I know now that she and my son both are heirs of the truth about Villa Harun ar-Rashid.

Bisharat's family narrative, while moving, is at best exaggerated. In fact, Bisharat's family was not indigenous to Jerusalem or any part of what now is Israel, and his grandfather did not grow up in Jerusalem.

Rather, Bisharat's family members were immigrants to Jerusalem who lived in Villa Harun ar-Rashid for just a few years in the late 1920s and early 1930s before renting it out as absentee landlords and then leaving for greener pastures abroad.

I base this statement on Bisharat's own documentation of his family history which appeared not in any of the Western newspapers in which he recounts his moving family narrative, but in an article he published in 2007 in the Palestinian Jerusalem Quarterly.

Everything I am about to recount about Bisharat's family history is taken from Bisharat's own documentation of his family history:

• Bisharat's grandfather was from what now is Jordan: "My grandfather, whom we all called ‘Papa’, was born in 1893 in as-Salt, now in Jordan, although then a part of an Ottoman district called the Belqa’, that straddled the Jordan River."
• Bisharat's great grandparents were from Nablus, now under Palestinian Authority control, not Jerusulem or any part of what now is Israel: "[Bisharat's grandfather] Ibrahim, and two uncles, Salti and Saliba, had settled there [as-Salt] only 15 years or so before [1893], having migrated eastward from Rafidia, a village adjacent to Nablus."
• Bisharat's grandfather went to Jerusalem to study: "My grandfather, Hanna Ibrahim Bisharat, was the fourth of Ibrahim and Fida’s seven children. At some point in his youth, Papa came to the attention of Father Maurice Gisler, a Swiss missionary and archaeologist, perhaps during one of the latter’s digs around Madaba, near Um al-Kundum. Gisler apparently recognized something special in my grandfather, and invited him to come to Jerusalem to study...."
• Bisharat's grandfather left Jerusalem in 1908: "Hanna studied in the Schneller’s Boys School (also known as the ‘Bishop Gobat’ school) in Jerusalem, gaining fluency in English and French to complement his native Arabic and Turkish. Around 1908 he was sent, under Father Gisler’s auspices, to an institute outside Freiberg, Switzerland to study agricultural engineering."
• Bisharat's family lived in the Jerusalem home which is the subject of his narrative only a few years beginning in the late 1920s: "My family lived in the Talbiyeh home for several years, during which several of my uncles were born."
• Bisharat's family vacated the Jerusalem home for financial reasons, not Zionist occupation: "Facing dire financial straits in the early thirties, my grandparents moved out of Villa Harun ar-Rashid for more modest accommodations on the Bethlehem road, and rented their home to officers of the British Royal Air Force."
• Bisharat's family left British-controlled Palestine before Israel's War of Independence, and left behind their rental property: "My family’s intended-to-be-temporary dispersal from Palestine preceded, and was essentially unrelated to, the 1947-1949 war. As I have already indicated, it was business and education that took my relatives from Palestine."

While Bisharat's family may have lost title to the rental property they owned in Jerusalem (similar to the homes lost by Jews who fled Arab countries), Bisharat's family was not indigenous to Jerusalem, and had a short history in Jerusalem. Did that make them settlers?

Does this change the narrative of the indigenous people supposedly cast into exile by the evil Zionists?

Things are not always so clear in the Middle East. And if Bisharat's family history is any judge, some of the narratives of Palestine which we repeatedly hear as a justification for the delegitimization of Israel are exaggerated at best.

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Frank Rich has a blood lust as do many of those pushing the false meme that opposition to Obama equals racism and violence, as witnessed by Rich's latest polemic in the NY Times today, The Rage Is Not About Health Care.

As happened with the Bill Sparkman "murder" (turned out to be suicide), the Amy Bishop shooting, the IRS Plane Crasher, the Fort Hood attack, and the Pentagon shooter, mainstream media types like Rich desperately want there to be blood on the ground attributable to Tea Partiers or other Obama opponents to give substance to their self-generated racial hysteria.

But it hasn't happened, and hopefully never will happen.

So instead Rich invents supposed widescale violence from what amounts to a handful of anonymous threats or acts of vandalism which were just as much directed at Republicans as at Democrats.

Michelle Malkin Doug Powers has it right:

Frank Rich and Friends have more in common with what they accuse tea partiers of being than with the civil rights pioneers whose principles they claim to be standing up for—people who endured similar baseless blanket statements, idiotic and ignorant stereotypes, generalizations, false accusations and yes, even sophomoric homophobic slurs.

