The Two Malcontents

‘HONOR KILLING’ In America

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:41:10 +0000

Rashid: Alleged killer says daughter dishonored the family.

ON July 6, police say, a Pakistani named Chaudhry Rashid strangled his 25-year-old daughter San- deela Kanwal with a Bungee cord in her bedroom because she wanted to end her arranged marriage. This "honor killing" came not in Pakistan, but in Jonesboro, Ga. - a suburb 16 miles outside Atlanta.

At his arraignment, Rashid said through an Urdu interpreter that he was "not in the state of mind to talk because of the death of his daughter," but stated "I have done nothing wrong."

This is not the same as declaring innocence. His attorney, Tammy Long, explained, "My client is going through a difficult time. As you can imagine, he is distraught." Apparently, it takes a stronger man to murder his daughter without sentiment.

The national media has paid little attention to the story of Kanwal’s murder, though most outlets found plenty of time to debate the cover of The New Yorker.

When a blonde girl goes missing, cable networks stop in their tracks - but when a Muslim woman is murdered by her father, there’s not a ripple of sustained interest. Where’s the outrage?

Maybe it’s muted because we’ve grown reluctant to pass judgment on other culture’s customs - but multiculturalism hits a crossroads when honor killings come to America.

The United Nations estimates that the world sees 5,000 honor killings a year - overwhelmingly in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, but increasingly among Muslim immigrant communities in Europe.

The United States has avoided this bloodstained trend until recently. Some consider Kanwal’s death the first documented honor killing here. Others point to the murder of sisters Amina and Sarah Said in Irving, Texas, on New Years’ 2007. (Their MySpace page remains up. Featuring assimilated teen culture and American music, it is haunting.) Their father remains on the run from police.

Few doubt that other honor killings have occurred behind closed doors. In upstate Monroe County just a few days ago, a girl was stabbed by her brother for wearing immodest western clothing and wanting to move to New York City. According to court documents, Waheed Allah Mohammad explained the stabbing by saying his sister was a "bad Muslim girl."

"Honor killing is a misnomer," author and exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali told me. "The killing occurs because these girls have allegedly brought shame on their family. The paradox is that these are individuals who have emancipated themselves.

"These girls embody the American dream. They want to become self-reliant - deciding who they marry, when they marry and how many children they will have."

On the surface, this sounds like a classic case for the left - outrages well worth protesting. Honor killings and other tribal customs like female genital mutilation represent a far greater threat to human rights than comparatively benign examples of Western sexism, like unrealistic measurements on a Barbie doll.

But this would require recognizing that the greatest danger to civil liberties in the world today comes not from the United States, but from a medieval tribalism that’s still murdering people around the world under the guise of enforcing piousness.

"America is an assimilating nation," affirms Ayaan, "and so when immigrant Muslim men assimilate into American society they are applauded for it. But when some immigrant Muslim women assimilate into American society, they find themselves ostracized - beaten and even killed by their own families. And the American public ignores their plight to protect the immigrant Muslim community from stigma."

There should be wall-to-wall coverage when Rashid’s pretrail hearings begin tomorrow in Atlanta. By any standards, this is a sensational crime.

Instead, the trial may well get dismissed as old news or swept under the rug as just another domestic-violence case. These rationalizations cover up a discomfort with wading into cultural judgment - and a desire to avoid the risk of violence that always comes with criticizing radical Islam.

There’s a cost to such squeamishness. In England, Lord Chief Justice Phillips, the country’s top judge, has said that sharia law should be incorporated into British law, while the Archbishop of Canterbury described such incorporation as "inevitable."

This slippery slope threatens to undermine liberal democracy and even the concept of civilized norms. America must make a stand, because many Europeans either can’t or won’t.

As Ayaan says: "As an immigrant Muslim woman running for your life, from your own family, I think America is a better place for us, because we know that Americans are individualist enough that they will ultimately chose to protect us - while Europeans choose to stick their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is going on."

Our ultimate victory in the War on Terror will be to encourage a Muslim reformation by offering examples of successful Muslim-American citizens - especially women - who thrive within the equal rights and open opportunities of American society. For Muslim women who want to live in freedom, America is the last best hope on earth - and we must remain nothing less.

Enemy Combatants:Suspend the Writ

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:36:11 +0000

After Boumediene, Congress must restore order and has the power to do it.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

For the protection of our troops on the battlefield and the security of all Americans, Congress needs, right now, to take action to reverse Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision granting constitutional habeas-corpus rights to alien enemy combatants.

It’s time to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.

“What?” you shudder. Have you lost your mind? Has this Bush-whacky Constitution-shredder finally gone off the deep end?

No. Not even a little. I’m not talking about suspending the old writ of habeas corpus, the one that protects all Americans inside the United States.

I’m talking about suspending the new writ invented on June 12, 2008. The faux writ that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his four associates in the Boumediene majority weaved out of whole cloth. The writ that runs only to the protection of America’s foreign enemies in a war Americans overwhelmingly support. The writ that purports to extend the jurisdiction of the courts — which is to say, the rule of judges — anyplace on the planet where the federal government acts and where the American military fights.

I am talking about restoring the separation of powers and the proper, limited role of the United States courts.

And I am not talking about locking the Gitmo prison door and throwing away the key. I am talking about the vital first step in a complete overhaul by which the American people reaffirm their intention to determine the requirements of their own self-defense.

