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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Uh huh

...


Looks like the blogosphere may be onto something.

I'm beginning to feel like a moth drawn to light.  Hopefully not to fire.

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Fourscore and Seven Bumper Stickers Ago

Taken by reader Jake today in Gettysburg, PA, where he is visiting with his family, and spotted this car.

Unfortunately, he did not get to meet Sarah Palin, although he did almost get run over by the MSM posse:





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My Summer hiatus.

Kathleen

Today is the last day I will post here until school starts again in the fall. I have a full plate between my Bartley Fellowship in London, resuscitating The Politicizer, and studying for the GMAT.

Anyway, I owe much thanks to the readership and Prof. Jacobson for allowing me to contribute. As I'm sure it has become evident, Prof. Jacobson is one of the hardest working guys in the blogosphere. It was a real honor to be trusted with a regular post and it has been a pleasure.

Within the past eight months that I've been posting here and keeping track of the news cycle, I have learned a lot of things and I've reinforced a few of my priors. Allow me to share a few...

Priors:
Lucianne.com is fantastic.
I'm lucky to have been born in America.
Contemporary liberalism is a prime example of the Nirvana Fallacy.

New:
Despite the nosedive this administration has taken, there are some players who are making strides towards small government. (There are some even looking on the high seas.)
In other words, the future isn't exactly bleak.
Sarah Palin is one elusive lady.
I wouldn't blame the Tea Party for splitting with the GOP establishment.
I just hope the right ideas win in November.
Meghan McCain is more starved for attention than I could have known.


At any rate, I hope to come back armed with a ton of European news and analysis! Have a good summer.
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“The boldest undertaking any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history” except for ...

I guess it depends on what you mean by "spiking the football":



Ever since this statement by Biden, I've been thinking, yeah except for ...

Victor Davis Hanson articulates some of these "except fors":
an “undertaking” “undertaken” greater than the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, to stop North Korea from obliterating the south, to confront the Soviet Union over its missiles in Cuba, to send troops to recover Kuwait, or to conduct the surge in Iraq?
I'll add some:
an “undertaking” “undertaken” greater than the decision to resupply Israel in 1973 despite threats from the Soviet Union, to drop special forces into an Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, to send Doolittle's Raiders over Tokyo, to launch the Berlin Airlift, or to land troops at Normandy?
The list could go on and on, but not if you think history started with Barack Obama's election (except for the bad stuff which started with Bush).

The self-centered arrogance of this administration is beyond imagination.  And it starts from the top.

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V-K Day - Kloppenburg Surrenders In Wisconsin

There will be no Battle of the Bulging Ballot Bags.

JoAnne Kloppenburg just announced that she will not file a lawsuit challenging the recount which found her losing to David Prosser by 7004 votes.

As discussed here previously, Kloppenburg had alleged that there were "anomalies" in the election, including torn or open ballot bags.

The "ballot bag security" issue was phony not because there were no tears or openings, but because there was no evidence that this was deliberate or affected the vote at all.  The Wisconsin Goverment Accountability Board rejected any suggestion that the election has other than routine, non-material adjustments, and specifically rejected the "ballot bag security" allegations.

There was a lack of reality to Kloppenburg's position since the vote did not change much from election night to the canvass to the recount.

The supposedly "found" votes in Waukesha were not "found."  The votes were reported by the city of Brookfield on election night, but the Waukesha clerk initially failed to report those votes to the press on election night.  The meme that Republicans stole the election was pure fantasy.

Updates:  I'll post the video when available.  The short version is that Kloppenburg insists that there were serious anomalies and problems, but that she cannot meet the threshold for a legal challenge.  Kloppenburg wants an independent investigation of Waukesha county.

In response to question of whether cost was worth it, Kloppenburg responded:  "Of course it was worth it...."

Kloppenburg spent most of the press conference doing what I predicted she would do, delegitimizing Prosser's victory without actually challenging it.

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The Region In Which Israel Lives

Call the U.N. Human Rights Council to condemn Israel, because obviously this was a Zionist plot to discredit the Egyptian Spring, Egyptian general admits 'virginity checks' conducted on protesters:
A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.