Some of us, regardless of our color or sexual orientation, aren’t going to watch our country turned into yet another failed socialist utopia on the ash heap of history without saying a word about it — regardless of the color or sexual orientation of those who are trying to do so. If the only “logical” rebuttal Frank Rich has to people concerned for the future of their children is “racism,” then I’m more positive than ever that I’ve chosen the correct side.

The days of people like Frank Rich having the only say-so are over, and that's what Frank Rich and the MSM fear most.

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Let me guess, this is all Israel's fault in the new "balanced" approach to the Middle East. From the Times of London:

SAUDI ARABIA is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fighters for jihad in Afghanistan.

According to officials in Macedonia, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to destabilise the Balkans. Strict Wahhabi and Salafi factions funded by Saudi organisations are clashing with traditionally moderate local Muslim communities.

Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to persuade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a custom virtually unknown in the liberal Islamic tradition of the Balkans.

Government sources in traditionally secular Macedonia (official title the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), said they were monitoring up to 50 Al-Qaeda volunteers recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Remind me, who are our friends and who are our enemies, and why?

(As an aside, it is too bad the Times of London is going behind a paywall this summer. It is an invaluable source of information ignored by the MSM in this country.)

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This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

The Mother of All Race Cards was played this week as two years of agitation by the MSM and nutroots seeking to paint critics of Obama as racist and violent came together in a fit of accusations and hyperbole outside the Capitol just before the health care vote.

First, some "facts." The allegations were that a crowd yelled racial epithets and spit at black Congressmen. The MSM and left-wing blogs went crazy, to put it mildly. And if the incident did take place as reported, then outrage would have been justified.

But through the diligent work of numerous bloggers, the facts were investigated and it turns out either that the incident did not take place at all, or if it did, it was a very isolated incident completely unrepresentative of the "crowd" of over 20,000 people.

There were dozens of video cameras on the scene, including some held by Congressmen towards whom the epithets allegedly were hurled, and so far no one has come up with any evidence of racial slurs being shouted or anyone spitting at a Congressman:

• Video Debunks Lib Accusations That Slurs were Shouted
• SMEARING THE TEA PARTIES: Dana Loesch responds on O’Reilly
• MEDIA FRAUD– More Proof That the Leftist Media Lied About Racist Attacks On Black Reps While They Ignored Vulgar Attacks By Lib Politicians
• Don't leave it to Cleaver

Andrew Breitbart has offered to make a $10,000 donation to the United Negro College Fund if anyone can present proof of racial slurs being shouted; as of this writing, there were no takers.

But those are facts, and if there is anything I have learned from the past year and one-half of blogging, it is that when it comes to the race card, facts do not matter.

If a single person made an objectionable slur, that certainly would be grounds for criticising that person, but was it grounds for smearing millions of people as racist?

Let's try this hypothetical. Suppose there were a popular blog which was a mouthpiece for a major political party, and the commenters to that blog made derogatory statements about transgendered people, using the term "tranny" as a pejorative.

Would that make the proprietors of the blog, its readers, and the political party transgender-phobic? Should hundreds if not thousands of people somehow affiliated with that blog be maligned?

The hypothetical is not hypothetical. The blog in question is the powerful Think Progress blog, a mouthpiece for Democratic Party operatives and a mover and shaker in formulating public discourse to the Democrats' liking.

Think Progress regularly and systematically seeks to portray Tea Party participants and opponents of Obamacare as racist extremists prone to inciting if not participating in violence.

Here is just a small sampling of some of the comments posted at Think Progress regarding the violent shutdown by liberal student groups of Ann Coulter's speech in Canada:

• My, my. How the transgendered have fallen (with apologies to the patriotic American members of the transgendered community, who I know would kick those Canadians asses if they had to).
• i wonder how long it is before angry trannie annie claims it’s a squashing of his first ammendment rights. tough tittie trannie, canadians don’t have to adhere to our first ammendment.
• Oh Canada…something something something…I know there’s something about “we stand on guard for thee”. Or maybe it’s “we slammed on that trannie…..”
• Good, they canceled the Neo-Conservative Drag Queen. These people should be denied every outlet for them to spread their LIES and DISCONTENT. Judging by her last photo, I think it’s time for here to shave that “ADAMS APPLE”, in her neck again.
• I don’t really think that the transgender community wants to claim Ann Coulter as their own, guys…:-\

Who made these comments? Don't know. Were they real or trolls planting comments for the purpose of making Think Progress look bad (which was done to Sarah Palin during the campaign)? Don't know.