In that overhaul, unaccountable judges (and justices) must be removed from the prosecution of war except to the extent, and only to the extent, that Congress devises a role for them in ensuring that we are detaining the right people. In a functioning democracy, the people’s representatives dictate what issues are delegated to the politically unaccountable courts. We’ve had that backwards for too long.

Further, in the overhaul, Congress must resume — and get about the long-delayed business of performing — its rightful role of prescribing the rules and procedures under which legal cases proceed in the federal courts.

SOLDIERS CANNOT BE MADE COPS
The questions now press urgently: Are we are serious about achieving victory over our jihadist enemies? Are we serious about safeguarding the lives of our young men and women in uniform? Those lives of our best and bravest have now been seriously jeopardized, and not just by the legal and political pressure to release enemies who should be detained during the fighting — at least 37 of whom are known to have returned to the jihad according to information released by the Pentagon (in his Boumediene dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia put the number at 30).

The Boumediene challenge is even more basic. The justices want to see our enemies as mere defendants, but our soldiers cannot be seen as cops. Police duties — Miranda warnings, evidence collection, forensic analysis, report-writing — are inimical to and cannot safely be performed in combat. Cops and FBI agents carry out these investigative tasks meticulously because they enjoy the relative safety of peacetime America. If those tasks are imposed on our troops in the deadly crossfire of the foreign battlefield, Americans will die.

If you doubt this, just consult any of the many dedicated men and women in law enforcement who, in their earlier years, served in the military during wartime. They will tell you, based on hard experience, that only a panel of elite lawyers — unburdened by the need to explain themselves to voters — could look at a battlefield and see a crime scene.

We plainly need a legal system for detaining enemy combatants, trying war criminals, and conducting intelligence collection for a novel kind of war against a ruthless, non-state enemy that defies convention. Congress should have devised such a system already. But the fact that Congress has been derelict does not mean it is suddenly appropriate for the devising to be done by judges.

This is a job for our lawmakers, and it is their solemn obligation to perform it — not watch from the sidelines, as if they were impotent, while judges appropriate their authority. Because of their institutional responsibilities (which do not include national security) and their insulation from politics (which means disconnection from those whose lives hang in the balance), judges are hardwired to elevate due-process concerns over all others. If judges are left to their own devices, the legal system for the war on terror will gradually become indistinguishable from the civilian-justice system — with privileges and tactical advantages our enemies do not merit and will use to endanger Americans.

Working together, Congress and the executive branch can design a system that is appropriately mindful of due process but guided primarily by the security of our homeland and our troops. Nevertheless, this is not a job to be slapped together in a couple of weeks. It will take a few months of diligent work. It must be done with due haste, but not hastily. It’s important, so it will take time to get it right.

Meanwhile, though, as Congress idles, the federal courts are already divvying up the Boumediene fallout and preparing to make up rules and procedures as hundreds of habeas cases roll along. That process should be stopped before it can do any more damage.

Congress has the power to stop it. Instantly. It can suspend the new Boumediene writ.

WHO MAKES THE RULES?
In their recklessness, the five justices in the Boumediene majority do not merely arrogate to themselves war powers that courts have no business performing — such as the battlefield determinations of who the enemy is; of what the battlefield is (during a war in which the enemy claims the power to strike anyone, anyplace, anytime); of what duties our troops owe to — and what lethal risks they must bear for — our enemies in the collection and preservation of “evidence” … even as they perform combat operations; of what commanders’ decisions may be second-guessed by lawyer hindsight — subordinating military discipline and success to the greater value judges place on due process.

No, not content with that, Justice Kennedy & Co. also undertake to dump the whole mess on the very federal district judges Congress cut out of the equation — as it was Congress’s perfect right to do — in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and, more emphatically, in the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

The mess, furthermore, has been dumped on the district-courthouse steps without a shred of guidance. That is, in the Supreme Court’s hauteur, it has set in motion a process in which the rules, procedures, and wartime obligations owed by the United States to enemies we are trying to defeat will be made up by judges as they go along, ad hoc, when issues randomly arise in litigation.

Do you think that might be a problem? Well, ask yourself: Must alien enemy combatants be given Miranda warnings at the moment of capture? (The Supreme Court, after all, held in 2000 that anyone who has Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution is entitled to the protections of its Miranda decision.) Are alien enemy combatants entitled to lawyers subsidized by the taxpayers they are sworn to kill? Does that entitlement attach immediately upon capture (which would shut down interrogations that yield life-saving intelligence)? At some later point? And if so, who is to say what that later point should be? Is a “reasonable time” the time it takes to exhaust the potential for gleaning actionable information? Or is it a short interval so as not to offend law-school-inculcated sensibilities about the “right” to counsel?

When and how must combatant status be determined? How thorough must the process on the battlefield be? What about the combatant-status review process? May a military prosecutor simply explain to a judge — civilian or military? — what the evidence supporting the combatant determination is? Must the government obtain affidavits from soldiers who made captures in the heat of battle? Or do the combatants get to issue subpoenas to our troops and intelligence officers, requiring in-court testimony and cross-examination?

How much discovery do the combatants get, including national-defense information from the government’s classified files? How much “exculpatory” evidence are they entitled to? In civilian proceedings, exculpatory evidence is not limited to evidence that shows a defendant is innocent. The concept has been expanded over the years to include (depending on the presiding judge’s predilections) pretty much anything a clever defense lawyer would find helpful to his case. Is that a standard we owe to the enemy while the war ensues?

