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[3/30/05
Wednesday]
[Ken
Masugi - Director Center for Local Government Claremont
Institute] 12:23 am [link]
"What's
Going On?" Law, Politics, and Schiavo Why
is economist (I was once forced to teach one of his books)
and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman regarded as
a voice of reason and perpetual candidate (and Harvard
political theory Ph.D.) Alan Keyes derided as a nut? Consider
the conclusion of Krugman's column:
America
isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives
who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination.
But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power
of domestic extremists, it can happen here.
Contrast
the fervent pro-life Keyes' explication of separation of powers
principles and executive authority in this
essay on his website. As he and we have underscored, the
crisis here is one of a runaway judiciary and politicians (too
many of whom are lawyers) too deferential to it. The lawyers
who were once a strength of American democracy (as per Tocqueville)
are now a source of weakness.
"Unchecked
by potential opposition from the other branches, judicial
power necessarily becomes judicial tyranny. Since this substantively
defeats the whole aim and purpose of the separation of powers,
we must reject any understanding of separation that leads
to this result."
Keyes focuses
his criticism on Governor Bush:
Whether
from timidity or political calculation, he has pretended
that legislative initiative is required to authorize his
action, even in the face of consistent proof that the legislature
is powerless against a determined and literally ruthless
application of judicial prerogative.
As
a result, the nation and the world have been witness to
the spectacle of the slow, judicially mandated murder of
an innocent and helpless woman, while Jeb Bush's actions
have given credibility to the patently false impression
that the judiciary has any claim whatsoever to executive
authority over the chief executive.
A skeptic
might counter that Mrs. Schiavo's own will is being carried
out, and that Keyes' whole argument is based on a false premise.
The LA Times (Josh Getlin) carried on Sunday a story somewhat
sympathetic to her husband, Michael.
Every court
has deferred to the original court and its findings, which
accept Michael Schiavo's word as authoritative, albeit disputed.
But this standard procedure has made the judiciary look to
many like a faction or a conspiracy instead of an integral
part of the rule of law. It is clear that the judiciary has
been a seriously compromised institution. This may be the most
instructive case of all, though most Americans appear not to
approve congress's intervention. That may be a sign of how
great reform is needed.
[3/29/05
Tuesday]
[Eric
Hogue - radio talk show host KTKZ -
Sacramento] 12:11 am [link]
End
fo Life Legislation Due
to the scarce time allotted me last night (my national
program director, dinner at 6PM), I'll let the column
from the NY
Times speak for itself...
After a
string of fruitless legal and legislative efforts, the central
question in the Terri Schiavo case - Who makes end-of-life
decisions when the patient's wishes are disputed? - is headed
back to Capitol Hill, where debate over broader legislation
has already begun.
On Sunday,
lawmakers of both parties agreed that Congress has a role
to play in such cases and should contemplate legislation
that would give added legal recourse to patients like Ms.
Schiavo. While it is difficult to predict whether such a
measure could pass, the Schiavo case has clearly pushed thorny
questions about end-of-life care to the fore on Capitol Hill,
as well as in state legislatures around the nation.
The Republican-controlled
House already passed a bill that would allow the federal
courts to review cases like Ms. Schiavo's, in which the patient
has left no written instructions, the family is at odds and
state courts have ordered a feeding tube to be withdrawn.
That bill evolved into one that was narrowly tailored to
Ms. Schiavo.
Now some
Democrats, prodded by advocates for the disabled, say Congress
should consider whether such a law is needed.
"I
think we should look into this and very possibly legislate
it," said Representative Barney Frank,
Democrat of Massachusetts, who opposed Congressional
action in the Schiavo case. Mr. Frank was speaking on
Sunday on the ABC News program "This Week With George
Stephanopoulos." Mr. Frank added: "I think
Congress needs to do more. Because I've spoken with a
lot of disability groups who are concerned that, even
where a choice is made to terminate life, it might be
coerced by circumstances."
In the
Senate, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, has also been consulting
with advocates for disability rights and is preparing to
introduce legislation along the lines of the bill that the
House passed, a spokeswoman said. Senator Harkin, an author
of the Americans With Disabilities Act, was one of the few
Democrats in the Senate who spoke in favor of the so-called
private relief measure that allowed a federal court to review
Ms. Schiavo's case.
How
do people like Barney Frank sleep at night. Here he is,
(they are; other Dems jumping onboard), ready to talk legislative
turkey AFTER they radically attacked Palm Sunday's Republican
creation of legislation to ask Judge Greer to reconsider
his opinion - the only opinion - in this case.
