Why should liberals have all the good music? Here's some good hard pounding rock for conservatives. Go to Andrew Sullivan's site, scroll down to Bush Was Right, and click on the link.
Sort of reminds you of Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, perhaps purposely.
Just when Ward Churchill fades from the news a clone pops up to remind us that being a committed leftist in academia often means being a complete jerk:
Warren County Community College adjunct English professor, John Daly resigned last night before the school's board of trustees began an emergency meeting to discuss the professor's fate. On November 13, Daly sent an email to student Rebecca Beach vowing "to expose [her] right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [Rebecca's] won't dare show their face on a college campus." In addition, Daly said that "Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors."
Daly's email to Rebecca came after she sent a note to faculty announcing the appearance of decorated war hero Lt. Col. Scott Rutter to discuss America's accomplishments in Iraq.
That's it? That e-mail provoked this wing-nut professor to threaten her? How can this guy face himself in the mirror in the morning after having tried to bully and intimidate a young college co-ed for expressing a desire to have people come out to listen to an Iraq War vet? How many John Daleys are out there threatening students for ideological reasons and endorsing the killing of American officers? Such people don't belong in the classroom at any level and we hope the guy never gets a job teaching again. It'll be interesting to see who, if anyone, hires him.
Perhaps somebody over at The Democratic Underground will be eager to find a position for someone like Mr. Daley who shares their general outlook and attitudes.
Ever wonder why parents home school or send their kids to private schools? Maybe this Boston Globe article will give some insight:
BENNINGTON, Vt. --The school superintendent whose district includes Mount Anthony Union High School has labeled "inappropriate" and "irresponsible" an English teacher's use of liberal statements in a vocabulary quiz.
"I wish Bush would be (coherent, eschewed) for once during a speech, but there are theories that his everyday diction charms the below-average mind, hence insuring him Republican votes," said one question on a quiz written by English and social studies teacher Bret Chenkin. The question referring to the president asked students to say whether coherent or eschewed was the proper word. The sentence would be more coherent if one eschewed eschewed.
Another example said, "It is frightening the way the extreme right has (balled, arrogated) aspects of the Constitution and warped them for their own agenda." Arrogated would be the proper word there.
Chenkin, 36 and a teacher for seven years, said the quizzes are being taken out of context. "The kids know it's hyperbolic, so-to-speak," he said. "They know it's tongue in cheek. They know where I stand."
He said he isn't shy about sharing his liberal views with students, but invites vigorous debate in the classroom. "Never once have I said, 'OK, you're wrong,'" he said. "Instead, it's, 'OK, let's open this up. Let's see where this can go.'"
Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union Superintendent Wesley Knapp said he would not want his children subjected to such teaching. "It's absolutely unacceptable," he said. "They (teachers) don't have a license to hold forth on a particular standpoint."
Knapp said he was recently informed of the situation and that it was a personnel issue that he took seriously.
Principal Sue Maguire said she hoped to speak to whoever complained about the quiz and any students who might be concerned. She said she also would talk with Chenkin about the context of the quiz.
"I feel like this needs to be investigated," she said.
Hmmm. She's not sure, but a teacher pressing his political views onto students in an English class just feels like something that ought to be looked into.
We have a question for the English teacher, Mr. Chenkin. We wonder how he feels about teaching Intelligent Design in schools. Want to bet that he's against it?
Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has a list of 100 films, broken down into fifty categories, that are, in his opinion, the most overrated in that category and the most underrated. It's amazing that he's actually seen all these movies plus all the others in each category he would have to have seen in order to compile this list, but evidently he has.
If you're a movie fan, you'll enjoy perusing Carter's 100.
Philosophically risqu�; dressers and daring polemical provocateurs might wish to see this.
We wonder: If a student shows up wearing one of these to school will he/she be sent home? It doesn't say at the site how to obtain them, but it'd be great fun to send some along to students at Dover High School in Pennsylvania. It'd be even more fun to make a gift of one to each new member of the Dover school board.