The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."

But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice.

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."
Just think what would have happened to these women had they been suspected of being Jewish or Israeli.

Actually, we know what would have happened.

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I've figured out blogging

Write a two sentence post asking readers to "brief" me on whether Anthony Weiner has been "exposed," with a video making a play on "weiner" and "boehner," and I generate enthusiasm and comments.

Write a multi-paragraph post about important issues of academic freedom and race politics in law school, and I generate nothing.

And it only took me 2 1/2 years to figure it out.

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Maybe Israel Should Now Recognize The Basque State

And the Kurdish State.
 
Via Israel Matzav, Spain to recognize 'Palestine' on the '1967 lines'

The Palestinian Authority announced on Thursday that Spain has decided to recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines before September. A spanish diplomat told Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath that Spain would support making the state of Palestine a UN member.
The announcement came as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Cairo on Monday, under the auspices of Egyptian authorities, with Ramadan Shallah, Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad organization, and his deputy, Ziad Nakhleh.
How nice.  The PA made the announcement while Abbas was meeting with the leader of one of the most hardline rejectionist terrorist groups.  Let me guess, it will not end with the "1967 lines."

Update:  Turkey celebrates 558 years of illegal occupation of Constantinople.


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Monday, May 30, 2011

Advice Muttered

A denial no politician wants to have to make.  From CBS News:
I did not send Twitter crotch pic
Someplace Bill Clinton was heard to mutter, "Well, Weiner'll just have to win, then."

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Obama's Greatest Foreign Policy Victory - Manuel Zelaya Returns To Honduras

The Obama administration has not had many foreign policy victories.  But it just consummated a long hoped-for victory in Honduras with the return of former President Manuel Zelaya, a close ally of Hugo Chavez.

Zelaya was forced into exile after Zelaya tried to extend his term as President in violation of the Honduran constitution.  Zelaya was deposed by the military acting on orders of the Honduran Supreme Court and the Honduran Congress.

Throughout 2009 the U.S. orchestrated intense pressure on Honduras, including facilitating the exclusion of Honduras from the Organization of American States, threatened sanctions, and disruption of the ability of Honduran officials to travel to the United States.  The fact that Honduras was acting in accordance with its own law as interpreted by its own Supreme Court in order to prevent a Chavez-style President-for-Life debacle meant nothing to the Obama administration.

For those of you who want some history, see my prior posts:
In order to ease the pressure, Honduras finally agreed that Zelaya could return, and he did so this weekend, as reported at Fausta's Blog and La Gringa's Blogicito.

Zelaya returned on a Venezuelan plane accompanied by Daniel Ortega and a top Chavez assistant, and has pledged to reenter politics:



Expect trouble, as Zelaya will waste no time in spiking the football with anti-American and pro-Chavez agitation.

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Should These Colors Even Run The Country?

My guess is that the owner of this vehicle not only objects to these colors running the world, but also is part of the open borders crowd which objects to these colors even running our own country.

A variation on a theme, spotted today in Ithaca:



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The German nuclear "solution"

Kathleen

Despite the fact that it is nowhere near a tsunami-prone area, the German government announced that it will phase out nuclear power over the next decade. Currently, Germany receives roughly a quarter of their energy from nuclear sources and no alternatives were cited in the announcement.

Angela Merkel, whose CDU party lost handedly in spring regional elections, diverted from a previous plan to keep nuclear power in Germany through 2030. As a result of several reactor shutdowns last year, Germany has recently gone from being a net exporter of energy to a net-importer, and this measure will only increase the price of energy (as well as unemployment).

This is a terrible idea. Dirty and expensive coal and gas-powered plants will replace the nuclear reactors (which do not even emit greenhouse gases). Merkel's coalition claims that "renewable energy" replace the void made by the absence of nuclear power.

I hope the fools who pushed for this are held accountable when they see their utilities go sky high.
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"Reform" In Syria

The head of Hezbollah has visited Syria to discuss "reforms":
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in order to discuss reforms in Syria, the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar, identified with Hezbollah, reported on Monday.