Seems
that American's with Disabilities (and related organizations)
are a little concerned over the Terri Schiavo's case and
murder. Disabled Americans have been rethinking the
judiciary rulings and the political agenda of 'quality of
life' decisions and determinations made by socialized healthcare
initiatives across the country.
If
you're disabled and your treatment is costly, it might be to
costly for the coming government healthcare process - it is
much more affordable to starve those with a lower quality
of life through court decisions or coming physician
assisted suicide legislation. [Hogue Blog -
email: onair@ktkz.com]
[3/28/05
Monday]
[Thomas
Lifson - proprietor of American
Thinker] 12:19 am [link]
Ossies
und Wessies "Ossies" and "Wessies" are
the German slang terms for Easterners and Westerners, referring
to the Deutschlanders who spent many years, respectively,
under communism and capitalism. They remain in steady use
in unified Germany. In fact, according to Reuters,
Nearly
a quarter of western Germans and 12 percent of easterners
want the Berlin Wall back -- more than 15 years after the
fall of the barrier that split Germany during the Cold
War, according to a new survey.
And
47
percent of the easterners agree with the statement that
the West "acquired the east like a colony," while 58 percent
of the westerners back the statement that "easterners tend
to wallow in self-pity."
Coming a decade
and a half after unification, the data show the dismaying cultural
damage inflicted by communism in the course of four and half
decades. Not that the Wessies haven't been heavily influenced
by socialism themselves. Perhaps that is one reason why the
Ossies have not been able to respond as aptly to the incentives
of capitalism as the Chinese have done. Lacking the massive
subsidies of German welfare capitalism, and starting from an
economic baseline much closer to starvation that the Ossies,
the Chinese have become avaricious capitalists.
It appears
that "shock therapy" approaches to undoing the cultural ravages
of communism are preferable to "kinder and gentler" gradualist
approaches. few are going to turn down a free ride, and they
will resent small pressures much more than a big bang, to which
they have no choice but to conform. In the long run, they will
be happier.
I still remember
vividly a conversation I had with a young woman a number of
years ago, a Wessie whose phsyician father had moved to the
East for idealistic reasons following unification, bringing
his family along and subjecting her to finishing high school
in the east. She was herself a super-achiever, who had moved
to New York City to be among the finest practitioners of her
particular art. She had found the Ossies bitter, proud, contemptuous
of the Wessies, and consumed by jealously, all the while expecting
a free ride, and resenting the inadeuqcies of what was given
to them.
Sounded like
Democrats to me. Still does.
[3/25/05
Friday]
[Chuck
McVey proprietor of Our
American Times] 8:04 am [link]
China
Shot Itself LA
Times, Editorial,
March 24, 2005
SUMMARY:
- America's
position as the "world’'s leading arms
exporter" reduces its credibility when it demands
that the EU continue to embargo arms sales to China.
- China's
recent anti-secession law, which threatens the use of force
against Taiwan if Taiwan takes an independent stance, lends
support to those who oppose China's acquisition of Western
arms.
- While
in Beijing, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rise stated
the were the EU to lift the ban, it “"would
not send the right signal." ”
- Rather
than affecting the regional balance of power, such sales
would only increase the regional arms race.
- China's
issue is pride. They are “"livid at still being
treated as a pariah nearly 16 years after the brutal suppression
of Tiananmen Square demonstrators. ”
- France
is the third-largest weapons seller and wants to sell arms
to China.
- The
head of EU foreign policy says “"the embargo
is ‘'unfair'" and wants to increase the organization's
clout by wooing China.
- “China
has been counting on these two allies to prevail…” However,
China is more used to telling people what to do rather
than lobbying.
- America
has little influence with the EU as it is to pro-Taiwan
and its new nominee for UN ambassador "is a
rabid supporter” of Taiwan independence."
COMMENTARY:
[3/24/05
Thursday]
[Joe
Armendariz - columnist ]
11:05 am [link]
Judiciary vs. Terri Schiavo et al: The
founders would he horrified to see what has happened to their model of representative
government...one based on the balance of power...self-government, it seems to
me, is far more dependent on a strong legislative and executive branch, than
a strong judicial branch, since the people actually vote for those serve in the
two former branches...the courts are unelected, unaccountable and increasingly
tyrannical.
[Charles
Kopp tOR columnist]
10:10 am [link]
R.I.P. American Ideals (1776-2005) Welcome
to the United States of Euthanasia We Americans have
certainly crossed a line. Murder of the helpless and voiceless,
murder by starvation, is legal tender in America. The Supreme
Court of the United States has said so. It is even warm and
fuzzy, according to the New York Times.