It's "inevitable" that gold will top $US500 an ounce as central banks contemplate buying more of the metal, David Gornall, the head of foreign exchange and bullion at Natexis Commodity Markets in London, said. He recommends investors buy bullion this week.
Maria Guegina, the head of external reserves at the Russian central bank, last week said the bank may double its gold reserves. Five per cent of its reserves are currently held in gold, totalling about 500 tonnes, she said.
Hedge funds and other large speculators increased their net-long position in New York gold futures in the week ended November 15, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Speculative long positions, or bets that prices will rise, outnumbered short positions by 129,686 contracts on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
While you and I may purchase gold in ounces, CBs tend to buy in tons. If, in fact, Russia moves forward with their plan to double their gold reserves, it would mean 500 tons of gold will be taken out of the market! To suspect that gold will top out at $500 is silly.
There is a deeper, hidden message here if one looks more closely. If you care to do the research, you will see that countries around the world are starting to question the wisdom of their reserves being mostly U.S. dollars.
If this is true, those dollar reserves will be exchanged for assets which represent true wealth, i.e. gold. Also, and this point shouldn't be dismissed, those dollars will eventually find their way back to the U.S. and result in higher, much higher inflation. I suspect we are already experiencing this as the real rate of inflation is increasing. Not in terms of the government CPI (consumer price index) nor the PPI (producer price index) as they are manipulated to such an extent as to be worthless. And not in terms of computers, DVDs, large-screen TVs, or anything else we import from China, but rather food, real estate, or anything made from petroleum.
Got gold?
WSC
The people Michael Moore and others on the Left refer to as "freedom fighters" and compare to the "Minute Men" of the American revolution are continuing their war against Iraqi children:
AL ASAD AB, IRAQ: The Thanksgiving Day car bombing in the town of Mahmudiyah encapsulates the nature of terror attacks directed at the Iraq people. Thursday's attack killed thirty and wounded forty. The location was a hospital, and the target was American troops handing out toys and food to children. ABC News voices the reaction of a stricken mother; "There was an explosion at the gate of the hospital... My children are gone. My brother is gone." Another car bombing in Hillah was directed at an soda stand, and killed eleven and wounded 17.
Outside of Abu Ghraib, Iraqi soldiers discover a car with children's dolls rigged with various forms of explosives. Iraqi government spokesperson Leith Kubba states "This is the same type of doll as that handed out on several occasions by US soldiers to children."
al-Qaeda's campaign against the innocent is nothing new. In July, twenty seven children were killed in a suicide attack on American soldiers who were giving candy to Iraqi children. There are numerous instances of al-Qaeda using disabled children - those with Downs Syndrome or other mental impairments - as suicide bombers or grenade throwers.
Those who advocate a withdrawal from Iraq wholly ignore the nature of the enemy we face, an enemy that has no compunction about slaughtering the innocent to achieve their political goals. Also lost in the debate is the fact that al-Qaeda is taking a real beating in Iraq, particularly in its former "Islamic Republics" in western Anbar province. Iraqi troops are entering the fight in battalion sized formations, the terror networks are being slowly and systematically dismantled, and leadership turnover due to precision operations is frighteningly high for the organization. The calls for withdrawal only embolden the terrorists to commit more spectacular acts of violence in order to paint a picture of chaos.
The people who do these things are subhuman savages and either the leftists who lionize them are terrible judges of character or they themselves believe that no atrocity should be condemned as long as it's perpetrated by those who hate America.
This is frightening in its implications. After all, this man was in charge of the Canadian military at one time:
Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."
Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop."
Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."
Hellyer's speech ended with a standing ovation. He said, "The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today."
We ourselves find it just a little hard to believe that the same president who won't raise a finger to prevent illegal aliens from flooding this country through Mexico is secretly funding the construction of military bases on the moon to kill aliens from space who haven't harmed a soul, as far as we know, and who don't demand welfare benefits, smuggle dope, or even take jobs from Americans.