Nasrallah "held more than one meeting with President Assad to discuss reforms in Syria", the report says. But Assad "did not require encouragement to proceed with reforms, as he himself presented many ideas", it was quick to add.
The Hezbollah chief recognizes that promises of reform will be what saves the Assad regime.  Indeed, Obama himself has stated that Assad save his regime if he establishes political reforms.
 
The reforms will not be worth the paper on which they are written, but it is the cover Assad needs, handed to him by the U.S.
 
In the meantime, Assad will continue to round up protesters, shoot thousands in the streets, and cleanse city-by-city.
 
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Is This Any Way To Run A Law School?

I previously posted about the lawsuit by Widener Law School Professor Lawrence Connell.  Widener is seeking to terminate Connell after Connell used a hypothetical example in his criminal law class of the Widener Dean being attacked, and a small number of students alleged that Connell made racist and/or sexist statements in class.  A Widener faculty committee has recommended that the charges be dropped, but Widener is pursuing termination proceedings.

Conell has filed suit, but there also is an administrative hearing at Widener on June 6.  Connell will not be attending the hearing because of a death in the immediate family, but has submitted affidavits by a variety of people, including two students.  Numerous students also previously sent e-mails of support.

In the affidavits of Danielle Oppenheim and Samuel Elbardissi, the students take issue and put in context the supposedly racist and/or sexist statements made by Connell.  You can read the affidavits, but the short version is that the complaining students have taken comments out of context, failing to distinguish Connell's explanation of case background (in which racism was a factor) from Connell's personal opinion. 

So when Connell discussed in class how Bernie Goetz's subjective perception of blacks being responsible for crime contributed to Goetz's defense, the students took this as an affirmative statement by Connell that blacks were responsible for crime.  (Oppenheim Aff't at pars. 23-25, Elbardissi Aff't at par. 10)

Equally troubling is that two complaining students repeatedly created confrontations with Connell in class over such misperceptions of racism.  As explained by Elbardissi:
33. Two incidents occurred in the class that required the other students to take notice.
34. The first student, who sat middle of the class in the second row, raised her hand as we had just finished a case. The issue was, as I recall, referencing another note in the casebook that dealt with racial profiling and the latitude that officers have in making their determinations whether to stop or not.
35. Professor Connell had gone over the note and discussed the statistics that pointed to blacks being heavily targeted by police. The student raised her hand. When called upon, the student started her response, in an aggressive tone, with the words "I don't know what you agenda is ... " Her comments lasted about 45 second to a minute, to which Professor Connell replied, "If you can tell me what I have said that makes you think I have an agenda, I will gladly respond to your question." The student continued with her tone and Professor Connell said that we were going to move on.
36. I have been with this student in other classes and her approach, at times, is to take personal the topics at hand. When such a situation arises, her tone and aggressiveness to attack the situation that is very personal to her is similar to what occurred on that day.
37. On a separate day, Professor Connell had opened the floor for a question he had posed. A student, sitting two to three rows behind me, was called on to answer the question. The student asked a question and Professor Connell asked her to answer his.  Her response to this request was "You never answer mine. Why should I answer yours?"' The situation was awkward for the class who had seen tension from these two students build over the semester. Professor Connell did not continue the tirade, but simply stated "That when you answer my question first, I will answer yours." and then moved on to another student on the opposite side of the room.
38 . I am currently in class with this student. Unfortunately, her comments in response to the professor's question or the general topic at hand, tends to start with "1 believe" or " I think." and never addresses the question posed or the topic at hand . I have no issue with this person, but the consistency that a [sic] the train of subtantive learning gets derailed when she participates is too consistent to not notice.
The charges against Connell have a similar feel to a Media Matters or Think Progress story, in which sentences or clauses from sentences are presented without any context or out of context and spun into a tale of supposed racism by people with an agenda.

Widener Law School should not be proud that it has brought the worst aspects of the blogosphere into its classrooms.