And what is the burden of proof? Must the military satisfy the judge that detention is warranted “beyond a reasonable doubt” — the heavy burden that applies in civilian criminal cases? Will “clear and convincing” evidence do? How about “probable cause”? Or a “preponderance” of the proof? And, by the way, whatever the standard is, what exactly is to be proved? That is, who gets to define what an enemy combatant is? Is it a military calculation made by professional soldiers who actually engage the enemy? Or is it whatever the judges decide from case to case?

Is the military entitled to a presumption in favor of detention? Congress has given prosecutors such a presumption in civilian cases involving particularly serious criminals. Do our soldiers get it for terrorists? Presumption or not, do the federal rules of evidence apply? (They don’t apply in civilian grand juries and detention hearings, even though American citizens are routinely arrested and imprisoned based on those proceedings.) Are we bound by Uniform Code of Military Justice procedures? Or do judges pick and choose based on what seems fair to them under the circumstances?

And what happens if a judge second-guesses the military and decides the detainee is not a combatant? Must he be released? What if no country wants him? Or if we have reason to think a willing country may persecute him upon transfer? (It is a treaty violation to extradite people to such places.) Must people our military believes are dangerous enough to detain be released into the United States?

Note that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of questions to be addressed. Anyone who’s spent any time in the litigation business knows that the potential issues are limited only by the human imagination. (Picture a human imagination shaped by, say, three years at Yale Law School before a stint at the ACLU).

Now consider this: In the civilian criminal justice system, a thicket in which judges have undeniable expertise, the American people do not allow — and have never allowed — the courts to make the rules up as they go along. The judicial power, instead, is heavily restricted by statutes, procedural and evidentiary rules, sentencing guidelines, and all manner of legislation enacted by Congress.

There’s a good reason for that: the occupation of judging — a difficult enough job — is to apply the law. It is Congress that writes the law. Judges do not get to dictate what cases get heard in court, and they do not get to prescribe the rules and standards that govern court proceedings. Even in peacetime, when ordinary law enforcement governs, it is the province of our elected representatives to define legal causes of action and formulate courtroom procedures. This ensures that the values judges are applying are our values, not their own. We call that democracy.

How much more essential is it, then, that Congress assert itself with respect to enemy combatants? War powers — including the apprehension and handling of enemy combatants — are political powers, not legal ones. The decision to go to war is the most important one made by a body politic. The prosecution of war is the responsibility of those government officials elected by and answerable to the people whose lives are at stake.

If war powers are delegated to politically insulated judges, then the American people are no longer in control of their most basic, natural right of self-defense. The very point of government, moreover, is thereby perverted. A political community forms a government, most elementally, for its own protection from external threats. That is why the first responsibility of government is the security of the governed, not due process for the enemies of the governed.

Assigning war powers to the political branches — as our Constitution does, or at least did until Boumediene — ensures that this democratic imperative is honored. Transferring them to unelected, unaccountable officials — as Boumediene does — is undemocratic, and unacceptable.

HAD WE KNOWN, THE WRIT WOULD ALREADY BE SUSPENDED
Let’s back up for a second. If someone were to posit a general suspension of the writ of habeas corpus enshrined in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, that would indeed be a radical proposal. It is not what I am suggesting.

What is radical, though, is Boumediene. Prior to June 12, 2008, when the ruling was announced, there was no writ of habeas corpus outside sovereign American territory. But five voracious justices now say not only that there is a global writ — i.e., that the legitimacy of government action always and everywhere depends on its capacity to win judicial approval. The justices further audaciously declare that this new global writ vests judges with the power to probe and reverse combatant determinations no matter how fastidiously any system defers to our enemies’ “rights” — and regardless of whether that system has been designed by the military or even Congress.

That is not democracy. It is judicial oligarchy — and nothing in our Constitution requires that we stand for it.

What I am thus proposing is that Congress simply return us to the law of the United States as it existed, soundly and through innumerable crises, for 219 years preceding June 12. Make clear that we are not suspending the traditional writ: we must not disturb the core function our courts perform in ensuring our domestic rule of law. But suspend the writ outside the United States (where it never ran in the first place) as to all non-Americans (who were never entitled to its protection in the first place). We must reject the perilous new world of enemy habeas and extra-territorial judicial fiat that has been in place not for 219 years but for one month.

Ordinarily, our law holds that Congress may not reverse a ruling that the Supreme Court contends is rooted in the Constitution, as five justices contend in Boumediene. Most of the time, the Court’s handiwork can be undone only by amending the Constitution or — an even more drastic measure — stripping the courts’ jurisdiction over the subject matter in dispute (which the Constitution expressly empowers Congress to do, as NR’s Ramesh Ponnuru and Prof. Robert P. George discuss in this important 2005 article).

But Boumediene is saliently different. The right on which the majority purported to rely may by its own terms be suspended. The Suspension Clause provides: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” (Emphasis added.)

The United States was invaded on September 11, 2001. Congress quickly acted to authorize the president to use all necessary force to quell our enemies. Had Congress any inkling that a decision as radical as Boumediene was coming, it would surely have suspended the writ of habeas corpus to the extent it may have existed for the benefit of foreigners outside the United States. Americans would have demanded nothing less. No one thought to do that, however, and rightly so: extraterritorial habeas is an absurd concept, to say nothing of the fact that it had been flatly rejected by the Supreme Court half a century before.