Last Sunday
night, the eve of Palm Sunday, some Democratic Representatives
in Congress argued for ninety minutes in favor of this killing,
a hundred pages of Congressional Record, without ever using
the word ‘starvation.’ A very selective application
of ‘federalism’ was more to be esteemed that living
flesh and blood. And those of us who took the side of flesh
and blood were called ‘ideologues.’
Not that
America has been sinless or free from mistakes; but anyone
who has read at length the words of our founders, their ideas,
their goals, their spiritual beliefs, can come to only one
conclusion. Our nation was founded upon a rock that no other
nation can equally claim. Human rights were recognized for
the first time on this earth, as being God given and inalienable
rights. A great truth arose here with brilliance and clarity,
shinning a light upon humanity. We had a unique place in the
history of human endeavors.
Until now.
Do you have a relative who is aging, inconvenient, suffering
dementia? Why wait for their natural passing? A child with
Downes syndrome, who in the opinion of some liberal judge has
no ‘quality of life.’ Do you have a retarded sibling
or child? Why suffer caring for them and paying for them? You
have the blessings of the new America, to simply stop feeding
them!
Come to think
of it, why discriminate among methods of murder? Why should
starvation be uniquely blessed by our Judges? Surely this arbitrary
limitation will soon be discovered to be unconstitutional.
Collectively,
we have pronounced sentence; this is the sum total of all our
words and deeds, as a nation. Serial killers and child molesters
have more rights to due process than the ailing, the helpless.
We come to mourn the passing of the home of the brave. Home
we are now, with a system of justice that washes its hands
and turns away. We do not even offer vinegar to the thirsty,
dying person.
We have crossed
a line, and most of us didn’t even see it.
[3/23/05
Wednesday]
[Ken
Masugi - Director Center for Local Government Claremont
Institute] 12:19 am [link]
Mexican
(and Other) Illegal Immigration Guess whose editorial:
Getting
terrorists into the United States is a vital step in most
of the worst terrorist scenarios. We now know that Al Qaeda
has travel facilitators, who are experts at exploiting
the weak points in our border security. The federal government
needs to act quickly and forcefully to make their jobs
harder, and the nation safer.
The NY
Times yesterday ("Our Terrorist-Friendly Borders")
argued for stricter rules and enforcing the rules that
now exist. “Until this year, immigration officials routinely
handed phony travel documents back to people caught trying
to enter illegally, and even now visitors are not always
required to show the simplest of evidence that they are
truly here on a visit: a return ticket.” Of course the
Times goes wobbily on some issues: Congress should grant “undocumented
residents access to some kind of driver's license for safety
and insurance reasons.”
Note this
in conjunction with Washington
Times (Stephen Dinan) and Washington
Post (Sylvia Moreno) stories on illegal immigration
(based on this
Pew Report). Out of over 10 million illegals (the estimates
vary) over 6 million are from Mexico. The illegal immigration
problem can’t be ignored; the left strategy now will be to
propose palliatives or placebos. The condition for dealing
seriously with this issue as the NY Times raises it
is the belief that we are fighting a war that we want to win.
Once we are clear on the goal, we can be clear on the means
and what is needed on all fronts of the war. But for most interested
in immigration the issue is one of economics, not national
security.
A citizen
perspective is helpful. John
Fonte provides part of it, in his critique of dual citizenship.
'Mexican legislative bodies have reserved seats for deputies
representing Mexicans living in the United States. The general
idea makes sense, but the problem is the Mexican government
has designated as "Mexicans" naturalized American citizens
and even their children born in the United States.' That is
the Mexican confusion affecting future citizens of ours. Americans
need to make clear what we expect from immigrants—citizenship,
their labor only, enrollment at schools, and so on—and
how this might benefit us as a nation. If we can't get the
issue of citizenship straight, the other issues will be even
more difficult to deal with.
[3/22/05
Tuesday]
[Cliff
Kincaid columnist] 12:02
am [link]
Pentagon
Leaders Exonerated For a new lesson in how to
slant the news, consider the March 11 story in the Washington
Post on testimony given by a Navy Admiral on Iraqi
prisoner abuse. Admiral Albert Church, who conducted a
major investigation, said, “An early focus of our
investigation was to determine whether DoD had promulgated
interrogation policies or guidance that directed, sanctioned
or encouraged the abuse of detainees. We found that this
was not the case.” His inquiry also found that “none
of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance
to approved policies at any level, in any theater.”
But that
is not how the Washington Post saw it. The story by
Josh White and Bradley Graham ran under the headline, “Senators
Question Absence of Blame in Abuse Report.” Who were
those Senators? They were mostly Democrats who wanted to believe
that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his top aides were
to blame.