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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Please Brief Me

I was in the car almost all day.

Have the facts about Weiner's tweet been exposed yet?



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Update on Bloomberg's View

Kathleen

I posted a few weeks ago about how I was happy to see Bloomberg's new "view," an editorial page. Alas, even the (primarily lefty) Slate Magazine has given it the thumbs-down.

Virginia Postrel, however, has been her usual astute self with a really entertaining article on Oprah's influence:
"Rather, she revived and extended an old American phenomenon: the tradition of middlebrow self-improvement that many observers assumed had died in the anti-authority turmoil of the 1960s.
While anything but radical, this achievement was nonetheless remarkable. ....
Oprah-ism doesn’t foster nuance or critical thinking. Yet even at its most philosophically ridiculous, it does manifest a singular, and characteristically American, virtue: It moves forward. The past, it affirms, is over and cannot be changed. What matters now is what happens next."
As per usual, I thought about Oprah in a different light. Even if Bloomberg View becomes a bust, I hope Ms. Postrel keeps up the good work.
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Now Is Not The Time To Play It Safe

Choices will have to be made soon, and chief among them is whether to tackle the debt problem head on and take the political risk, or not.

I don't see it as much of a risk.  Obama will not be defeated unless front and center is the damage to the nation from the national debt and the deficits, and the absolute abdication of duty by the Democrats.  Instead of 14 Wisconsin fleebaggers, we have an entire Democratic Party and President who have fled from the central issue of our generation.

With the mass media on Obama's side, milquetoast is not going to work.

Obama is overplaying the bin Laden card big time, but he can't help himself because it is the only achievement of his administration as to which he is on the side of the American people.  Every other supposed achievement -- Obamacare, Stimulus, not sure what else -- in fact was an abject failure and unpopular.

Obama cannot ride bin Laden forever.  It's the debt stupid.  And the big, ever expanding government which stifles job growth. 

The Democrats think they are sitting pretty with stupid, childish commercials about Grandma being thrown off a cliff.

Let them think NY-26 was their Virginia, New Jersy and Massachusetts.  Three sweeping wins in significant sized states versus a mere plurality in a messed up congressional race in which a fake Tea Party candidate served as spoiler.

Now is not the time to play it safe.  Because safe is a guarantee of four more years of the worst President since the Great Depression.

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Official Decree, Part 1: Defacing Gov't Property Is Illegal

Official Decree, Part 2:  Everything is government property.

Send to me by a reader in Columbus, Ohio, who took the photo below last summer and who writes as follows:
When I asked the man if I could take a picture of his truck, he tried to give me a copy of the pocket Constitution. "Already have one, my good man - you give that to someone who needs it." Then I gave him a card for theohioproject.com - always a treat running into fellow conservatives in a blue county like mine!
The small bumper sticker says "What part of Europe are you from?  The part whose ass we saved, or the part whose ass we kicked?"



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Saturday, May 28, 2011

I'm not touching this one

...
with a ten foot pole.

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Saturday Night Card Game (A Friend Told Me He Chugged 40s In High School)

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

Think Progress  is reeling from being punked by the Navy Seal Anchor Baby hoax.  But Think Progress needs to earn its keep, so it soldiers on.

Think Progress continues its the never-ending quest to find someone (preferably a Fox News employee, a Republican politician , a Tea Party supporter, or as a last resort, someone who knows one of the foregoing) making a racist statement.  And once again, Think Progress steps in it.

Eric Bolling, someone I had never heard of before, apparently is under consideration to replace Glenn Beck on Fox News.  So that makes Bolling a public enemy to Think Progress.

Bear with me here, you have to make several logical suppositions and factual assumptions.  So I'll take it in sequence. 

Obama was in Ireland.  Obama chugged some brew.  Bolling commented about it on Facebook, and Twitter, saying "Obama chugging 40's in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO."


