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White House officials say that even if the documents are convincing, they do not remove the political necessity to work with Mr. Arafat under the kind of peace plan that Mr. Bush is trying to pursue with the help of friendly Arab countries.
In other words, the White House position has become that Israel must ignore the deeds of the man who assaults, murders, and terrorizes her citizens, and treat with the man as if he were an honest partner for peace - no matter what he has done, or might do in the future.
The only reason that George Bush can even think about trying to push this agenda is that there have been no significant terror attacks on the United States since 9/11. Do you think for one moment that if some Osama bin Laden terrorist walked into a home in Elk Grove, Illinois and machine-gunned to death a five year old girl in her bed that the American people would put up for one second with the notion that we must treat that terrorist's boss as a partner for peace? Or that any other decent government in the world should do likewise?
Sorry, folks. I had a minor accident and burned one of my hands. Single-handed hunt-and-peck isn't my favorite way to post, so there may be a hiatus at DailyPundit for a day or so. Go read the Pink Pistols discussion at InstaPundit instead. It's excellent!
Editor -- Regarding reports of military planning for an invasion of Iraq when the president decides: This indicates that the lesson that the U.S. government learned from the ignominious Vietnam conflict was that 30 years hence nobody could remember what that lesson was. JAY MELTESEN San Francisco
Uh, right, Jay Meltesen. Whatever you say. Thirty minutes from now, nobody will care about that, either.
Fred Pruitt is on to something rather odd over at Rantburg. Seems a plane that might be Osama bin Laden's personal transportation has been discovered sitting on the tarmac at Jeddah airport in (where freaking else?) Saudi Arabia. Fred asks, "Wonder where it's been flying lately? Wonder who's paying for its maintenance?"
Good questions. Wonder if the royal oilbags will answer them?
Do yourself a favor. Subscribe to the new Los Angeles paper. Ken Layne, Matt Welch, maybe even Tim Blair, speaking truth to power, and showing heart-warming monkey pictures for all. What could be better? Go sign up now!
According to a program transcript, Armey said, "I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank."
Matthews then asked Armey, "Well, where do you put the Palestinian state, in Norway?" Armey responded, "There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land and soil and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian state."
When Matthews asked whether Armey believed "the Palestinians who are now living on the West Bank should get out of there?" Armey replied, "Yes."
A spokesman for the Council of American-Islamic Relations called Armey's views "insane."
Given that the initial creation of the plight of the refugees, and the subsequent occupation of the disputed territories by Israel are both the result of aggression against Israel by the Arab states, why is it insane to expect those Arab states to take practical steps to solve the problems they created in the first place?
It's time for Congress to adopt the Pundits Promotion and Protection Act of 2002. Opinion journalism is clearly a strategic national industry worthy of federal largesse. Picture America without CNN's "Crossfire," Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" or www.nationalreview.com (where my work is archived). Just imagine how bland your morning corn flakes would be without the daily editorial page. The following policies - patterned after existing, real-life programs - will assure this country a steady and reliable supply of perspectives on today's vital issues.
Without any doubt whatsoever, this is an idea whose time has come. I figure that if DailyPundit can earn subsidies by weight alone, this endeavor should generate federal handouts in the five figure per day range. God only knows what somebody prolific, like the estemed and liquid VodkaFountain, or the terrible flow of the awesome InstaNiagara might garner of the public dollar.
Pixels don't come cheap, people. Write, phone, or email your congressperson today.
A Palestinian Cabinet minister resigned Friday amid growing calls for reform following Israel's military offensive, which left Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority in tatters. Nabil Amr, minister of parliamentary affairs, submitted his resignation but said he would retain his seat in the Palestinian parliament.
Keep an eye on items like this one, and the one I mentioned earlier about Yasser Arafat being shunned during his "triumphal" exit from the Ramallah seige. Something's going on here, and whatever it is, my hunch is it doesn't bode well for the Ringo lookalike.