When we were attacked seven years ago, there was simply no reason to believe the writ extended outside the United States. Up until the Court’s Boumediene power-grab, it was understood that foreign affairs, including the prosecution of foreign wars, were the province of the political branches — of diplomacy and military force, not legal processes. The jurisdiction of the federal courts was limited to the United States, except where Congress said otherwise. Outside our territory, our body politic, judges had no power. And their imprimatur has never before been thought necessary to legitimize extra-territorial government action that the Constitution empowers the political branches to undertake.

Congress should suspend the Boumediene writ without delay, revoke the universal jurisdiction the courts have asserted, and put the judges out of the business of making new law. Congress should also commit itself to fashioning a legal system that comprehensively governs detention, trial and related matters — and it should do so within the next four months: that is, during the election run-up, while the public is engaged and candidates can tell us where they stand.

I have suggested a national-security court. Others have made similar proposals. It is not important what the tribunal is called, and we can debate where the lines should be drawn between due process and national security. The point is that the new system must be designed by the people’s representatives. It must be reflective of our values and duly mindful of military necessity in a war Americans intend to win.

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and many other elected officials expressed apt outrage over the Boumediene ruling. But talk is cheap. They have it within their power to reverse Boumediene, restore the proper balance of power among the branches of government, and reaffirm democratic self-determination.

What’s needed now is the will.

Military Excluded From ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Hearing

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:31:14 +0000

(CNSNews.com) – When a House panel holds a hearing Wednesday afternoon examining the impact of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding homosexuals in the military, no one from the Defense Department will testify.

That’s because no one from the military has been invited to testify, according to Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), sponsor of a bill to overturn the military’s ban on homosexuality.

“The truth of the matter is, we don’t (have anyone from the Defense Department scheduled) because we know what they would say,” Tauscher said at a Tuesday news conference. “We know that they would say, ‘That’s the law, ma’am. We salute smartly and we do what the law says.’”

In fact, Tauscher admitted that the entire reason for the hearing is to lay the groundwork for efforts after the election, when she and subcommittee chair Rep. Susan Jones (D-Calif.) hope to get a newly elected President Barrack Obama to make an issue of homosexuals in the military.

“This is not a question of whether the committee can pass this out today,” Tauscher said. “This bill is not going to be brought for a vote in this Congress. We do not believe that it is appropriate to bring a bill forward that the president won’t sign.”

Tauscher admitted she is merely trying to lobby for the bill in the hope that the next president, whom she told reporters will be Sen. Barrack Obama (D-Ill.), the expected Democratic nominee, who she said has indicated would take up the issue early in his administration, if elected.

Tauscher’s bill, meanwhile, reportedly does not have the support of the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), or of many of the Democrats on the committee.

When pressed if she had canvassed the members, or Skelton, and knew where the bill stood, Tauscher was defensive.

“There’s no reason to do that, since we’re not going to bring the bill forward until we have an environment where we can not only pass the bill, but get it signed,” Tauscher said.

“In our business, we can pass bills all day long, but if the Senate doesn’t take them up and pass them, or if president doesn’t sign them, it’s a lot like wasting your time,” she said.

One witness who is expected to testify in support of barring homosexuals from military service, surprisingly supports not inviting the military to the hearing.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said even the Defense Department doesn’t understand that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is not the law of the land. .

“They know what the policy is, but they don’t know what the law is,” Donnelly said, “and they don’t understand the difference between the two. In their public statements, I have seen no indication that they really understand what the difference is.”

Donnelly, who supports barring homosexuals from military service, said the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is a set of policies and an enforcement scheme that President Bill Clinton put into place in 1993 after Congress passed a law.

“The statute — Section 654, Title X — states clearly that ‘homosexuality is incompatible with military service,’ ” Donnelly told CNSNews.com. “After he signed the law, President Clinton then put into place regulations that are inconsistent with the law.”

Donnelly said the Clinton policy is clearly illegal – “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ suggests that you can serve in the armed forces as long as you don’t say that you are homosexual.”

The Pentagon did not return calls. But retired Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis, who has testified at previous congressional hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” said the move to remove the ban on homosexuals in the military is political and has nothing to do with the needs of the military.

“For someone in the middle of politically correct Washington to hold a hearing suggesting that our armed forces – some of whom are dying and getting wounded on the battlefields today –are somehow going to be better armed forces if we remove the barriers to a politically powerful group and, all of the sudden, make them a mainstream part of this organization, is the height of arrogance,” Maginnis said.

Obama has indicated that he would support efforts to eliminate a ban on homosexuals serving in the military.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the likely Republican nominee, has indicated he is opposed to making changes to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Wednesday’s hearing is taking place in Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on personnel.

Accused San Francisco Hacker Gives POS Mayor Newsom Secret Codes

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:19:57 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ― A computer engineer accused of illegally taking control of the city of San Francisco’s network and locking out other system administrators has turned over the secret access codes directly to Mayor Gavin Newsom during a secret jailhouse meeting, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday evening.

The newspaper said Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg, who’s being held on charges of computer tampering, surrendered the passwords during the private meeting at the Hall of Justice jail with Newsom — who did not inform police or prosecutors beforehand.

A spokesman for Newsom said the codes were valid and allowed access to the computer network in question. It stores critical city government data, including e-mails, law enforcement records, and payroll documents, officials have said.

Childs, who was a longtime employee in the city’s technology department, was due to appear in court Wednesday for a bail reduction hearing and his attorney Erin Crane was expected to cite his cooperation in turning over the information to Newsom.

Childs remained jailed Tuesday night on $5 million bail.

Accused San Francisco Hacker Gives POS Mayor Newsom Secret Codes

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:18:44 +0000

Childs remained jailed Tuesday night on $5 million bail.