According to Think Progress, this tweet was "racially-tinged":
“40′s” is a slang name for 40oz malt liquor bottles. But Obama drank from a pint glass (not a bottle) of beer that doesn’t come in 40oz bottles. Why did Bolling say Obama was “chugging 40′s”? As even some of Bolling’s Facebook commenter note, it’s an eyebrow-raising choice of words, given the beverage’s long-time association with African American stereotypes.
I'm not so sure Think Progress is correct about this. 

One of the retweets of Bolling's tweet was by @40ozMaltLiquor which runs the website 40ozMaltLiquor.com devoted to 40 oz. malt liquor (is the internet great, or what?).  The website features images of 839 different bottles of 40 oz. malt liquor.  Whatever stereotypes were in the minds of the Think Progress editors and writers, I'm not sure you can say the 40 oz. malt liquor phenomenon was limited to one racial or ethnic group.

And to prove the point, I'd like to relate some personal high school history.  Since I was not of legal drinking age until the end my senior year in high school, this information is based solely on what a friend told me.

This friend told me that he and his friends would use a fake i.d. to buy big bottles of Colt 45 Malt Liquor.  Although my friend did not specify, I'm pretty sure they were 40 oz. bottles.  My friend and his friends had heard that Colt 45 had a higher alcohol content than regular beer.  I don't know if that was true, but my friend and his friends believed it, which really was all that mattered to them.  My friend and his friends then would go to the beach or a house where the parents were away, and chug 40s of Colt 45.  With the strobe light on.

The point of this story is that the people doing the chugging of 40s, according to my friend, were all white.

So when I heard that Eric Bolling used the term "chugging 40s," I didn't see it as racially-tinged.  Just funny.

But what do I know, I've never chugged 40s.  Although I've heard about it.  From a friend.



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Sometimes The Show Must Not Go On

Via Drudge, one of the best headlines ever, Horse herpes outbreak forces rodeo queens to ride stick ponies

This show should not have gone on. For the sake of the children.


Video Courtesy of KSL.com

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Public office quotas

Kathleen

Since I have one month left in the states before I head over to London, I've been keeping track of the news in the British Isles. As I knew from living in Berlin in the latter-half of 2009, Europe is always a reliable deviation to the left from American politics. We may have affirmative action in our schools, but at least we don't have it in our politics(?), unlike Ireland:
The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has announced he will institute a rule that 30 per cent of all election candidates must be women.

Parties who refuse to follow that edict will lose half of their state funding.
Okay, low hanging fruit here, but it's arguably one of the stupidest things I've heard all day. First of all, as the article points out, two of the best politicians of recent times in Ireland were Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. Much like the "quotas" in schools, having the participation of women become a mandate will only devalue the accomplishments of these politicians. I can't even imagine the scorn Sarah Palin would receive if the Left could criticize her participation as a Right-wing quota-filling measure.

And, though reading Michael Lewis normally causes me to roll my eyes furiously, I did enjoy this exposé of the inanity of the Irish "crisis." Ireland has reliably bad politics, which has a way of making me incredibly appreciative that my grandparents got out of there in the 1950s.
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I hereby take back all Canada jokes

In a draft statement the G-8 nations were set to echo Obama's call for negotiations based on the 1967 borders, the same framework which caused outrage in the U.S. Congress:
 Group of Eight leaders will give "strong support" to U.S. President Barack Obama's call for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal to be based on the 1967 borders, the French Press Agency AFP reported on Friday.
But since G-8 statements must be unanimous, Canada insisted on taking out the reference to the 1967 borders in a bold move of support for Israel:
Diplomats involved in Middle East discussions at the G8 summit said Canada had insisted that no mention of Israel's pre-1967 borders be made in the leaders' final communique, even though most of the other leaders wanted a mention.

"The Canadians were really very adamant, even though Obama expressly referred to 1967 borders in his speech last week," one European diplomat said.

Canada's strong backing for Israel was cited by diplomats last year as one reason why Canada failed to win a rotating two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council.

[Stephen] Harper has made is position on Israel very clear, saying last year: "When Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand."
Can you imagine.  Harper disrespected my President.  Waiting for outrage and indignation in the Salons of The Atlantic.

Am I now not patriotic for taking back prior Canada jokes?