They're our enemies because they want us dead. That's a sufficient reason for us to fight them; we need no other. And we will continue to fight until they no longer want us dead, either because they have changed their minds or because they are dead. That's when the war will be over. And I don't care whether most of the casualties are on their side. To me that's the ideal outcome. Not because I want their side to bleed, but because I want our side not to. Bodycounts are not scores in a game, and the war doesn't end when we score more of their corpses than they score of ours. And if someone accuses me of being a war criminal, I'll consider that a badge of honor. Because the term has been so debased these days that all it really means is "someone who's winning".
It's a downright eerie sensation to feel that not only is somebody reading your mind, they're speaking your mind better than you ever could.
A popular science teacher and her 15-year-old student, apparently tangled in an intimate relationship that has equally captivated and horrified their school, were discovered Thursday in a Las Vegas hotel room where they had fled together, authorities said.
Tanya Joan Hadden, 33, a Cajon High School teacher, and Richard Pena, a 15-year-old freshman, were found by police investigators in a room at the $39-a-night New Frontier Hotel & Gambling Hall, where Elvis Presley reportedly played his first Vegas gig in 1956.
I'm sorry. I know I'm supposed to, but somehow I just can't find myself getting too worked up over what would be the fondest desire of ninety percent of the fifteen year old boys I've ever known - including me, when I was fifteen.
This volume of the Regent University Law Review might well be known as the refugee edition of Volume 12 of the Stanford Law and Policy Review (SLPR). As co-editor of SLPR’s symposium on gay rights, I solicited and tentatively accepted the articles by A. Dean Byrd and Stony Olson, George A. Rekers and Mark D. Kilgus, Ben Kaufman, and Judith Reisman, all of which question or criticize various tenets of gay rights orthodoxy. Unfortunately, all these articles were rejected at the last moment by the SLPR editorial board.
I've read most of the rejected articles and don't find them convincing at all, but that is still no excuse for a university to simply repress them. If this is what a once-proud liberal tradition of freedom of expression and discourse has come to, then the left has finally embraced the tyranny they have always claimed to despise.
Scutum Sobieski of the excellent Regurga-Blog tips me to the latest from the left-liberal American Prospect anent the Field Poll they gloated over that showed Gray Davis leading Bill Simon by a wide margin in the California gubernatorial race. It seems they've been forced to change their tune by, of all things, the most recent Field Poll:
CALIFORNIA FOR BUSH? Since we made much of a Field Poll showing Bill Simon down by double-digits to Gray Davis, we feel compelled to also note that the latest Field Poll also shows that 52 percent of California voters would be inclined to re-elect George W. Bush. Uh-oh. Somebody email us something to gloat about, quick! [posted 11:00 am]
Uh, okay. Snakehead and Bonehead are still appearing for the DNC on Crassfire? But seriously, congratulations, folks, for recognizing the change - and printing it.
The latest mission to pursue al-Qaida and Taliban fighters is drawing chuckles from American forces - not for its objective, nor for its methods, but for its name. In a tiny case of cultures clashing, "Operation Snipe," a name chosen by Britain, fails to take into account the existence of a more jocular American tradition: the "snipe hunt."
'England and America are two countries separated by the same language' -- George Bernard Shaw
It was no secret that Bush and White House political director Karl Rove would have preferred liberal former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to win the California gubernatorial primary. After Simon demolished Riordan in the March 5 voting, ugly rumors circulated that the White House would "write off" California—a state that Democrats have carried by more than a million votes in four of the last five statewide contests. Bush has now put those rumors to rest. During his two-day swing through California, the President appeared at two Simon fund-raising events and strongly boosted the Republican nominee against Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. At a sold-out Simon dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, Bush hailed the conservative leader as "an entrepreneur with a generous heart" and someone who "is willing to lead, doesn’t need a poll or a focus group to tell him what to think, a man who will stand on principle, and a man who has the courage to do what is right for the people of California."
Hm. Evidently Rove and Bush can read the polls as well as the next guys. While at this point I sort of doubt there is any love lost between the Simon and Bush camps, they'll still work together, though. That's the name of the political game - and if Bush can retake California for the Republicans nationally, he'll establish the party's ascendancy for a generation.