Obama Watch: Democrats (Finally) Angry About Security Breach

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:14:13 +0000

By Lisa De Pasquale

The ACORN Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

Barack Obama has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group that engages in voter registration efforts that ultimately help elect their leftist candidates by any means necessary. Obama worked on their voter registration drive in 1992 and sued the state on behalf of ACORN in a “Motor Voter” case.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal has been at the forefront in investigating voter fraud in presidential elections. In 2007, ACORN was involved in numerous voter fraud cases in Seattle. Fund wrote:

The list of “voters” registered in Washington state included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Tom Friedman, actress Katie Holmes and nonexistent people with nonsensical names such as Stormi Bays and Fruto Boy. The addresses used for the fake names were local homeless shelters. Given that the state doesn’t require the showing of any identification before voting, it is entirely possible people could have illegally voted using those names.

Outside groups like ACORN knowingly or unknowingly routinely register non-citizens and convicted felons because they don’t ask for proof of citizenship. Earlier this month Fund wrote, “ACORN’s political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama while its ‘voter education’ arm has pledged to spend $35 million to register people this fall — despite a history of vote fraud scandals that have led to guilty pleas by many ACORN employees.” Fund concluded, "But ACORN may play, along with other liberal groups, a leading role in electing Mr. Obama. Such groups deserve a closer look now, before their influence and possibly their clout grow dramatically after the November election."

It Pays to Be a Friend of Obama

While sitting on the Woods Fund of Chicago board, Barack Obama saw that grants were made to his church, Trinity United Church of Christ, and ACORN. In 2001, the Woods Fund awarded Trinity Church a grant of $6,000. A former Illinois state employee at The American Thinker wrote, “The grant was probably awarded since Obama did not receive his $6,000 director’s pay in 2001. He had received $6,000 in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Even though the grant may have been made in lieu of Obama’s pay, the Fund’s own web page in 2001 states that religious organizations are not eligible for grant consideration.”
From 2001 to 2005, ACORN received $355,000 from the Woods Fund. That’s enough to register thousands of Stormi Bays and Fruto Boys to vote. One can only imagine what groups received grants at the behest of fellow board member William Ayers. Both Obama and Ayers are still listed on the Woods Fund’s list of board members.

Democrats (Finally) Angry About Security Breach

Liberal bloggers at The Huffington Post and Daily Kos were in an uproar over John McCain’s comment last Friday that Barack Obama might be in Iraq over the weekend. At a campaign luncheon McCain said, “I believe that either today or tomorrow — and I’m not privy to his schedule — Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators. ” Obama’s trip to the Middle East was no surprise, but liberals’ concern about security was certainly unexpected.

When the New York Times revealed details of a covert CIA operation, including the schedule and tail identification of the aircraft, in 2005 there wasn’t a spec of outrage from the Left. Then again in June 2008, the New York Times’ “Insider a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation” revealed a former U.S. interrogator’s name, current place of work, as well as the name of his father, who was also a former interrogator. The interrogator did not even agree to be interviewed for the story. One leftist blogger wrote, “As for [named interrogator], goodbye and good riddance. I hope our tax dollars aren’t going to pay him a pension.”

The Left has selective outrage for security breaches. Undermining security for ordinary Americans and the nation is acceptable. Off-handedly reminding an audience of Obama’s already publicized trip to the Middle East is “high treason”. If they were truly worried about Obama’s safety (and media tag-alongs Katie, Charlie and Brian), they wouldn’t have called attention to McCain’s comment by incessantly whining about it all weekend.

A Surge of Rhetoric on Afghanistan

Barack Obama’s recent talking point against the surge in Iraq is that it took resources away from Afghanistan. Obama’s website states:

The decision to invade Iraq diverted resources from the war in Afghanistan, making it harder for us to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden and others involved in the 9/11 attacks. Nearly seven years later, the Taliban has reemerged in southern Afghanistan while Al Qaeda has used the space provided by the Iraq war to regroup, train and plan for another attack on the United States.

Sweetness & Light’s Steve Gilbert reminds us of an early campaign ad from Obama’s latest convert, Hillary Clinton. Gilbert writes, “Alas, the ad itself, like all of her anti-Obama campaign ads, has been meticulously scrubbed from the Hillary Clinton campaign site as well as YouTube.” Here’s a transcript of the ad:

Announcer: Barack Obama says he has the judgment to be president.
But as chairman of an oversight committee charged with the force of fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan–he was too busy running for president to hold even one hearing.

Barack Obama: “I became chairman of this committee, at the beginning of this campaign-at the beginning of 2007, so it is true that we haven’t had oversight hearings on Afghanistan.”

Announcer: Hillary Clinton will never be too busy to defend our national security-bringing our troops home from Iraq and pursing Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

In all fairness, Obama only logged 143 days in the Senate prior to launching his presidential campaign. That doesn’t allow much experience for running a committee… or a country.

HYPE: The Obama Effect

Citizens United has led the pack in conservative filmmaking. Their latest, HYPE: The Obama Effect, asks “Is he the new Kennedy or recycled Jimmy Carter? Is he the one who will finally change Washington, or will challenges like the Tony Rezko trial reveal politics as usual? Is he the uniter the country begs for, or a liberal divider?” The documentary will be available on DVD on September 1 and have a limited run in theaters beginning September 4.