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Michael Strong

Kathleen

Should you only watch one TED video on public policy, innovation, education, and human potential, please let it be this one:


Michael Strong never disappoints me.

.... neither does his wife.
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"A Great Evil Has Been Loosed Upon The World"

Nothing really has changed at the U.N., even though General Assembly Resolution 3379 eventually was repealed. 

From Durban to Durban II to the sick joke that is the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Palestinian agenda always has been about denying Israel's legitimacy, and the U.N. has been the primary forum. 

Expect more in September.



Added: Can you imagine Susan Rice giving a speech like this?

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Her watch is stuck at 14:59

I think she broke it to preserve that last second of fame, but we're stuck with the pathetic complaints of a complete phony who loves to call attention to herself so she can complain that people are paying attention to her, and yes, she can't help pointing out that which she objects to people talking about, even when they were not talking about it.

Will someone please get that last second to tick off.

I don't have to mention her name, I bet that most of you know who she is.

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Friday, May 27, 2011

Palestinians Miscalculate Again, Will Not Obtain State Via U.N. In September

The threat of the Palestinians going directly to the U.N. General Assembly to obtain recognition as a sovereign state has been the latest in a long line of attempts to obtain the 1967 borders and to avoid serious concessions on non-territorial items, such as the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

In a recent Op-Ed in The NY Times, Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed the Palestinians intention to obtain membership as a state at the U.N. this September:
Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice....
The State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the principles of the United Nations Charter. Once admitted to the United Nations, our state stands ready to negotiate all core issues of the conflict with Israel. A key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948.

Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another, however, and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us.
The pressure from U.N. recognition has led to many chicken-little outcries that Israel must give in now, or else.

It appears that the Palestinian gambit was nothing more than posturing, with one important caveat.

As reported by the Jerusalem Post, the President of the U.N. General Assembly confirms that the Palestinians cannot obtain U.N. recognition as a member state unless the matter is referred to the General Assembly by the Security Council:
The Palestinians cannot circumvent the UN Security Council to avoid a likely US veto if they try to join the United Nations as a sovereign state later this year, a top UN official said on Friday.
But the official made clear a US veto would not put the issue of Palestinian statehood and UN membership to rest.

Some Arab diplomats in New York have suggested it would be possible for the Palestinians to bypass the UN Security Council and go straight to the 192-nation General Assembly to win approval for a planned UN membership application.
The UN charter says that new members are admitted by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the 15-nation Security Council, where the United Sates, Britain, France, China and Russia are permanent members with veto powers.
The current president of the General Assembly, Joseph Deiss of Switzerland, was asked by reporters if there was a way for the Palestinians to become a UN member state if its application was vetoed by the United States, which opposes the idea. Deiss said, "No."
The big caveat is that a permanent U.N. member would have to exercise its veto power.  That's us.

A General Assembly resolution unofficially recognizing a Palestinian state would not be insignificant as a further attempt to isolate Israel, but it also would not amount to much more than already exists.  In 1947 the General Assembly recognized Jewish and Arab states, and the Palestinians rejected it.   In 1988, another General Assembly resolution was passed recognizing Palestinian sovereignty over post-'67 war territory captured by Israel.

Yet the Palestinians do not have a state because they have rejected compromise on the key issues, and have no consensus even as to whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state.

One of these days the Palestinians will accept that they cannot have it all, just as Benjamin Netanyahu recently acknowledged that there will have to be Israeli territorial compromises. 

But one of those days seems as far away as it was in 1947, 1967, 1973, 1988, and last week.

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Good read for the long weekend

Kathleen

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in City Journal, details the necessity of studying conflict, despite a near-ubiquitous hesitation to do so in our modern era. (More details of this can be found in 'The Peace Racket.')