Even if made by regular Think Progress readers, would the comments reflect on Think Progress or its other readers? That I do know, and the answer is No.

There is no more basis to smear Think Progress, its employees and readers for what some (anonymous) person says in the Comments than there is to smear the various Tea Party groups, supporters and attendees for what some (anonymous) person at a rally allegedly shouted.

Yet Think Progress and its progeny will take isolated and anonymous comments at a Tea Party rally, or an isolated sign held at a rally, and use it to smear millions of people as racist or violent. Indeed, that is why Think Progress sends photographers and reporters to Tea Party rallies, in the hope of finding someone whose sign or commentary can be used to smear all Tea Partiers.

A union teacher recently hung Obama in effigy, but that no more reflected teachers or union members in general than did the alleged actions of a very small number of people at the Capitol.

There does appear to be evidence that someone shouted "fag" at Barney Frank. The crowd's reaction was very telling, as reported by Politico (emphasis mine):

Frank, who is gay, was leaving the Longworth House Office Building when a man yelled a charged homophobic slur at the Massachusetts lawmaker.

Other protesters quickly admonished the shouter, with one woman yelling back, "We don't need that."

Back in October 2008 I warned that the use of the race card by team Obama was an ominous sign, and a warning for the future:

The suppression of legitimate political expression through false accusations of racism by the Obama campaign and its supporters is the defining theme of the 2008 campaign.

And so it has come to pass this week that the Mother of All Race Cards was played, regurgitated by the MSM, and trumpeted by the nutroots.

These people do not understand how much damage they have done to this nation, and even if they understood, they would not care.

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Numerous companies already have announced enormous financial write-downs related to Obamacare's cutback of subsidies for prescription drug benefit programs for retirees.

These subsidies, while characterized by Democrats as "loopholes," actually saved the government money because it cost less to subsidize private drug programs than for the government to provide the same benefit through Medicare:

This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or "political."

As explained at Volokh Conspiracy the write-downs must be taken immediately:

The writedowns are in response to the loss of a tax-free subsidy for providing prescription drug coverage to retirees. Several years ago, Congress decided it was better to induce corporations to provide prescription drug coverage for retirees than to have the costs paid by Medicare, so it enacted a tax-free subsidy, while still allowing companies to take a tax deduction for the coverage . Under the health care reforms Congress just enacted, however, the deduction will be eliminated in 2013.

Why are the companies announcing these changes? And why now if the tax change does not take effect until 2013? Because failure to do so could get the companies in trouble with the SEC. Under standard accounting rules, companies are supposed to take the charge in the quarter in which the tax law change is enacted, not when it takes effect. Because the first quarter ends Wednesday, more writedown announcements may be forthcoming.

If these were just financial write-downs, the Democrats would not care.

But as explained at Powerline, the result will be the elimination of these private benefits for retirees, which has caused the bullies in Washington to use the power of Congressional investigation for intimidation:

These announcements are the tip of the iceberg; hundreds like them will follow as Obamacare becomes a reality. Congressional Democrats, evidently stung by the bad publicity, are trying to strike back. A reader writes:

Good post on the true cost of ObamaCare. But it gets better: the Dems are now shaking down CEOs who don't get with the program. In the attached letter, Henry Waxman not only orders the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co, and Verizon to testify before the Energy and Commerce Committee, but also to produce internal analyses and emails related to their statements. They don't expressly subpoena the CEOs, so we can hope that they tell the Dems to GFY, though somehow I doubt that will happen.

The Dems sent these letters to the Republicans on the committee after 6pm tonight with no advance notice or prior cooperation.

Obamacare's chickens already are coming home to roost, and it only has been a week.

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The reaction to Obama's treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ("Bibi") Netanyahu was as strong if not stronger than I have seen in the comments here and elsewhere in the blogosphere on any other issue. (I didn't let through a number of over-the-top comments.)

Why this reaction? I bet a lot of the people having this reaction only had heard of Bibi Netanyahu in passing on the news.

Who would care if our President left a foreign leader to wait in the White House while the President supposedly went to have dinner with his family? Who would care if our President broke protocol by refusing to be photographed and hold a press conference with a foreign leader? Who would care if that foreign leader left tail tucked between his legs, humiliated at home at the treatment by the leader of the free world?