There's even more lunacy in the original story, if you can imagine it. This, for example, from a spokesperson for a Canadian "Exopolitics" organization:
How does this spokesperson know that the aliens are "ethical"? Has he spoken with any of them? Has he posed ethical questions to them like, "Is it ever right to be an illegal alien?" Or, "If their exhaust emissions are depleting the ozone layer, shouldn't they stay away?" Until important questions like these are answered the spokesperson will have to forgive our doubts about the aliens' alleged ethics.
Here are fifteen things which are going, or probably will go, the way of rabbit ears, mens' dress hats, corner grocery stores, typewriters and record players over the course of the next twenty years. By the year 2025 it will likely be harder than it is today to find:
Phone booths, SUVs, movie theaters, newspapers, pennies, utility poles, service stations (esp. full service), camcorders, neckties, encyclopedias, bank tellers, recent tombstones, independent auto mechanics, wooden pencils, and standard transmissions.
Perhaps readers can suggest more candidates for our endangered species list.
This open letter to Jose Padilla reveals much about the mindset of the American Left. It drips with concern for a man who is believed to be a terrorist and who plotted to kill Americans. The writer, a lawyer with the ACLU, commiserates with Padilla because his rights were allegedly abridged by the government, and maybe they were. But can't the ACLU insist that American citizens receive their due process rights without making it sound like those who may have been denied certain rights are ipso facto persecuted innocents regardless of what may be the facts of their case? The writer sounds very much as if he believes that anyone who is believed to be a threat to Americans should receive our sympathies. Here's part of the letter:
Evidently, if Padilla is only guilty of planning to blow up an apartment building with natural gas instead of a couple of city blocks with a radiological weapon he can't really be such a bad guy. We should feel deeply sorry for him.
No, we shouldn't. We should feel contempt for him even as we agree that he needs to be granted every right that the American Constitution affords him. Even if he didn't actually plot to carry out the crime, but merely talked about doing it, he's still a despicable figure. There'll be time enough for sympathy if he's found to be completely innocent. Give him his legal rights, whatever they may be, but don't expect the rest of us to feel sorry for the man unless it turns out that he had nothing to do with plots to harm Americans nor expressed approval of such plots.
One of the charming quirks about the behavior of young girls - my daughter's friends, for example - is that they instinctively defer all decisions involving the group to a particular individual as if she were somehow anointed by God for preeminence. There need be no verbal communication in these interactions, they just happen as a matter of course, as if everyone tacitly understands that there's a hierarchy of status which no one in the group is to challenge.
If one of the lower ranking girls should have the temerity to dissent from the dictates of the alpha female the unfortunate young lady would suffer immediate social excommunication and be banished from the royal court. I once asked my daughter why girls accept this state of affairs as normal, to which she replied with a shrug which suggested that she had no idea and that no one really wonders about it except me.
I thought of this, oddly enough, after reading writer Susan Ives' complaint that "Intelligent design disrespects faith, discounts faith, destroys faith."
Faith, Ives avers, is:
Ms. Ives constructs a strange argument. Suppose it were the case that science demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe and everything in it were indeed the product of purposeful, intelligent engineering. Would Ms. Ives then feel that her faith was devastated beyond repair? Would she greet the news with fascination or would it throw her into a religious crisis? Simply to pose the questions, I think, is to answer them.
Her confusion stems from a Kierkegaardian view of faith that makes it the more virtuous the less evidence there is to support it. Her view is that metaphysics and physics are sealed in airtight compartments without either ever leaking into the other. This is pretty naive. The idea that faith is somehow vitiated by empirical evidence is really quite peculiar. Jesus, after all, offered his disciples plenty of empirical evidence that he was the Son of God and he expected those demonstrations to strengthen their faith, not destroy it.
All of that aside, though, Ms Ives completely misrepresents Intelligent Design. ID is not an attempt to "prove" that God exists. Nor is it an attempt to demonstrate some tenet of religious faith to be true. It is simply a conclusion inferred from observations of the physical world that powerfully suggest that the universe in general, and life in particular, appear strongly teleological. If this teleology is not just an illusory appearance but a factual reality, it would certainly be of religious interest, just as Darwin's claims have been of religious interest to people, many of them atheists, but so what? Should we shrink from investigating the nature and structure of the cosmos just because it might bolster one's faith or encourage another one's skepticism?