"Indeed, by ignoring history, the modern age is free to interpret war as a failure of communication, of diplomacy, of talking—as if aggressors don’t know exactly what they’re doing. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, frustrated by the Bush administration’s intransigence in the War on Terror, flew to Syria, hoping to persuade President Assad to stop funding terror in the Middle East. She assumed that Assad’s belligerence resulted from our aloofness and arrogance rather than from his dictatorship’s interest in destroying democracy in Lebanon and Iraq, before such contagious freedom might in fact destroy him. For a therapeutically inclined generation raised on Oprah and Dr. Phil—and not on the letters of William Tecumseh Sherman and William Shirer’s Berlin Diary—problems between states, like those in our personal lives, should be argued about by equally civilized and peaceful rivals, and so solved without resorting to violence."

Hanson ends with a few book suggestions to complete a primer in military history. I'll try to grab a Kindle copy of one this weekend. (As an aside, I would add one more from Cornell's own to his list.)
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Kagan Should Recuse Herself As To Obamacare

Several readers wrote to me asking me to post on this.  It certainly is worth noting, because Elena Kagan's involvement or not in whatever Obamacare appeals make their way to the Supreme Court could make a difference.

Justice Kagan did not recuse herself from consideration of Virginia's request for the Supreme Court to take Virginia's case before the 4th Circuit ruled, leading many to conclude that Kagan perceived no conflict which would require her to recuse herself from the case.  By contrast, Kagan did not participate in the decision yesterday involving the Arizona E-Verify law, because of her prior involvement in the issue when she worked as Solicitor General for Obama.

Judicial Watch, however, has uncovered e-mails which show that Kagan was involved at some level with the framing of Obama's legal strategy on Obamacare:
According to a January 8, 2010, email from Neal Katyal, former Deputy Solicitor General (and current Acting Solicitor General) to Brian Hauck, Senior Counsel to Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, Kagan was involved in the strategy to defend Obamacare from the very beginning:
Subject: Re: Health Care Defense:
Brian, Elena would definitely like OSG [Office of Solicitor General] to be involved in this set of issues…we will bring in Elena as needed. [The “set of issues” refers to another email calling for assembling a group to figure out “how to defend against the…health care proposals that are pending.”]
On March 21, 2010, Katyal urged Kagan to attend a health care litigation meeting that was evidently organized by the Obama White House: “This is the first I’ve heard of this. I think you should go, no? I will, regardless, but feel like this is litigation of singular importance.”
In another email exchange that took place on January 8, 2010, Katyal’s Department of Justice colleague Brian Hauck asked Katyal about putting together a group to discuss challenges to Obamacare. “Could you figure out the right person or people for that?” Hauck asked. “Absolutely right on. Let’s crush them,” Katyal responded. “I’ll speak with Elena and designate someone.”
Kagan needs to step aside from consideration of any matters involving Obamacare.  Unlike the hyper-ventilated accusations against Clarence Thomas because of his wife's political activities, the conduct here involves Kagan personally and the subject matter of the litigation.

The impact of having Kagan recused is important, but only really comes into play if Anthony Kennedy votes with the liberals, or there is not a typical conservative-liberal split.  Assuming the usual 4-4 with Kennedy casting the winning vote, Kagan's absence will not matter if Kennedy votes to strike down the Obamacare mandate. 

But, if Kennedy voted to uphold the mandate, and Kagan were recused, there would be a 4-4 split, which means that the lower court holding would prevail.  Since we don't know how the appeals courts will rule, this does not result in a predictable outcome on the merits.

Beyond the end result, it is important for Kagan to recuse herself because while the nation does not have to agree with Supreme Court decisions, it is important that the decisions not be seen as tainted by prior activities of one of the Justices with regard to the subject matter of the decision.

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Still Digging For "Stolen Votes" In Wisconsin Sup Ct Election

As of this writing, JoAnne Kloppenburg has not yet announced whether she will file a court challenge to the recently concluded recount, which found her losing (again) by just over 7000 votes.  A court challenge must be filed by Monday Tuesday.

As documented here, Team Kloppenburg repeatedly has made noises about "ballot bag security" problems, despite the vote count changing just slightly and in Kloppenburg's favor, from the canvass to the recount.  If there were fraud favoring David Prosser, one would have expected a more substantial vote change and a change in favor of Prosser.