Part of it certainly is that the foreign leader in question was the leader of Israel, which is tremendously popular with Americans. In Israel the clear majority of Americans see a democratic nation surrounded by implacable enemies who also are our enemies, doing what it takes to survive and thrive. In so many historical, religious and political ways Israel is our kindred spirit, more than just one among many nations.

But that cannot explain the intensity of the reaction. Obama has shown disrespect for our British friends, with whom we share an even more intense historical relationship. There are very, very few countries in the world whose soldiers would die for us, and Britain is one of those countries. Yet the reaction to Obama's treatment of Britain has been muted.

I think the reaction to Obama's treatment of Bibi Netanyahu hits home because it was so personal in nature, and because it epitomized how the American people have been treated by Obama and the Democrats, with arrogance and disdain.

We have seen this attitude since the Inauguration, when Obama and the crowd treated George W. Bush with disrespect, in the smears by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other leading Democrats against health care protesters, in the daily attacks by the left-wing blogs and mainstream media against the Tea Party members, in the treatment of Sarah Palin and Trig Palin, in the bribes and budgetary chicanery used to pass a health care bill opposed by a significant majority of the population, and in the disgusting use of the race card to stifle legitimate political dissent.

In Bibi Netanyahu we see something we have lost in our leader, an unflinching sense of national destiny, an unapologetic pride in who we are and why we are, and a willingness to stand up to tyrants and neighborhood bullies regardless of the price.

To see a leader like Bibi Netanyahu treated so shabbily by someone who treats us the same way was too much to bear.

The story of how Obama treated Bibi Netanyahu at the White House was a familiar story, which is why it has caused such a strong reaction.

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Here is how Hamas has responded to Obama's peace initiative (i.e., humiliation of Netanyahu and contrived crisis):

A Hamas cross-border attack on Israeli forces outside Kissufim Friday, March 26, killed an officer, Maj. Eliraz Peretz, Dep. Commander of Golani Battalion 12, 31, from Eli and 1st Sgt. Ilan Seviatsovsky, 21, from Ofrah. Two Israeli soldiers were also injured in the heavy fighting which followed when an Israeli tank and artillery force which crossed in to shell the attackers was ambushed by a second Hamas unit firing anti-tank weapons and bombs. Israeli helicopter gunships were sent in as the battle escalated into the heaviest Israel-Hamas engagement since Israel's Cast Lead anti-terror operation in early 2009.

In the past weeks since Obama went on his binge, Hamas has upped the attacks on the Gaza border, including a rocket attack which killed a Thai worker.

Oh, by the way, Hamas considers all of Israel occupied territory, including West Jerusalem.

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From Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph (h/t Gateway Pundit via Instapundit), on the destructive Obama foreign policy:

I wrote recently about Barack Obama’s sneering contempt for both Israel and Great Britain. Further confirmation of this was provided today with new details emerging regarding the President’s appalling reception for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House earlier this week....

The ritual humiliation of the Israelis is an absolute disgrace, and yet another example of how the Obama administration views its allies with indifference, contempt, and at times outright hostility. It is extraordinary how far the Obama team has gone out of its way to grovel to state sponsors of terrorism, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Muammar Gaddafi, while kicking America’s friends in the teeth.

Israel is literally fighting for its survival on a daily basis against an array of vicious terrorist groups, from Hamas to Hizbollah, while facing a looming threat from a genocidal, nuclear-armed Iran. President Obama’s top priority in the Middle East should be preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapons programme. Instead he seems obsessed with kowtowing to America’s enemies by bashing Israel at almost every opportunity.

This is a foreign policy doctrine that is both destructive and fundamentally against the US national interest. The future security of the United States rests not upon the degree to which it can appease her enemies, but upon the strength of her enduring alliances with the rest of the free world. Israel needs Washington’s support and vice versa, not a slap in the face from a president whose idea of world leadership seems to consist largely of apologising for his country while throwing America’s friends to the wolves.

We have a problem here. No reason to deny it anymore.

It's not an issue of a secret agenda. There was no secret either during the campaign or afterwards.

Redistribution of power always has been and still is the Obama agenda, at home and abroad.

The only difference is that former Obamamaniacs are finally waking up to the reality.

Update: Obama’s full-court press on Israel ("So there are absolutely no demands of the Palestinians at all, and nothing but demands of the Israelis.")