Obama takes on airs of inevitability:Stokes ‘Audacity Watch’ fire

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:06:04 +0000

By Donald Lambro

Barack Obama is only a candidate, but don’t tell that to the Germans, some of whom have leapfrogged that whole election thing and already are calling him "President Obama" in advance of his visit.

For that matter, his own campaign could use a reminder. For the second time in as many days, reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on his overseas trip corrected campaign staffers for saying White House practices also govern his campaign in dealing with the press, or in delivering speeches.

Even the King of Jordan gave the senator from Illinois special treatment - personally driving the presumed Democratic nominee to the airport in his Mercedes.

Meantime, Mr. Obama has met with top U.S. military commanders and engaged in negotiations with foreign leaders, prompting strong criticism from a former White House adviser who accused him of crossing the line by talking about his conversations with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"We have a long tradition in this country that we only have one president at a time. He’s the commander in chief and the negotiator in chief. I cannot remember a campaign in which a rival seeking the presidency has been in a position negotiating a war that’s under way with another party outside the country," David Gergen, who has served four presidents in both parties during his career, said on CNN Monday night.

The freshman senator has run into similar self-perception troubles before for a faux presidential seal on his speaking podium and for considering an address at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate, where President Kennedy delivered his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech during the Cold War.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed Mr. Obama’s site selection, calling it "inappropriate" for politics.

Instead, Mr. Obama will speak Thursday at Berlin’s Victory Column, a far less lofty site commemorating Austria’s defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, in an event that is expected to draw thousands and provide footage for the campaign’s TV ads.

This was all too much for Republicans, who stepped up the pace of their regular "Audacity Watch" e-mail blast to reporters. In the past few days, the Republican National Committee has balked at the ad team’s coverage of the speech and become riled when Mr. Obama presented himself as qualified not only to win the presidential race Nov. 4 but also re-election in 2012.

On CBS’ "Face the Nation," Mr. Obama said the objective of his trip was "to have substantive discussions with people like [Afghan] President Karzai or [Iraqi] Prime Minister Maliki or [French] President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years." That comment, and another in which he said he "never" has doubts, became fodder for another "Audacity Watch."

The RNC also has targeted his quips about dismantling the White House bowling alley in favor of a basketball court.

"Days after securing the nomination and losing nine of the last 14 primaries, and 151 days before the general election, Barack Obama is speaking as if he has been elected and re-elected," RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said last month after Mr. Obama suggested he would be ending his second term during the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Mr. Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, says even the press is fawning over the Democrat as if he has been elected, releasing a harsh new ad Tuesday using favorable quotes reporters have given as evidence they are in "love" with Mr. Obama.

The New Hampshire Union Leader reported Tuesday that just one reporter met the Republican at the airport when he landed for a campaign event, but Mr. Obama travels with a press corps that takes up two buses. More reporters travel with Mr. Obama than with the sitting president, and so many scribes wanted a ticket across the Atlantic with the Democratic candidate that the campaign had to turn down about 150 requests.

The McCain ad infuriated some reporters, who said their words were twisted. It was released as a record 1,300 press credential requests flooded the Chicago headquarters for Thursday’s Obama speech in Berlin.

A Berlin hotel staffer told a reporter Tuesday she was "very excited" that "President Obama" would be speaking just down the street, and mentioned her parents’ emotions of love for the United States when Mr. Kennedy spoke there in the 1960s.

At the site of the upcoming speech, a security officer explained that he and others had blocked off traffic "because the president from America is coming."

The role of president and presidential candidate was further blurred Tuesday when a senior campaign official on the trip, who spoke to reporters on background, denied that Mr. Obama’s address in Berlin had any political overtones.

"It’s not going to be a political speech. When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally," the senior adviser said.

"But he is not a president of the United States," a reporter told the adviser.

"He is going to talk about the issues as an individual … not as a candidate, but as an individual, as a senator," Mr. Obama’s aide replied. The adviser insisted that the Berlin speech "is not for campaign purposes."

However, after the briefing, campaign media adviser David Axelrod said in a statement that the aide’s description of the Berlin rally was inaccurate.

"The answer is that, of course, any event outside of a [congressional delegation trip] is a campaign event. But it is not a political rally. He will not engage his American political opponents. It is a speech to our allies and the people of Europe," he said.

Later, Politico reported that an Obama staffer and former Clinton White House official told reporters that he never, in his four years in the White House, had gone on the record for a briefing. Politico reported that several reporters retorted that they weren’t in the White House.

The Republican National Committee was having a field day with these stories Tuesday, sending out press releases with the headline, "Senior Obama foreign policy adviser: Obama is president of the United States."

If Mr. Obama’s upcoming speech in Berlin "is not political, why shoot footage for campaign ads?" the RNC said.

The Obama campaign’s efforts to elevate the candidate, who has served 3 1/2 years in the U.S. Senate, has come under increasing criticism from pundits who say his fame does not live up to his accomplishments.

"Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote last week.

"Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?" he asked.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Nicholas wrote a story saying, "He’s not president yet, but Barack Obama has already given some thought to White House decor."

Asked at a town hall meeting in Fargo, N.D., whether he had any decorating plans for the Lincoln Bedroom, he recalled a visit to the White House soon after he came to the Senate and seeing "this flat-screen TV in there. That didn’t seem to be appropriate. So I might take out the TV, I don’t know."

Obama Faking It

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:54:06 +0000

By Maggie Gallagher

Obama has a problem: What do you do when you’re a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief?

Pose, of course.

What else can a guy like Obama do?