Ms. Ives seems to be implicitly arguing that Christians and other theists should not be engaged in the scientific enterprise, nor should they be doing philosophy, because the more they understand about God's creation, and the more scientific and philosophical support they find for their religious beliefs in the creation they study, the more damage they'll do to their faith. This is ludicrous, of course. Most of the great scientists of the past, Newton, Boyle, Maxwell, Galileo and so on were Christians who delighted in the attempt to understand more about God through their science. They were all "intelligent design" proponents though the term wasn't in use during their era, and they saw no problem in deriving nourishment for their faith from the fruits of their science.
What does all this have to do with teenage girls? Well, Ms Ives is either arguing that Christians should not undertake to study the world or she's advocating a teenage girl version of theory precedence, viz that Christians engaged in science and philosophy dare not presume to arrive at conclusions at odds with the reigning materialist paradigm. Materialism is the tacitly acclaimed alpha theory that all must acknowledge, to which all must pay deference and which no one dare flout on pain of social ostracism and intellectual banishment. It's the metaphysical assumption whose rightful place, like that of the teenage princess, at the very top of the theoretical hierarchy is always assumed and never challenged.
Why Ms Ives should think materialism should be granted this place of epistemological privilege, though, and what there is about materialism that has earned it such lofty status, she doesn't say. Perhaps the reason she doesn't is that, as with the teenage princess, there really is no good justification for the deference materialism expects to be shown. It survives atop the heap only so long as people like Ms Ives unthinkingly assume it just belongs there.
THANKSGIVING DAY 1789 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION:
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor - and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be - That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks - for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation - for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war -for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed - for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions - to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually - to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed - to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord - To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us - and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789. GO. WASHINGTON.
All Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations can be found here. No doubt those who say that this country was not founded by religious men nor upon Judeo-Christian presuppositions would rather you not read these, but here they are.
We hope that each of us takes time this day to reflect upon all that we have to be grateful for and to reflect, too, upon our relationship to the God from whom all of our blessings flow. Have a great Thanksgiving Day.
,
This ABC News report contains much of relevance to the current torture debate. It needs to be borne in mind in reading what follows that ABC very probably would like to put the worst construction on what they've uncovered, but if their aim is to make the CIA's methods look morally indefensible they don't succeed. Here are excerpts of the article with commentary:
Nov. 18, 2005 - Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.
They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions of their accounts are corroborated by public statements of former CIA officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified CIA Inspector General's report.
"They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don't sleep. Don't lie on the floor," one prisoner said through a translator. The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic, sources said.
Okay. We can agree that forcing someone to listen to Eminem is unkind, but it scarcely rises to the level of torture. What about the other methods the CIA uses?
Note that these techniques have been used on only a dozen of the top al Qaeda detainees. They are not used indiscriminately, nor are they used by untrained personnel.
Of these, only the last three can be considered to cause extreme pain or suffering and how much suffering they cause is completely up to the detainee. This is an important point. Unlike abuse carried out as retribution, punishment or for the amusement of the abusers, the detainee has complete control over how much of this treatment he must endure.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
Maybe, but do they believe they're actually being drowned or do they only feel like they're being drowned? If the latter then it's not a mock execution. The prisoner doesn't have to think he's going to be killed in order to be unable to withstand the treatment.
The techniques are controversial among experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators. Many feel that a confession obtained this way is an unreliable tool. Two experienced officers have told ABC that there is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation.
Where's ABC's substantiation that "many" feel this is an unreliable tool? They cite the opinion of two officers who so believe. Very well, but how many others are convinced that the information gained from these dozen or so terrorists was reliable? Moreover, if other techniques are effective in extracting valuable information then why does the CIA go to the trouble and legal risk of employing less effective methods?