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In late October 2008, shortly before the election, I wrote an article for American Thinker titled It's 3 a.m. and the Prime Minister of Israel is Calling.

The title of my article was a play on Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. campaign ad, which suggested that Obama was unfit to lead in an international crisis. (Yes, I do see the irony of Hillary having to implement Obama's foreign policy.)

I wrote as follows about the true danger facing Israel, which was a cut-off of support from the U.S. in a time of crisis:

On October 12, 1973, President Nixon ordered a massive military re-supply airlift to Israel. President Nixon made this decision over the objections of the foreign policy establishment, which wanted a more "balanced" approach. Israel owed its survival to a Republican President who was not afraid to make a hard, and in some quarters unpopular, decision in a time of crisis.

There is only one person in the world who can destroy Israel. That person is not the leader of Syria or Iran, or the head of some terrorist group. The only person who can destroy Israel is the President of the United States, whose decisions in times of crisis affect Israel's survival. If Richard Nixon has not taken the bold decision to resupply Israel, Israel would not be here today.

It's wake up time, folks. The rift between the U.S. and Israel is being stoked needlessly, another false crisis which the administration is not letting go to waste:

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said....

Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.

Even more dangerous times in the Middle East now.

The enemies of Israel -- who just so happen to be the enemies of the United States -- will be emboldened. Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda and their compatriots are smiling right now, and preparing for war.

The left-wing academics, bloggers and NGO lawyers are dusting off their computer keyboards for renewed attempts to delegitimize Israel, and the despots who run the UN Human Rights Council are preparing new anti-Israel resolutions.

Our President does not realize that by trying to impose his peace on his terms he is increasing the likelihood of war. A sense of Israeli encirclement and a need to strike first because of uncertainty led to the 1967 war.

Putting Israel's security at risk is not the path to peace:

[T]he demands the Americans have made go far beyond the issue of Jerusalem; they now include more than was demanded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two weeks ago. Obama would like Israel to make good-will gestures to the Palestinians Authority, including the release of prisoners held in Israeli jails and the transfer of territory to the control of the Palestinian security forces.

Towards the end of my American Thinker article I posed these questions:

Supporters of Israel are correct to be concerned with the prospect of an Obama presidency. Which Obama will pick up the phone in the middle of the night? Will it be the Obama who says all the right things about Israel's safety, or will it be the pre-campaign Obama who was comfortable being around the anti-Israeli elements in our society when it served his political interests? Will it be the Obama who pledges never to put Israel's security in jeopardy, or will it be the Obama who surrounds himself with foreign policy advisors who argue for more "balance" in the Middle East policy of the United States?

I still do not know the answer to these questions. And neither do the Israelis, and that is the point.

Because Israel has no territorial buffer and because its population is concentrated in an area smaller than some counties in Texas, the mere implied threat by the U.S. to withhold support can bring Israel to its knees. A country brought to its knees cannot defend itself.

I could take comfort in the fact that support for Israel among Americans is near an all time high, at 63%. Approximately the same percentage of Americans who opposed Obamacare, and we saw how that worked out. So don't think public opinion will make a difference.

Congressional support also is heartening.

But what Obama wants, Obama has grown accustomed to getting.



NOTE re Comments: I normally do not moderate comments for content, but on this one I am because the reaction is so hostile to what Obama is doing. I agree with you on substance, and feel free to criticize him (or agree with him), but keep it at a certain level, or post it elsewhere.

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Marc Ambinder and Steve Benen have it all figured out. The lawsuits challenging the health care mandate obviously are frivolous because the Complaints filed do not contain any case authority supporting the claims.

Gotcha! Those dumb Republican lawyers obviously don't know what they're doing! They have no case!

Ambinder started it off, by relying on a comment by one of his readers:

Reading through the complaint filed by 13 state attorneys general, against the health reform legislation, reader @calchala was struck by something that wasn't there: the lack of any specific case citation to buttress the underlying claim that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to impose on individuals a mandate to buy health care and to punish those who don't by levying a fine.

Steve Benen then ran with it, linking to Ambinder's post and an anonymous Tweet (click on the links in the quote):

I saw a report the other day that 13 state attorneys general who are challenging the law, questioning the constitutionality of the individual mandate, failed to include "any specific case citations to buttress the underlying claim that it is unconstitutional." A.L. took a look at the lawsuit and concluded, "It is beyond frivolous. I can't believe actual lawyers are willing to sign it." ...