So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as free campaign commercial backdrops, to lend him the emotional weight and substance — the aura as a commander — that he hasn’t yet earned on his own.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was the one journalist with the courage to name what she was actually seeing happen: Obama faking even being interviewed by the press.

"Let me say something about the message management. He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference," either in Afghanistan or Iraq, noted Mitchell on the air. Instead Obama manufactured "what some would call ‘fake interviews,’ because they are not interviews from a journalist," Mitchell went on.

Mitchell understands very well that this contrived image management is powerfully all to Obama’s political advantage. He’s shameless when it comes to managing his own image. "Politically it’s as smart as can be," she conceded before noting the big obvious truth nobody else in the media was bothering to expose: "We’ve not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before."

The whole Obama campaign is something we’ve never seen before — at least not executed to this level of perfection with a media willing to go along because, well, so many of them want it to succeed.

Poor John McCain. He’s so last-century. Still living in a world in which deeds matter, policies matter, what you would actually do with the power entrusted to you matters.

In the op ed the New York Times refused to print (which appeared in the New York Post this week instead), McCain lays out the facts in Iraq:

"Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent."

Obama, he points out, still claims no political progress is being made. "Perhaps he’s unaware that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, ‘Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress,’" McCain jabs.

He jabs at an opponent who melts away from his punch.

McCain’s approach is all so, well, cognitive. McCain thinks that reality is something that really exists, that has to be dealt with, instead of recognizing that we live in a Brave New World where highly paid symbolic analysts construct reality by manipulating symbols.

The left imagines they learned this from Ronald Reagan and the rise of the right: big strong guy, genial, looks good on camera — bingo! Maybe you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool 51 percent every time, with the right branding and the right kind of images.

God help us when the people who think like that actually run all three branches of our government.

President Obama, if that’s our future, and his team of symbolic analysts will find out soon enough there are realities out there which none of his contrivances are going to be able to help him handle.

More important, so will we.

How ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ Radovan Karadzic used bearded medicine man disguise to evade capture for a decade

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:07:28 +0000

Via Daily Mail:

This is the extraordinary disguise which allowed one of the world’s most wanted men to escape justice for years.

Behind a bushy white beard, grandfatherly spectacles and with his infamous bouffant hair dragged into a ponytail, Radovan Karadzic practised as a doctor in Belgrade, capital of the country which was supposedly hunting him down for genocide.

The Butcher of Bosnia, accused of responsibility for the murder of 20,000 civilians, was allowed to work as Dr Dragan Dabic a practitioner in alternative medicine, to write for Serb publications and, with grotesque irony, to contribute to a magazine entitled Healthy Life.

Bouffant: Radovan Karadzic as the world remembers him during the Bosnian war, left, and as the bearded and bespectacled Dr Dabic

Last night, following his arrest on a Number 73 bus in the Serb capital, nationalist extremists fought with riot police, accusing the new West-leaning government that captured him of treason.

Karadzic was the architect of the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo in the Balkan wars of the early 1990s when he was Bosnian Serb president. His indictment for war crimes describes the

landscapes he left behind as ‘truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history’.

But as he sits in a Belgrade cell awaiting extradition and trial at the same court in The Hague that tried his political mentor Slobodan Milosevic, a disturbing question hung over the affair.

Did Karadzic simply fade into the freedom of anonymity, or did Serbia turn a blind eye to his existence, handing him over only when it became clear that the new government’s dream of joining the EU would never be granted while he was at liberty?

War criminal: Karadzic went unnoticed as a regular magazine contributer

Tales of his flight from justice and enduring freedom are the stuff of legend among his supporters – and a constant source of pain for the families of massacre victims. What seems certain is that it was not a solo performance.

Intelligence sources believe he was hidden and helped by a close-knit network of military friends and Serb nationalists before being fed into the bustle of Bel-Supporters made it clear that ‘every Serb house shall be his hiding place and every true Serb his ally’, as one phrased it.

Some claimed Karadzic had joined a monastery, others that he was hiding in Britain, Russia, or Eastern Europe.

In 2004, dozens of U.S., British, German and Slovenian troops in helicopters and vehicles mounted a night-time raid on a Serbian Orthodox church and the home of a priest, wounding him and his son.

But there was no trace of Karadzic.

Recently Nato and EU troops raided the homes of Karadzic’s wife and children in Pale, his wartime stronghold southeast of Sarajevo. They even searched the sewage tank, his wife Ljiljana said.

For the last several years, however, he was apparently living openly in Belgrade as Dr Dabic.

Mass grave: The bodies of dozens of Srebrenica victims are investigated in 1996

He spoke quietly, became ‘very religious’ and chatted easily with friends about ‘family life’.

While international authorities were supposedly scouring Europe for him, he was appearing in public and being filmed giving alternative medicine talks.

He even had his own website, which published his email address and phone number, and promised his treatment could help everything from impotence to autism.

Last October Karadzic, who trained as a psychiatrist, appeared at a well-being convention organised by Healthy Life magazine, and introduced himself to staff as a neuro-psychiatrist who wanted to contribute articles.

Editor Goran Kojic said he liked to write morbid and surreal poetry, and sometimes children’s poems. ‘He was a kind man, with good

manners, quiet and witty,’ he said.

There were conflicting reports of his arrest, but his lawyer Sveta Vujacic said it happened on a Number 73 bus in Belgrade on Friday.

Three civilians got on the bus and approached Karadzic while he was reading a magazine. He thought they were ticket inspectors.