IDF troops did not carry out a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp, the international Human Rights Watch organization has announced following it's investigation of the recent events. According to the HRW report, Palestinian gunmen endangered the lives of local residents by preparing and setting explosive devices inside the refugee camp...
What? You mean all those Palestinian "spokesmen" and "eyewitnesses" were lying to us?
Singapore will be cutting corporate and personal income tax rates to 20 percent by FY 2004. This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lee Hsien Loong in parliament on Friday when he delivered the 2002/03 Budget.
Russia has a flat tax, Singapore is cutting taxes, and all Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-Teacher's Unions) can talk about is raising taxes.
As DEBKAfile wrote earlier this week, Abdullah intends to pour Saudi money into the West Bank to rebuild not only the Palestinian Authority but also Yasser Arafat’s standing as PA chairman. Bush, for his part, will steer Sharon toward a new policy. If Sharon balks, Bush will bring the full weight of the White House to bear on him, just as he did this week when he forced him to accept the transfer to a Jericho prison of the wanted killers of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi and the end of Arafat’s confinement. Saudi money will therefore wipe out the profits of Operation Defensive Shield and the month-long siege of Arafat’s compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The feeling in Jerusalem is that Israel will be told to foot the bill for the Saudi lifeline for Arafat. The coin may possibly be a demand to start dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as Israel’s contribution to the rehabilitation of the Palestinian Authority. Even more ironically, Washington and Riyadh are plunging ahead with their joint strategy without a word from Arafat about dropping his strategy of terror. The US president’s decision to play the Arafat card left Sharon too stunned to speak and with few options.
Take Debka for what it's worth, but if George Bush sells out Israel in favor of the royal oilbags, not only will his war on terror go down in ruins, his presidency and his party's effective control of congress will as well. His failure will make that of his father look like a small hiccup in comparison. And President McCain will laugh over his political grave.
Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, emerged from a month of captivity to make a victory tour of Ramallah yesterday. But it was shunned by most of the populace, amid whispers of betrayal. A small crowd of supporters joined him - only enough to fill the viewfinder of a television camera. There was no joy on the streets to celebrate the departure of the Israeli army after five months in the north of the city. Schoolchildren filled the gap left by volunteers.
This is the best news I've heard about the old murderer's release since that shameful event occurred. Could George Bush be lucky enough to have stumbled out of the crap-pile of his own making and into a bucket of pure gold? I sure hope so, but we'll have to wait and see. (Link courtesy Rand Simberg).
But there is another view: that a U.S. invasion will inflame the Mideast, bring down pro-American Arab regimes...
Exactly which Arab regimes might those be, Pat? The Saudis who finance terror? The Iranians who arm it? The Iraqis who support it? The Egyptians, whose government media spurs it on? The Syrians, Libyans, Palestinians, Yemenis, and all the rest of the pack baying for death to the Great Satan America?
What planet do you live on, Pat, that has "pro-American Arab regimes?"
UPDATE: Sorry, questioning Buchanan about his planet of residence is probably not a fair inquiry. DailyPundit regrets the error.
Israel's finest have also made off with awesome amounts of cash, jewelry, valuables, antiques, cameras, camcorders -even clothes and food. Sometimes they simply point an M-16 at you and say, "Your money or your life." But as a rule they are much more disciplined: They enter a residential building, lock all of the residents into a single apartment or room, and then strip the place bare. Sometimes they have a meal and a shower in the process; usually they smash what they don't take. In a number of cases they have remained for days on end, using the building as a sniper nest to kill women doing laundry and leaving hospitals while dozens of residents are imprisoned as described above, and prevented from obtaining any supplies. To be fair, I do know of one case where the soldiers neither stole nor destroyed anything. All they did was constantly shoot at the building on the other side of the road. According to the residents, not a single shot was fired back.
In California, this sort of garbage can get published without a single line of effort at editorial balance - or even basic fact-checking. It's amazing. But it's easy. Let's see if I can do it:
Palestinian "freedom fighters" have kidnapped hundreds of Jewish infants, cut their throats, drunk their blood, raped their bodies, and dissolved their corpses in fiery acid to hid their filthy deeds. Palestinian thug armies have burned thousands of Jewish settlements to the ground, and murdered their inhabitants indiscriminately. Palestinian leaders are urging their people to murder Jews -
Oh, wait. That last sentence is actually true. And the rest must be as well, right? After all, you read it in a "news" outlet, and you didn't see anything that indicated it was utter bullshit, did you?