This raises an important question. Exactly what constitutes cruelty? Surely it's not just a matter of inflicting severe pain on someone. If it were, then surgeons in Civil War field hospitals would have been cruel. They were not so regarded, of course, because they were trying to accomplish a long term good. For an act to be cruel the actor must be motivated by a desire to hurt or degrade another simply to punish, amuse, exact retribution, or to vent his own frustrations. Any of these motivations would make the administration of pain cruel and thus evil, and any agent of the government who acts upon such motives should face punishment.
The motivation to save lives, however, is in a completely different moral category. If there is adequate reason to believe that the detainee is withholding information that could prevent the loss of life then inflicting severe pain or discomfort in order to elicit that information is not "cruel" as long as it is reasonably assured to work, and as long as there are no more effective or reliable methods available.
The cruelty of an act also depends on the amount of control possessed by the prisoner as we discussed above. A detainee who is powerless to stop the administration of pain is in a much different position than one who has complete control over how much he wishes to endure. If the pain is inflicted in order to obtain lifesaving intelligence from a terrorist who otherwise refuses to yield it, and the treatment stops when the terrorist gives up that intelligence, and the terrorist knows it will stop when he gives up that information, then the treatment is not intrinsically cruel.
I leave it to the professionals to determine the extent to which harsh methods are reliable. My only concern is to make the case that, if they are, they are not immoral, or at least not necessarily so. It would be helpful to know how effective conventional techniques have been in gaining significant information from top al Qaeda people. ABC doesn't tell us, but they do say that Kalid Mohammad was pleading to be able to divulge what he knew after only two and a half minutes. That seems pretty effective.
The use of the conjunction "however" in the above paragraph implies that what follows is somehow contrary to what precedes it, but the content of the "however" paragraph is completely irrelevant to the preceding paragraph. Is ABC just sloppy or is it trying to discredit the argument that there are advantages to the use of "harsh measures" without having to do the heavy lifting involved in actually refuting it?
According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.
His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.
"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.
However, sources said, al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, as at least one account has stated. The distinction in this murky world is nonetheless an important one. Al Libbi sought to please his investigators, not lead them down a false path, two sources with firsthand knowledge of the statements said.
This is an example of one of the weakest of the arguments in the torture debate. The fact that questionable information was acquired on one occasion is hardly reason to think the practice is generally unhelpful. Nor is it a reason, eo ipso, to refrain from harsh measures. After all, any interrogation technique is going to yield some unreliable information. What we need to know is the overall quality of the information gleaned from all detainees who were subjected to the treatment. Was it all unreliable? If not, the salient question becomes how reliable does it have to be in a given circumstance to warrant the use of harsh measures.
When properly used, the techniques appear to be closely monitored and are signed off on in writing on a case-by-case, technique-by-technique basis, according to highly placed current and former intelligence officers involved in the program. In this way, they say, enhanced interrogations have been authorized for about a dozen high value al Qaeda targets - Khalid Sheik Mohammed among them. According to the sources, all of these have confessed, none of them has died, and all of them remain incarcerated.
While some media accounts have described the locations where these detainees are located as a string of secret CIA prisons - a gulag, as it were - in fact, sources say, there are a very limited number of these locations in use at any time, and most often they consist of a secure building on an existing or former military base. In addition, they say, the prisoners usually are not scattered but travel together to these locations, so that information can be extracted from one and compared with others. Currently, it is believed that one or more former Soviet bloc air bases and military installations are the Eastern European location of the top suspects. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is among the suspects detained there, sources said.
The sources told ABC that the techniques, while progressively aggressive, are not deemed torture, and the debate among intelligence officers as to whether they are effective should not be underestimated. There are many who feel these techniques, properly supervised, are both valid and necessary, the sources said. While harsh, they say, they are not torture and are reserved only for the most important and most difficult prisoners.
ABC belatedly acknowledges here what they elided above - that although one or two officers think these measures are not effective, "many" others think they are. Although ABC expatiates on cases like al Libbi's where the results are questionable, they don't bother to give us specific examples of cases where the intelligence gained from these techniques has saved lives. Is that because there are no such cases, is it because the information is classified, or is it because they just don't want to tell us about such cases? They should at least tell us which of these possibilities explains their silence.