They ordered him off, blindfolded him, put him in a car and drove for around 20 minutes, he said. He was placed in a small room but refused to answer questions.

Vujacic said he was now in good spirits but refusing to co-operate with police.

Partners in crime: Karadzic with the Bosnian Serb general Radko Mladic, left

It appears that a surveillance operation was mounted several weeks ago and that authorities were watching an address in a suburb of Belgrade.

There were conflicting reports over whether the address was linked to Karadzic or his murderous and fugitive cohort, General Ratko Mladic.

But whatever the target, Karadzic became the prize. His arrest led to scenes of unbridled joy across the former war zones where so many lives were lost.

Equally, however, the unrest among supporters in Belgrade suggest he may be moved out of the country as quickly as possible.

The timing of the arrest raised suspicions that it was secured by politics, not police work.

It came just two weeks after a new, pro-Western Serbian government took office and coincided with informal negotiations that could allow Serbia to join the EU at some stage.

Brussels had made it clear to Belgrade that EU membership was dependent on Karadzic being handed over.

Commentators suggested that Serbian authorities must have known the whereabouts of Karadzic – who was drawing an army pension until recently – but had no interest in handing him over.

Karadzic with former US President Jimmy Carter before their talks in Pale, outside Sarajevo, in 1994

That changed with the new government. And it quickly seems to have won Serbia some EU plus marks.

Hours after his arrest, senior figures were already talking about a ‘brighter future’ for Serbia with the EU.

There have long been suspicions that Karadzic’s family helped to conceal him, an allegation they robustly deny.

However it seems likely that he will be formally reunited with them soon, a luxury denied to relatives of all those of victims of his regime.

His daughter Sonja Karadzic said family members want to spend at least a few hours with him before his transfer into the hands of the United Nations.

Wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic was ‘shocked’ to learn of the arrest. ‘As soon as the phone rang, I knew something was wrong,’ she said.

‘I am very shocked. Confused. But at least we know he is alive.’

In neighbouring Montenegro, his relatives still view him as a hero and believe his arrest was an act of treason.

‘I am very sad that this has happened to Radovan. I feel sorry for him,’ said family member Vukosav Karadzic, from the village of Petnjica where Radovan was born.

‘I am sorry he did not kill himself but allowed himself to be captured. He was betrayed by our people.’

Karadzic’s mother Jovankas, who lived in nearby Niksic, was in her 80s when she died recently.

In an interview while he was on the run she spoke proudly of her son and described him as ‘a fine, good man’.

Lawyers for Karadzic said they would appeal against his detention, a process which could delay his transfer to The Hague.

They have already complained that he was illegally held.

One protested that the arrest of the man accused of genocide was ‘absolutely against the law’.

Sources said it could be months before he is brought to trial.

Once Karadzic does arrive in The Hague, he will be rushed amid tight security to the tribunal’s purpose-built detention unit inside a jail close to the North Sea coast.

He will take up residence in a cell in the same block where Milosevic died in 2006 shortly before the end of his genocide trial.

It was here that the former Serb president mapped out his defence while listening to Frank Sinatra and Celine Dion CDs.

The first chance the public will get to see Karadzic will be within days of his arrival, when he has to appear in court before a red and black-robed judge for a brief arraignment-style hearing in which he will be asked to enter pleas.

Riots: Serbian police clashing with Karadzic supporters, in Belgrade yesterday

Meet ABC News’ Newest Reporter, Ben Affleck: Fan of Chomsky, Hater of America; Gives Oprah Mag his Anti-U.S. Book List

T2M — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:17:41 +0000

Via Debbie Schlussel:

What do you do when you’re a fat, washed up actor who could never act, is tired of waxing your back, and now can’t attract movie-goers? Oh, and you can no longer attract media attention as Mr. J-Lo a/k/a Ben-Lo?

Well, if you’re Ben Affleck, you become a reporter for ABC News. Affleck has been hired by the network news division to shoot a "documentary" (sounds like Michael Moore, only not as fat . . . yet) for "Nightline," the ABC’s latenight news show. Yup, sadly, I had to "read" the July 14, 2008 issue of Us Magazine to learn this. See the caption on the pic, below.

I’m not sure if this–a left-wing movie star now serving up the news–should be a source of irritation because Affleck’s far-left, airheaded views are really no different from those of most other network TV news reporters. His are just out there for us to see.

Meanwhile, the arrogant Affleck tells the August issue of Oprah’s "O" Magazine that among his five fave books–the ones he says "made a difference" in his life–is far-left Noamm Chomsky’s "Manufacturing Consent." What a coinky-dink: Affleck and tyrant Hugo Chavez (and airhead swimsuit model, Elle MacPherson) are fans of the same hate-America author. Says Comrade Ben:

I’m grateful to the book for introducing me to Chomsky, a political analyst [with] startling briliance. . . . Chomsky is a writer I believe everyone should read.

Red Ben also notes something he’s noted before–on Oprah’s daytime talk show–that he’s also in love with Howard Zinn and his "A People’s History of the United States," a far left, hate-America, revisionist "history" of America that is sadly a textbook in many U.S. classrooms.

In the rest of new ABC News reporter Affleck’s choices, Jihad Ben–who tells us he majored in Middle Eastern studies in college, but doesn’t tell us that he dropped out of college after barely a year of attending–attacks American foreign policy in the Mid-East. Methinks there’s not much about the U.S. that Ben Affleck likes, except the green America’s strangely stuffed in his bank account and the freedom of speech that allows him to put forth his incredible arrogance and hatred for this country.