The Post took
its lead from those senators, claiming in its story that the
Church review “did not place specific blame for the confusing
interrogation policies that migrated from Washington to the
battlefield…” Notice the phrase, “migrated
from Washington to the battlefield.” That is the opinion
of the Post writers in a so-called straight news story. No
evidence of such migration was presented.
Then the Post writers
went on to say that Church “told the Senate Armed Services
Committee at a hearing that no high-level policy decisions
directly led to the abuse.” This was in the second paragraph
of the story, but it certainly should have been the lead. The
headline was that another review cleared top Pentagon leaders
of any role in the prisoner abuse.
Two extensive
reviews of the evidence have now shown that Rumsfeld and other
top officials had no role in approving or condoning any of
the isolated cases of abuse. The “Final Report of the
Independent Panel to Review DoD Detention Operations,” August
2004, reported that, “No approved procedures called for
or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There
is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials
or military authorities.”
What else
did the Post leave out?
At the hearing
supposedly covered by the Post, Senator Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.,
noted that there have been more than 50,000 detainees in the
global War on Terror who have been held in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Guantanamo Bay, and other locations. Church had identified
70 substantive cases of abuse. So that means, Lieberman said,
that only one tenth of one percent of the detainees has been
involved in alleged abuse. In the overwhelming majority of
cases, he noted, detainees have been treated properly.
If you go
one level further, Lieberman said, 20 of those 70 cases were
associated with alleged abuse during interrogations. That,
he said, is one twenty-fifth of one percent of all detainees.
The alleged abuse has to be put “in the proper perspective,” he
said. “Most of the American personnel—service men
and women—who are holding detainees and interrogating
them, to the best of our knowledge, are acting within the law.”
Now why wasn’t
that fit to print at the Post? [AIM]
[3/21/05
Monday]
[Eric
Hogue - radio talk show host KTKZ -
Sacramento] 12:19 am [link]
Saving Terri is Immoral As Republican
lawmakers scramble to pass legislation in an attempt to preserve
the life of a brain-damaged woman, one Oregon congressman is
doing all he can to stop the bill.
The emergency
measure, which passed the Senate Sunday, would allow Terri
Schiavo's parents
to take their case to a federal judge and take Schiavo's fate
out of Florida courts. Judges there had ordered her feeding
tube removed.
But Oregon's
Democratic Congressman Earl Blumenauer says the measure is
immoral because Schiavo made it clear to her husband that she
would not want to live in a vegetative state.
He is organizing
the opposition to the measure, which comes before the House
on Sunday afternoon. One-third of the members present need
to vote "No" to ensure that the feeding tube is not
put back in.
Remember,
the Democrat Party is the party of 'death', right? Will the
Democrats fight for the feeding tube to stay out of her body?
Will the Democrats make sure that she dies, make that starve
to death? Is this what the Democrats will take into the mid-term
elections in 2006; "vote for the Democrats, the party
that made sure that a husband starved his wife to death!" [Hogue Blog -
email: onair@ktkz.com]
[Cliff
Kincaid columnist] 12:17
am [link]
PBS
Must Go George Will has written something that we at AIM have
been saying for years—public broadcasting must be freed of its
federal subsidies. Let’s see if it can survive on its own. It
used to be the case, Will notes, that the Public Broadcasting Service
claimed it was needed because it contributed to diversity in programming. “Now,” he
says, “PBS is airing some HBO films. There is a nifty use of
tax dollars—showing HBO reruns.”
The case
for terminating PBS is bolstered by an article by Chris Baker
in the Washington Times on Terence Smith, a former CBS News
correspondent, who now postures as a media watchdog on public
television. “I absolutely do not believe anyone at CBS
or ‘60 Minutes’ comes to its reporting with a political
bias,” Smith says. “By and large, the people I
have worked with at newspapers and TV really have tried to
be objective.”
Smith’s
statement is ridiculous. Has he ever heard of CBS whistleblower
Bernard Goldberg, who wrote two books about the bias at CBS
and the other networks? The Baker article says that, “Mr.
Smith is surprised that he is still the only TV reporter working
the media beat.” We are surprised, too. And we’re
surprised that someone who fails to recognize liberal media
bias has a job like that. But then again, he works for public
broadcasting, which has a bias of its own.
Over at
National Public Radio, we discovered that Linda Fasulo, their
U.N. correspondent, had taken $26,000 from the U.N. lobby to
write a pro-U.N. book. NPR implicitly acknowledges that taking
the money was inappropriate because it has announced that their
reporters will not be able to accept such subsidies in the
future. Fasulo’s acceptance of the money violated the
ethics code that is supposed to govern the activities of NPR
employees.