They don't call rags like the Coast Weekly "throwaways" for nothing.
In a symbolic but strong expression of support for Israel, the House and Senate yesterday endorsed its military campaign to dismantle "the terrorist infrastructure" in the occupied territories despite earlier administration warnings that the vote could interfere in Middle East peace efforts.
What this really means is that the pervasive efforts of elite liberal and leftist opinonmakers to portray Palestinians as victims, and Israelis as villains in this confrontation, have been an abject failure. Congress-critters can read their own polls better than anybody else, and they are painfully aware, with elections looming, that the American people aren't buying the notion that lunatic acts of human sacrifice and wanton murder are the deeds of "freedom fighters."
France's far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen could garner between 18 and 25 percent of the vote in presidential run-off elections Sunday, which are sure to be won won by incumbent President Jacques Chirac, according to a recent poll.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge for the first time disclosed Thursday the Bush administration is studying ways to set national standards for driver's licenses that would assist in preventing fraudulent identification and expose aliens who overstayed their visas.
Drudge is pushing this under a screech hed about a "National ID Card," but I'm considerably more worried about the gigantic databases being put together by local, state, and national organs of government, not to mention the enormous pools of data accreting in the computers of credit agencies, private corporations, and marketing wizards.
Editor -- It saddens me deeply to hear the actions that the Jewish groups are taking in response to the reporting done by The Chronicle and other publications on this latest Mideast crisis (Chronicle, May 2). It is quite unfortunate that there aren't equally powerful Palestinian interest groups that could challenge the voice and influence of the Jewish interest groups. As it appears that no such Palestinian group exists, I truly hope that fair and even-handed journalism prevails and corporate media does not succumb to Jewish lobby extortion. SYLVA TAFFE Sunnyvale
Yes, Sylvia Taffe, aside from CAIR and a dozen other Palestinian cheerleading sections here in the US, there aren't any "equally powerful Palestinian interest groups." As if truth was the sole province of public relations campaigns. But you betray yourself at the end - that "Jewish lobby extortion" thing you toss off. Yep, it's all the fault of those damned Jews. Say, have you been putting up posters over in Berkeley lately?
From the Palestinian Authority official web site comes this map of "Palestine:"
Do you see any trace of Israel on this map? Neither do I. Shouldn't somebody tell Yasser "Partner For Peace" Arafat about this terrible omission? (Link courtesy Daddy Warblogs).
My neighbor across the SF Bay, Berkeley, puts forth yet another example of why it is considered such a bastion of leftist fascism:
This picture was on a phone booth on the corner of Channing and Telegraph in Berkeley, two blocks from the campus of the University of California at Berkeley proper. Link courtesy The Angry Clam.
Rep. Richard Armey (Majority Leader, R.-Tex), speaking with Chris Matthews on MSNBC: "I am content with Israel keeping all the land it occupies now." When Matthews asked if he means to say that "all the Palestinians who are now in the West Bank should get out of there? Is that correct?," Armey responded, "Yes." He explained that there was plenty of room for the PA population in other Arab countries.
Whoa! Coupled with the recent lopsided congressional votes on resolutions that were highly favorable to Israel, I'd be willing to bet this is causing some foggy Jockeys™ in Soggy Bottom, and maybe even at the White House itself.
From down in the trenches, GedankenPundit sends a startling message that portends nothing but problems for the Democrats this fall - and maybe even after that.
Make no mistake,after fifty-four years Israel is fighting for its very survival. The battle is not only between the IDF and Palestinian terrorists,but also in the media for the hearts and minds of American and world public opinion. So how does The New York Times which proudly claims to publish "all the news that's fit to print,"react to Israel's war of self defense?