Two sources also told ABC that the techniques - authorized for use by only a handful of trained CIA officers - have been misapplied in at least one instance.
The sources said that in that case a young, untrained junior officer caused the death of one detainee at a mud fort dubbed the "salt pit" that is used as a prison. They say the death occurred when the prisoner was left to stand naked throughout the harsh Afghanistan night after being doused with cold water. He died, they say, of hypothermia.
According to the sources, a second CIA detainee died in Iraq and a third detainee died following harsh interrogation by Department of Defense personnel and contractors in Iraq. CIA sources said that in the DOD case, the interrogation was harsh, but did not involve the CIA.
Every effort should be made to prevent these sorts of incidents, of course, and if they occur through negligence or wantonness they should be met with discipline appropriate to the case just as any careless shooting of civilians by troops should be disciplined. But the fact that there have been a relatively few deaths (compared to the 82,000 people who've been detained since 2003) no more discredits the use of harsh interrogation than does the tragic deaths of a small number of civilians at checkpoints discredit the procedures followed by the military at these locations.
The ABC report is useful in describing exactly what sorts of interrogation practices are permitted by the CIA and what the limits of those are. Whether other agencies work under similar strictures and whether they are as closely monitored we can't say, but it seems that the images that the word torture usual connotes -- electric shocks, fingernail pulling, savage beatings, mutilations, etc. -- are not acceptable treatment for detainees in our custody. For that we can be grateful.
Anyone who looks back on his life and seeks to identify the influences which led him to the place he presently finds himself will probably be able to point to a half dozen or so people, in addition to his parents, who exerted a strong push on his life in at least one of its aspects.
There are those who help shape one's character, one's ambitions, one's religious, philosophical, and political views, and so on. In my own life there have been several such men, some I knew personally and others whom I never formally met but whose influence I nevertheless soaked up through their written work like leaves soak up sunshine.
One example of the latter is William F. Buckley. When I was fresh out of college in 1969 I stumbled across Mr. Buckley's Firing Line television show. I was just beginning to develop an interest in political affairs, having somehow managed to scoot through college in the ideologically charged 60's with hardly a political thought in my head to show for it.
I was impressed with all the things about Buckley that impress everyone who watches him - his wit, his breadth of knowledge, his mastery of the language, his ability to articulate conservative ideas with an eloquence and charm that disarmed his opponents - but most of all I was impressed with his demeanor. He was never rude or overbearing. He never got nasty or raised his voice. His colloquies with his guests were always marked with courtesy, good humor, and unfailing graciousness. In those early years of my adulthood he was an exemplar of how political disagreements should be debated and how discourse should be conducted.
Although I possessed none of his gifts, I subliminally decided that I wanted to be like him anyway, to the extent that I could. I read his books and National Review, the magazine he founded in the 1950s, and found myself wishing to learn all the things I should have learned in college but was too busy being a jock to trouble myself with. I regretted, having fallen under his sway, that I had squandered so many years and opportunities that could have been devoted to the cultivation of a fuller intellectual life.
Eventually, my interests evolved in various directions and followed channels not closely related to politics, but those other pursuits were always in some sense a product of the appetite he had stimulated in me for learning. He had given my appreciation for what Hannah Arendt calls the "life of the mind" a spark, a sturdy kick start, and I have always been grateful for the richness that that has added to my life.
I heard Bill Buckley give a lecture a few years back, and I wanted to tell him after his talk how much he has meant to me, but he was surrounded by adoring fans and besides, I thought, he probably hears stories similar to mine all the time anyway. I've regretted not taking the opportunity then, and I thought I'd write him and tell him what I wanted to tell him that night, but I somehow never got to it. I suppose I assumed that WFB has always been around and always will be. There'll be other opportunities.
Now I see that his 80th birthday is the 24th of this month, and I realize that if I don't do it soon it might never happen. That would be an omission I would deeply regret, so as Mr. Buckley approaches this milestone in his life I've resolved to contact him and tell him what he has meant in mine.
Happy birthday, Bill.