If there were any justice, these attorneys general would face a voter backlash for participating in such a wasteful stunt.

WARNING: Do not rely on anonymous comments and tweets for legal reasoning.

There is no requirement that a Complaint cite case law, and indeed it would be unusual if not improper to include case citations in a Complaint.

That's why we have these things called "Briefs." Perhaps you have heard of them. Briefs are the place where lawyers cite case law, statutes, rules, regulations and all other sorts of fun legal stuff supporting their case.

The Complaint merely is a jurisdictional document meant to put the opponent on notice of the claims. Here is the text of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a):

A pleading that states a claim for relief must contain:

(1) a short and plain statement of the grounds for the court’s jurisdiction, unless the court already has jurisdiction and the claim needs no new jurisdictional support;
(2) a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief; and
(3) a demand for the relief sought, which may include relief in the alternative or different types of relief.

That's all you have to include (exceptions to this general standard don't apply here).

There is a frivolous argument here, and it is that the failure to cite case authority in a Complaint reflects on the merits of the Complaint.

Get these guys some lawyers, quick, before they embarrass themselves.

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Title translation here.

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The connection between health insurance and death rates is, at best, tenuous.

Ruth Marcus, in The Washington Post, pointed out yesterday that studies are not in agreement on the subject, leading Marcus to conclude as to Obamacare: "Gee, I hope this works out."

But that has not stopped Democrats, from party leaders to sycophantic columnists and bloggers, from throwing around phony and contrived numbers of "deaths" occurring due to lack of Obamacare.

Every day the supporters of Obamacare spew their blood libel.

One of the people making that false connection was Ezra Klein, also at The Washington Post, who now is upset about "fear-mongering" on the right. In a throw-away line in his post, Klein kinda, sorta, almost apologizes for accusing opponents of a public option of being killers:

Few of us are on a mountain with this stuff, of course. Many condemned me for saying that Joe Lieberman was willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands to settle an old grudge with liberals when he threatened to blow up the bill if the Medicare buy-in wasn't removed. I'll stand by the math of the comment, and the analysis of Lieberman's motivations, but I certainly wish I had phrased it somewhat more delicately. The word "cause" was ill-advised.

"Ill-advised"? That's it, after you accused Joe Lieberman of being a mass murderer, and your compatriots accuse us of being mass murderers? Isn't that the worst kind of fear-mongering? Isn't that the Democratic Party?

Apology not accepted. See you in November.

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From a CBS News poll released today, a clear majority of Americans want Republicans to keep fighting Obamacare:

All the euphoria and giddiness from the Democrats and nutroots should not deter us from fighting this monstrosity, this abysmal, stunted, grotesque, freakish, ... (I'm running out of descriptors here, help me out) sorry excuse for legislation.

Update 3-25-2010: Rasmussen new poll shows similar results, 55% Favor Repeal of Health Care Bill.

(h/t to HotAir for both polls)

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Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post:

Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator,needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length.

Wrong. Unsavory Third World dictators are not treated this poorly by Obama:


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I understand, way too long a post title, but I needed to get the point across quickly, so that it was not "buried" from NY Times scrutiny. Here is what The Times wrote yesterday (emphasis mine):

Buried deep in the health care legislation that President Obama signed on Tuesday is a new requirement that will affect any American who walks into a McDonald’s, Starbucks or Burger King. Every big restaurant chain in the nation will now be required to put calorie information on their menus and drive-through signs....

The legislation also requires labels on food items in vending machines, meaning that anybody tempted by a king-size Snickers bar will know up front that it packs 440 calories.

Oh yeah, it was buried really, really deep. Here is part of my post from August 23, 2009, regarding the Senate HELP Committee bill (which became the basis for the final Senate bill), Leave Our Vending Machines Alone:

A good example of how far off course Democrats in Congress have strayed on the issue of health care reform, are provisions in the Senate HELP Committee draft bill creating rules and regulations governing food disclosures at fast food restaurants and in vending machines.

Titled the Affordable Health Choices Act, the Senate draft bill amends the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to require food nutritional disclosures at fast food restaurants, similar to the disclosures currently required on packaged food. Under section 325 of the Senate bill (starting at p. 399), any fast food chain with 20 locations and a standardized menu would have to display "in a clear and conspicuous manner" nutrition and calorie information....

But what about drive through windows? The information must be displayed on the drive through menu board. Salad bars and buffets? The information must be placed next to each item....