*They offer a misguided moral equivalency between terrorists and the victims,between Middle Eastern dictatorships on the one hand,and the solitary democracy on the other. *They run headlines that subtly distort not just the reality, but often the facts found below the headline.
*They show pictures chosen with a predisposition to solicit support for allegedly innocent,suffering Palestinian men,women and children,suggesting Israel is the cause of their misery.
Where is this outfit headquartered? Cedarhurst, NY. I guess this is another group of New York Jews who haven't gotten the word from Gary Farber yet that they aren't supposed to think NYT is biased against Israel.
A major defence relationship, probably directed at China, is taking shape. And it is in the form of a triangle. Australian Prime Minister John Howard raised the idea of forging a closer Australia-Japan-US defence triangle during talks with his Japanese counterpart, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, on Wednesday.
On the one hand, this news. On the other, the startling rapproachment reached between Vladimir Putin and George Bush a few months ago down in Texas. Much of the current war on terror will be dead and forgotten four years from now. But ten years (or less) down the road, the Communist Chinese tyrants may have excellent cause to fear and regret US decisions made in the past six months.
This week, though, we turn to the babbling of a man burdened with a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation`s most undistinguished presidents — a man who, three years into his lone term in office, had approval ratings lower than Richard Nixon`s at the height — or depth — of the Watergate crisis.
Not everybody thinks The Peanut has redeemed himself by years of slapping together cheap housing for the poor and writing inane Op-Eds for NYT.
Bob "CNN" Franken and Al "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot" Franken are cousins? Sounds like an illegal concentration of media power to me. Gosh, if the Franken family merged with the Ben Stein family, why then we'd have...
Captured Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti has told Israeli interrogators that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat personally approved weapons funding for attacks against Israelis, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said Thursday. Palestinian officials contacted by The Associated Press refused to comment on the report.
Mostly because they couldn't think of a pack of lies fast enough. Don't worry. By the time the Chief Terrorist Chairman of the PA, Mr. (Partner for Peace) Arafat gets to a Euromedia microphone tomorrow, they'll have their whoppers all in order.
Sharpton blasted the Republican and Democratic parties for neglecting the needs of minorities.
"We have been basically taken for granted by one party and ignored by the other party," Sharpton said. "We must, I think, in 2004 renegotiate those relationships."
Good idea, Al. I suggest you deliver the black vote to the Green Party. Then you can combine being taken for granted and ignored all into one package.
The Pentagon said on Thursday it had ordered the U.S. Army to come up with alternatives to its Crusader artillery system, foreshadowing possible cancellation of the $11 billion United Defense Industries program derided by critics as an obsolete Cold War system backed by vested interests. The move appeared to trigger a test of strength among Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Army and lawmakers who have the power of the purse over how best to modernize the U.S. military.
There are two problems with the military procurement system: First, the cozy relationship between Pentagon officers and the companies which sell to them - and quite often employ them in cushy jobs after they retire; second, that members of Congress who vote on the budgets for the military are far too often more concerned about military pork in their districts than they are with military readiness to defend the nation.
Neither of these issues is focused on the military's first and highest duty, which is to protect and defend the United States of America and her citizens. Given that we are now in wartime, that will have to change, and I believe it will. I think that change is what Don Rumsfeld intended to accomplish all along, and now in the new, post 9/11 era, he holds all the cards.
The Crusader system is gone. I doubt very much whether SecDef - a true old hand in the backroom ways of Washington - would have joined this sort of battle if he weren't sure he could win it.
UPDATE: One extremely interesting aspect of this story is that United Defense Industries, the maker of the Crusader system, is a subsidiary of The Carlyle Group, the ultimate old-boy network company, in which George Bush the elder has a financial interest.
The IDF released a videotape Thursday showing the apparently staged funeral of a Palestinian in the Jenin refugee camp. The footage was filmed by an IDF unmanned reconnaissance plane on April 28.
Think of all the superb Palestinian acting - not to mention the superb Palestinian lying - now going to waste since the UN decided to cancel their fault fact-finding mission.
The Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, like all Egyptian media firmly under the control of the Egyptian government, prints something rather unlikely (for them):
The quiet consensus emerging from the dozens of human rights lawyers and military experts who have visited Jenin camp over the last two weeks is that there appears little substance to the Palestinian claim that a massacre occurred.
If, as some have suggested, part of the agreement reached between the US and Saudi Arabia at the recent summit in Texas was for the Saudis to pressure Arafat and the Arab states into a more peaceful line, it looks as if the Saudis may be doing their part. The usual approach for the Arab media to take is to accept any Palestinian charge, no matter how outrageous, at face value, and then amplify it throughout the Arabian world. However, that doesn't seem to be the case here. In Egypt's case, though, it is a fair speculation to wonder exactly who is applying the pressure: Saudi Arabia, or the United States itself?
The Editor at Midwest Conservative Journal takes a look at the role of Christianity in the Middle East, and what he finds isn't pretty at all. In fact, it's horrifying.
Okay, not to sound overly jingoistic, but is there any blog coming out of an American university on the student level that approaches the consistent high quality being demonstrated by these three guys from Oxford University? If you know of one, point me to it, please.
Gregory Hlatky at A Dog's Life offers his interpretation of the logical outcome of a mindset that approves of things like the two deaf lesbians who are hoping for a deaf child:
Avant-garde artist Eve Rosepetal is pregnant and taking thalidomide in an effort to create a sculpture with a unique visual impact.
It's Swiftian satire, of course, but chilling in it implications nonetheless.
California's state Senate Thursday approved a controversial bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions, a measure automakers say is aimed at choking off sales of sport utility vehicles through tighter fuel economy standards.
Gov. Gray Davis has not taken a position on the bill, which is strongly opposed by the auto industry. Officials in his office said the Democratic governor was working with the bill's author, Democratic Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, seeking "to make it more palatable to all parties concerned."
The only palatable version of this piece of nanny-state idiocy is one that goes away entirely. However, I can live with a bill like this as long as it has Davis's public paw-prints all over it. Let him step out front as favoring the elimination of the preferred mode of transportation for huge swathes of his suburban supporters.
The White House chided Yasser Arafat Thursday for condemning Israel as "terrorists, Nazis and racists," and said it would be better for all sides to focus on peace issues.
Oh, ho, ho, ho. You're the morons who forced Israel to let this poisonous little murderer out of his box. You rewarded him for doing everything but "focusing on peace issues." What are you complaining about now? He's only continuing to do exactly what he did before to win victory.
Some experts said Clinton also would risk his status as a world statesman by aligning himself so closely with the issues common to afternoon or late-night talk shows such as adultery, rape, child abuse and teen pregnancy.
Now, I don't normally do this, but the good folks who operate lucianne.com offered such a great riposte I couldn't resist:
While he was president he aligned himself with corruption, mendacity, adultery, rape, convicted felons, tax cheats, Chinese spies and dirty money. What's the big deal? He'd be perfect for the job.
Interesting Jim Hoagland column in WaPo today, Sharon, Speaking Alone. Hoagland plays it as fantasy, but maybe he knows more than he's publicly admitting. (Link courtesy Cut on the Bias).
Thanks to the anti-Simon press corps, few Californians know that Simon has been leading Gray Davis in at least five polls.
"I don't want to argue on whether or not Gray Davis has done a good job or a bad job. I just want to look at the numbers. And the numbers say he has done a terrible job. His numbers stink," said pollster Stuart Rothenberg in April. "And he's losing to a guy who has never run for office before on a ballot test."
A survey conducted by the California Teachers Association -- a group which endorsed Davis -- found Bill Simon enjoying a four-point lead over Davis, 41 to 37 percent.
Simon says that he has been maintaining an 8-point lead over Davis since the primary. The polling firm Public Opinion Strategies Inc. says Simon leads Gray Davis 48% to 41% among registered voters. A poll conducted by Probolsky & Associates Opinion Research puts Davis's support at less than 38% of voters and Simon's at 44%.
Polls apparently don't impress the California media unless they show Davis ahead. The San Francisco Chronicle neglected the polls above, but it quickly perked up when an unreliable Field Poll emerged to suggest a Davis lead.