Well, if you are a Republican and you tend to support the current administration you might wish to know that there are certain precincts in the Left-wing blogosphere in which you are quite unpopular. One of these is Democratic Underground where one ranter goes on at great length telling us how much he hates us, what loathesome creatures we are, what morans (his spelling) we all are. He finally concludes by urging us all to kill ourselves.
Perhaps this represents the Left's new strategy for winning in 2008.
Anyway, not everyone on the Left is this sick, of course, but judging by the comments he received on his post, many of them are. They're evidently consumed by a hatred so vile and irrational that it seems demonic. Don't take my word for it. Read it yourself and tell me that this guy and the people he speaks for are not quite simply stark, raving lunatics.
Thanks for the tip to Michelle Malkin.
Bill has been predicting that the price of precious metals is going to continue to rise, perhaps precipitously, making it a very attractive investment. It looks like he knows what he's talking about. The spot price of gold has currently reached $493 an ounce. This time last year it was around $425 an ounce. Investors are buying and pushing the price up, and it will be interesting to see if they regard $500 as a benchmark signalling them to sell and score profits.
If not, it may soar several hundred more dollars. Yikes!
Stuart Taylor at National Journal has an excellent analysis of charges by the Democrats that Judge Samuel Alito is outside the "mainstream" of American judicial thought. Among his numerous trenchant comments Taylor quotes from Alito's 1985 job application to the Reagan Justice Department:
Taylor then says this:
These are certainly the words of a Reagan conservative. But are they outside the mainstream? Somebody should tell The New York Times that Reagan won 49 states in 1984. And that in exit polls, many more Americans identify themselves as conservatives (34 percent in 2004) than as liberals (21 percent).
Generalities aside, let's locate Alito, and [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, on the spectrum of public opinion on three of the hottest issues: abortion, racial preferences, and religion.
If Alito is outside the mainstream on abortion, then so are the very large percentage of constitutional scholars -- including many pro-choice liberals -- who agree that Roe was a judicial usurpation of legislative authority with no basis in the Constitution. Even Ginsburg herself wrote (also in 1985) that Roe was "heavy-handed judicial intervention [that] was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict."
Take the now-defunct Pennsylvania law requiring married women to notify their husbands before having abortions, unless they fear a violent response. And indulge, for the sake of argument, critics' cynical assumption that Alito's vote to uphold this provision was driven by his political views -- contrary to the explanation in Alito's 1991 dissent that he was seeking only to follow binding Supreme Court precedents.
Outside the mainstream? Hardly. While The New York Times calls spousal-notice laws "extreme limits on abortion," some 70 percent of poll respondents favor them.
As for racial preferences, Alito's 1985 assertion that "racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed" places him squarely in the middle of public opinion -- unlike Ginsburg, who has voted to uphold wholesale use of quota-like preferences in college admissions, contracting, and other areas.
Polls show overwhelming public opposition to quotas. And neutrally worded polls that avoid the word "quota" show that more than two-thirds of Americans oppose racial preferences.
Some critics fault Alito's 1996 vote to uphold a white teacher's racial-discrimination lawsuit against the Piscataway, N.J., school board, for laying her off ahead of a black teacher, in the name of "diversity."
Alito's response should be: Go ahead. Make my day. Let's discuss the legality of race-based layoffs. This one was so indefensible that racial-preference champions -- facing almost certain defeat in the Supreme Court -- paid the white teacher a large sum to drop her lawsuit before the justices could rule.
Democrats who think the mainstream is to be found on the leftmost shore of every river will be unmoved by Taylor's piece, but if you're interested in the coming battle over Alito's nomination you'll want to read the rest of his argument. It's well worth it.
Amidst the sky-is-falling rhetoric of the media over the vote last Thursday night to cut social programs from the budget there is this scarcely mentioned fact tucked away in an AP report:
In other words, Congress did not make any cuts in benefits, they merely cut the rate at which the amount the government spends on these programs would increase every year. A report on NPR the other morning quoted one congressman as saying that instead of the budget increasing over the next several years at a rate of 7.5% the "cuts" will slow its increase to a rate of 7.3%.