While Team Kloppenburg has not yet announced whether it will challenge the recount, this call for volunteers by a self-described social change consultant who has been "heavily involved" in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, certainly indicates that Kloppenburg is not yet done:
As you may know, I've been heavily involved in the election integrity work around the WI Supreme Court race.

In the next few days, we need a cadre of people to help with a very specific project: reading the minutes (the official record) of the recount from all 72 counties. Do you think some of your readers would help with this? JoAnne Kloppenburg has until Monday to decide whether or not to seek a judicial review. We need people who can commit at least three hours to this project between now and Saturday, so we can pull together their findings and get them to the campaign in time to inform their decision.
We're trying to document that enough votes were affected by irregularities to call the outcome of the election into question and indicate the need for judicial review. How are we doing that? By going through the minutes (official record) of the recounts for as many counties as possible, documenting the number of votes affected by each irregularity....
I e-mailed the author asking whether she was working with the Kloppenburg campaign or coordinating the efforts, but have not heard back yet.

The call for volunteers has been linked by Mark Crispin Miller and also spread via Twitter.

The delusion continues.

Update:  I received this response to my e-mail:
The Kloppenburg campaign is aware of our project. We are not coordinating it with them. Velvet Revolution works on issues election integrity, not specifically in support of any candidate or campaign. While we will share our findings with the campaign and hope that the hundreds of irregularities we are documenting will be considered by the campaign in their decision about whether or not to seek judicial review, we believe this project is important regardless of the campaign's decision. The voters of Wisconsin need to know what really happened in this election, and the whole country needs to understand how vulnerable to incorrect results our election system currently is.

Would you like to volunteer?
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Question of the Day - Antipathy or Blundering?

Charles Krauthammer (h/t @fuzislippers) has a column today about Obama's Middle East policy, and ends with this question:
The only remaining question is whether this perverse and ultimately self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations.
Is it really all or nothing, or some combination of lack of the emotional connection a majority of Americans feel towards Israel (but not "antipathy") combined with the arrogance of someone who thinks he can cause the seas to stop rising? 

That third combination has my vote.

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Finally, They're Burning Posters Of Hezbollah Chief

Hezbollah in Lebanon needs Bashar Assad to stay in power, as Syria not only supports Hezbollah militarily but also serves as a logistics conduit for Iran.

Hezbollah's support of Syria's crackdown has been noticed:
Syrian security forces fired at two protests in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor on Friday as demonstrations demanding the removal of President Bashar Assad swept the tribal area, residents and activists said.

In the city of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, protesters burned pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose speech in Beirut this week in support of Assad infuriated demonstrators, activists and a tribal leader in the province told Reuters by phone, adding security forces had withdrawn from the streets of Albu Kamal.
While many worry about what would happen if Assad was toppled, I'm less concerned.  Unlike Egypt under Mubarak and Jordan, Syria has been a cause of trouble in the region for decades, and Assad has the blood of hundreds of American soldiers on his hands as Syria served as a conduit for foreign fighters to enter Iraq.

If Assad falls, Hezbollah will be isolated geographically and politically.  The upside for peace in the region would be enormous.

Update:  Thanks to SoccerDad for the link to Syria: The Case for 'The Devil We Don't Know'

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Thursday, May 26, 2011

He doesn't need a Medicare plan, because he got bin Laden.

It's a, um, a European, um, wedding toast training, um, ping ponging, um, partying like it's 2008, whatever....

This tweet is making waves on our side of the pond:


He doesn't need a Medicare plan, because he got bin Laden.

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"Israel is an American Value"

This is an explanation from Walter Russell Mead of why Benjamin Netanyahu received such a warm reception.  I think it's a little heavy on the religion side, but I think it's essentially correct (emphasis mine):
As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.
It means more. The existence of Israel means that the God of the Bible is still watching out for the well-being of the human race. For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted.

Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God. Obama’s political isolation on this issue, and the haste with which liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi left the embattled President to take the heat alone, testify to the pervasive sense in American politics that Israel is an American value.
Read the whole thing.

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