This Field Poll was not restricted to likely voters. And yet even this dubious poll bodes ill for Davis, as 57% of voters indicated they would not vote for his re-election.
Juan Gato offers a thoughtful analysis of his opinions of several different guises of libertarianism, and to my pleasure, mentions me (and VodkaSeer) as examples of the sort of libs he doesn't have too many problems with.
However, some of the lib purists he mentions do have a problem or two with my own flavor. I get a lot of mail that starts out, "How can you call yourself a libertarian, when..." and then finishes with whatever supposed sin I've committed against the correspondent's interpretation of libertarianism. One of the big ones I'm often asked is how can I support the US government when it is such a massive, statist enterprise, and supposedly the antithesis of all things lib.
The answer is, I'm pragmatic. Of course the US is not an ideal libertarian state (whatever the hell that might be). However, Rand loved America, and loved our constitution, and our constitution is, indeed, unique in the world. And it is because of that constitution that libertarian principles have a better chance of growing and flourishing here than they do anywhere else on the globe.
An example: The Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms, a right dear to the hearts of most libertarians (although, oddly enough, not to Rand herself). Yet for nearly the past eighty years, that right has been more or less a dead letter - still on the constitutional books, but ignored by the Supreme Court, and derided by cravens to whom the right of individual self defense of life, liberty, and property is anathema.
Yet now, after all these years, because that right remained enumerated within the constitution it has begun to spring to life again. In three states of the union it now officially guarantees what it always did - an individual right which the state, except in certain highly-constricted instances - cannot trample upon. And the change in direction of legal scholarship - not to mention a new awakening of the general public to the virtues of self defense - indicates that the Second may once again come to mean what the Founders intended it to mean.
In short, the United States, while not being a libertarian nation, is the most fertile ground in which libertarian principles may flourish, and so it seems to me I would be a profound fool for sacrificing the good in favor of the perfect and not supporting my country, libertarian-derided warts and all. Does this mean I support everything our government does? Of course not. But I am appreciative of the fact that, because of the elements of individual sovereign liberty already in place here, I am free to oppose those elements I don't like, and do my best to change them. That may not make me a libertarian purist, but for me, it will do.
Of course, I'm not a fanatic. I'm just some guy who believes in liberty for the sovereign individual - or at least in enjoying the opportunity to create a nation in which such things are accepted and respected. Actually, we already have that nation. Our great national argument is not over principles, but over degrees. How much freedom? How much liberty?
This is a great thing, in a world where much of the debate isn't "How much," but "Whether at all." And I can deal with that just fine.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco received the diplomatic equivalent of the raspberry when China's visiting vice president refused to accept four letters she tried to hand him seeking action on alleged human rights abuses.
I'm of two minds. Pelosi happens to be right here - the Chinese communist tyrants are horrible abusers of human rights - but Pelosi is also, most of the time, a terrible obsessed-nanny of a busybody. So while a part of me agrees wholeheartedly with her action, another part can't help but snicker at her being slapped down.
It's called schadenfreude, and I'm only human. So sue me.
"We're all immigrants," said Passamani, who had a Brazilian flag draped over her back. "It doesn't make a difference if some have green cards and others don't have papers. We're all in the same boat.
No, you're not. Some of you are in the boat of legal entry, following the rules, and not breaking the law. The others are in a boat that makes a complete mockery of the first.
We're not quite there yet — one USDA worker for every farmer — but we're getting closer everyday. Over the past 30 years in the United States, the number of full-time farmers has fallen by about half, but the number of USDA employees has increased by nearly 50%. And the dollars paid out by the USDA to the shrinking number of farmers has accelerated even more rapidly.
Nope, the era of big government is not over, no matter what the Big He once said. If anything, it is only getting worse.
A school suspended an 11-year-old girl for drawing two teachers with arrows through their heads, saying the stick figures were more death threat than doodle.
I know who the doodles are in this mess, and is isn't the kid.
His apology coincides with the 75th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Buck v. Bell decision upholding Virginia's eugenics sterilization law, which became a model for other states.