But wait, surely the vending machines of the world are safe from signage. Nope, owners of 20 or more vending machines will have to post signage with the nutritional and caloric content of every item in the vending machine

Welcome to our modern investigative mainstream media, uncovering deep secrets which were exposed long ago in the blogosphere.

Now had there been provisions in the Senate bill regarding wiretapping of al-Qaeda operatives preparing to attack us, somehow I think The Times would have uncovered that secret long ago.

The people at The NY Times need to read my blog more often, or hire me to blog for them so I can call their attention to the obvious before it happens.

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I told you this was coming. Increasingly, those who think Israel is to blame for the lack of peace in the Middle East, and who view pushing Israel back to barely defensible borders as the answer, have been pushing hard the meme that Israel is endangering U.S. troops.

Today, that meme is pushed by Robert Wright in the N.Y. Times:

America’s perceived support of — or at least acquiescence in — Israel’s more inflammatory policies endangers American troops abroad. In the long run, it will also endanger American civilians at home, funneling more terrorism in their direction.

Abe Foxman was right to criticize this trend, although wrong to frame it in terms of "blaming Jews for everything" or of attributing the meme to Gen. David Petraeus. Foxman's correct analysis but incorrect characterization and attribution has given life to a cottage industry of people who have seized on danger to U.S. troops as a justification for Israel-bashing.

Those pushing the meme are not necessarily anti-Semitic or "anti-Israel," but they are misusing the emotional issue of the safety of U.S. troops. Claims that Foxman called General David Petraeus a "Jew Baiter" are the types of false hyperbole used to divide Israel and the U.S. by people who view such division as a step forward.

Remember, the original justification for al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. was the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. U.S. troops remain there as well as in numerous other Muslim countries. So should we pull out all our troops from all Muslim countries?

And while we are at it, should we end our support for "moderate" Muslim governments because it angers the fanatics? The result of giving in to the Muslim "street" is an endless parade of appeasements and abandonment of friends.

This really is the most pernicious argument being pushed by people like Wright. It is an attempt to demonize American supporters of Israel, and is the "dual loyalty" libel taken to a whole new level.

Next time an American soldier is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq or somewhere else in the Middle East, it will not be because Israel built housing units in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, or even on the West Bank. It will be because they hate us, they hate our way of life, and they want to drive all Western, non-Islamist influences from the region.

Do not lay violent fanaticism at Israel's doorstep, or at the doorstep of Israel's American supporters.

Update: Gary Bauer responds to Wright's column, Standing with our Friend and Ally, Israel:

Finally, there is the pernicious idea that our traditional support for Israel outrages Muslims and thus endangers American soldiers’ lives. I guess one could say our support of Great Britain in the 1930s outraged the Nazis too, and thus endangered American soldiers’ lives. But of course standing with Britain was the right thing to do against the Nazis just as being a supporter of Israel today against the Islamofascists who strap bombs to their children to blow up Jews is the right thing to do.

Israel has never asked for a U.S. soldier to fight to defend it. In fact, our relationship with Israel has saved U.S. lives. The Israeli military has shared valuable intelligence with our military, and during the Cold War it supplied us with many Soviet weapons systems. Israeli technology is being used today by the U.S. military in Iraq to protect our soldiers from IEDs.

An America that prostrates itself before the Muslim world for fear of irritating it would be an America that no other American ally could count on.

So, in spite of Mr. Wright’s efforts to redefine what it means to be a friend to Israel, I will continue to support the traditional definition that recognizes the little democracy as the only reliable friend, and only truly free nation, in a “neighborhood” of thugs, dictators, and self-anointed kings.

Update 3-25-2010: Gen. Petraeus has called the reports by bloggers out of context, and denied that he laid any substantial blame on Israel for the violence towards the U.S.:

“There’s a 56-page document that we submitted that has a statement in it that describes various factors that influence the strategic context in which we operate and among those we listed the Mideast peace process,” he said. “We noted in there that there was a perception at times that America sides with Israel and so forth. And I mean, that is a perception. It is there. I don’t think that’s disputable. But I think people inferred from what that said and then repeated it a couple of times and bloggers picked it up and spun it. And I think that has been unhelpful, frankly.”

He also noted that there were plenty of other important factors that were mentioned in the report, including “a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which by the way deny Israel’s right to exist. There’s a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place.”

Petraeus continued, “So we have all the factors in there, but this is just one, and it was pulled out of this 56-page document, which was not what I read to the Senate at all.”

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