In almost none of the other reports on this vote that I could find was this brought out. Instead the reader was given the strong impression that money was being taken out of poor peoples' wallets and put into the greedy hands of the rich.
In an e-mail from Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, he makes this completely unsubstantiated and irresponsible allegation:
What's morally unconscionable is to mislead people into thinking that spending on these social programs is actually being reduced. There's no mention in Wallis' message as to what the rationale is for the "cuts", whether current recipients will indeed lose benefits, whether it will be duplicate benefit programs which are to be cut, whether the eligibility for benefits is being tightened -- no context whatsoever. Just pure rhetoric and propaganda.
Evidently Wallis is of the view that we should just throw every penny we have at the problem of poverty because to withhold anything is morally unconscionable. Mr. Wallis needs to be asked exactly how much of our national wealth he thinks we should be transferring to the poor. At what point, exactly, do we say that we have done enough? When we are transferring 100% of our GDP? If not that, why not?
Is it too much to ask that the media and other liberals report these things competently and accurately?
Gary Glitter, the impressario of Rock and Roll, Part Two, a favorite theme at high school and college football games and other sporting events, is facing a possible sentence of death by firing squad in Vietnam, believe it or not. If you're interested you can get the details here.
How many ways can the Democrats demonstrate that they have no responsible or intelligent alternative to the President's policy in Iraq? This article in the L.A. Times by Ron Brownstein summarizes some of the Democrats' recent proposals. They're stunning in their shallowness:
The foolishness of this is hard to overstate. If these plans were adopted the insurgents would know that if they could just cling to life for another year Iraq would fall into their laps. The Iraqi people and even much of their military would have little more to do with the Americans and intelligence on terrorists would dry up. No one would want to be seen as helping the Americans if they knew that in a year the insurgents would be exacting their revenge.
If the Iraqi military is not yet fully ready to control the country by next October when the Americans withdrew their support, literally all hell would break loose. Civil war between Shia and Sunni would almost certainly ensue. Iran would then move into the Shia south, Syria would move into the Sunni triangle, and Turkey might well invade the Kurdish north. The oil and other wealth of Iraq would be up for grabs. Al Qaeda would romp through the country lopping off the heads of anyone who had had dealings with the United States. No one in the region would have cause to fear an American return so small states like Kuwait which sit on vast wealth would be gobbled up by predatory neighbors. Terrorists would train openly without having to fear American arms, and would operate with impunity throughout the region. The whole world would sit by, unable and unwilling to do anything to prevent the region from crumbling into war, famine, and chaos.
John Murtha created a huge fuss in the House with his plan to begin pulling out now and to complete the withdrawal within six months. He envisions an over the horizon quick reaction force of Marines to be reinserted if any trouble flairs up. With all due respect to Rep. Murtha, his idea is just stupid. Why pull the Marines out at all if you think you may have to reinsert them later? Sending them in after having surrendered the Iraqis to the tender mercies of the insurgents would be lunacy.
Even if this country would stand for their reentry into Iraq, which they surely wouldn't, where would they go? They'd have to rebuild their bases and supply lines and, most improbable of all, their relationships with the same Iraqi people they had recently deserted. They'd get no help from resentful, embittered Iraqis and the maelstrom that would ensue in Iraq after an American withdrawal would make anything short of a total re-invasion of the country a suicide mission.
In other words, Kerry is saying that we should do pretty much what the administration has said we will do. Question for Sen. Kerry: What should we do if the election doesn't go well? Pull out anyway? Stay until the country is politically stable? If the latter, how is that in any way different from what the President is already doing?
Now there's a bright idea. Many Shiites and Sunnis would relish getting at each other's throats. What better incentive can we give them to tear into each other than to tell them that if they don't behave we'll just have to get out of their way?
It boggles the mind to think that these ideas come from the minds of United States Senators. Little wonder that the American people fear to turn over the reins of national security to the Democrats.
At one point in his piece Brownstein says this:
Precisely. It's always easier to criticize others for not doing what you think they should be doing than to offer a coherent plan for doing it yourself. Especially when you have no idea at all of what you're talking about.