The U.S. Constitution may only be whatever the U.S. Supreme Court says it is, but that doesn't prevent what the Supreme Court says from being wrong, stupid, and evil.
The Palestinian leader smiled as the crowd chanted, "With our spirit and our blood, we will redeem you, oh Arafat."
Hours earlier, after Israel had ended its siege of Arafat's headquarters and declared him free to go late on Wednesday, the Palestinian leader angrily denounced the "barbarian activities" of the IDF and said fanatics who assassinated former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were now in power in Israel.
Well, of course, one of the things that Chairman Arafat must do is condemn and thwart terrorist activities. It's important he do so.
Evidently Arafat thinks Bush meant Israeli "terrorist" activities.
In an attempt to derail the plan to imprison Ze'evi's killers, Hamas official Abed el-Aziz Rantisi, in a BBC interview, warned that his organization would begin a wave of terror attacks against Israel in the coming days and weeks.
If Arafat can't prevent Hamas from launching a wave of terror attacks, tell me again why we are dealing with him? How is it exactly that he can be a "partner for peace" when he is incapable of delivering peace?
This will be spun every which way, depending on the reader's perspective (and one doesn't even really know how much credence to place in the editing process here at all) but, that given, this is a mesmerizing interview of NYT columnist Thomas Friedman by a representative of the United Arab Emirate's Gulf News. Don't miss it.
Congressional leaders forged ahead yesterday with resolutions embracing Israel's policy of incursions into Palestinian territory, brushing aside White House concerns that the lawmakers could undermine Middle East diplomatic efforts. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has privately urged lawmakers several times recently to hold off, arguing that even a symbolic vote in favor of Israel could anger Arab leaders....
Despite predictable squeals from those who support President Bush as a matter of religious fervor rather than policy, this is an excellent example of how a three-branched government is supposed to function. The congress perceives the executive is making a mistake, and so it exercises its powers of oversight regarding the executive. Good. That's the way things are supposed to work.
As for "anger[ing] Arab leaders," those leaders would include, I presume, the fat, corrupt despots who already hate us, whose totally controlled state media demand and applaud American deaths, and whose people and leaders finance the war on terror against us?
Editor -- So, now we know for sure what had been fairly obvious all along. While the Israelis were calling the Palestinians "liars" and accusing them of exaggerating the massacre in Jenin and human rights violations in Ramallah, they barred reporters and cameras; they also stalled the U.N. inspections until they could do another coverup. Evidently, even with another bulldozing, they can't hide the truth any longer. Is there really any difference between Ariel Sharon and Saddam Hussein? They both wind up hiding their evil from the light of day. NORAH ALFORD Rohnert Park
Actually, Norah Alford, now we know for sure what we've suspected all along: reflexive anti-Israel, Palestinian sympathizers like yourself don't have a clue what you're talking about. Ha'aretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, is reporting:
Palestinians initially charged hundreds of innocents died in Jenin in a weeklong Israeli assault aimed at rooting out Palestinian fighters after a wave of suicide bombings. But Palestinian medics have so far recovered 53 corpses, including 21 civilians, and UN officials have estimated another 22 were missing.
Hardly the slaughter your overheated imagination is suggesting. But don't let reality intrude on your fantasies - after all, you live in the SF Bay Area, where entertaining such fantasies is regarded as s natural right.
A web site called BarkingDogs.org has been handed a cease-and-desist demand by attorneys representing the Dallas Morning News. The reason for the legal maneuver? They want the web site operator to stop "deep-linking" into the Morning News web site. What's deep-linking? Nothing more than linking to some page on the site that isn't the main, front, or splash page.
Here is one of the "deep links" from the BarkingDogs site that triggered the cease-and-desist order. Here is BarkingDogs's side of the issue. And here is a link to the contacts page for the owners of the Dallas Morning News, where you can tell them what you think of their novel policy and the tactics they are using to enforce it.
Some useless British snot from The Guardian goes looking for something American to sneer at, and decides that plentiful, cheap food is just the ticket.
Say. Maybe when he gets back to Old Blighty, he can hack out another snarky bit of girlish bitchery about those lovely Brit dental problems:
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