The NPR News
Code of Ethics and Practices requires that its reporters avoid “actual
and apparent conflicts of interest or engaging in outside activities,
public comment or writing that calls into question our ability
to report fairly on a subject.” In Fasulo’s case,
she was reporting on the U.N. for NPR as she was accepting
money from Ted Turner's U.N. Foundation to do her pro-U.N.
book.
While Smith
may be the only TV reporter working the media beat, there are
other media watchdog shows. We have criticized one of them,
Fox News Watch, on several occasions for getting facts wrong
and failing to correct errors. On the March 12 edition of the
show, panelist Neal Gabler returned to the CBS Memogate affair,
saying that the panel report into the scandal had only challenged
the “methods” of the CBS journalists. The report,
he claimed, “never discredited the story itself.” This
is so off-base as to be laughable.
Remember
that the thrust of the CBS program was that President Bush
got preferential treatment to get into the Texas Air National
Guard so that he could avoid going to Vietnam. But the report
notes evidence—not used on the air—that there was
no waiting list to get into the Guard as a pilot and Bush,
therefore, didn’t need any special treatment. What’s
more, the report found that CBS producer Mary Mapes was in
possession of evidence that Bush actually volunteered to be
a pilot in Vietnam. Bush was rejected because there were other
more experienced pilots available.
No political
bias at CBS? Perhaps Terence Smith stayed too long at Dan Rather’s
network. [AIM]
[3/18/05
Friday]
[Daniel
Pipes - author, activist, CRO contributor] 12:11am [link]
Americans'
Tax Dollars Fund the Wahhabi Lobby In
a startling article today, "Moderate
and Mainstream," Sherrie
Gossett reveals for Accuracy in Media that the Bush administration
has sent $50,000 to the Islamic Society of North America,
a leading organization in the Wahhabi lobby's American
division.
Mohamed El-sanousi,
director of community outreach and communications for ISNA,
told Gossett his organization received grants in 2003 and 2004
from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
of the Department of Health and Human Services. The money did
not save anyone from substance abuse or improve mental health,
however. Instead, it went to teach other members of the Wahhabi
lobby how to milk the government: "We used the grants to train
Muslim community leaders in how to apply for grants to do social
services," El-sanousi explained.
Gossett does
a fine job documenting ISNA's many ties to radical Islam, including
to Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Rashid Ghanushi, the International Institute
of Islamic Thought, and the Islamic Universal Heritage Foundation.
She cites a
November 2003 report on WTHR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis
(near Plainfield, Indiana, where ISNA's headquarters is located),
that found "a dozen charities, organizations or individuals
under federal scrutiny for possible ties to terrorism that
are linked in some way to ISNA." ISNA is also under
Senate scrutiny for links to terrorist groups.
Sayyid M.
Syeed, ISNA's secretary general, responded aggressively to
Gossett when she asked about such matters in a phone interview
on March 10: "You cannot pick up these small things. You will
repent when you do these things," he told her. Referring to
Accuracy in Media's prior coverage of a Freedom
House report on Saudi hate literature in U.S. mosques,
Syeed threatened Gossett: "You will be hurt, you will be pained
by this if you continue to write such things."
It's an outrage
that ISNA receives taxpayer funds. But then, the U.S. government
has often indulged,
patronized, endorsed, and legitimated Islamist organizations.
So, why not fund them as well?
[Scott
Norvell - proprietor of TongueTied blog] 12:01
am | 
Both of the two World wars began with arms races and this policy was continued in the Cold War (World War III). It is stunning that the elite Los Angeles Times fails to raise the danger of pumping arms into this hot spot. A ‘'region' where we were close to war in the Quemoy Islands of the Taiwan Straits in 1958. This ‘'regional' confrontation occurred when in 1955 President Eisenhower stated that America would not allow the islands in the straits to be used as stepping-stones to attack Taiwan. However, the Times has no concern other than a ‘'regional arms race' to allowing France et al to pump ever more arms in to one of The most dangerous areas of a very dangerous world. That, even though the Times does recognize that China has significant pride issues that poorly color their decisions.
The editorial's premise, that China acted contrary to its own arming interests by enacting the anti-secession law, was not supported with any facts.
Buried within this editorial by the Los Angeles Times are the following a priori concepts:
The thought that we should abandon millions of people who live in a democracy is absurd. Not only would it tend to dramatically reduce respect for America's word, support, and honor, but it would to a greater amount increase the position of the Chinese on the world political stage. This is an example of bringing an agenda position to an editorial. This is also shown by referring to John Bolton's position on Taiwan as "rabid."” True, John Bolton's politics do not match those of the Los Angeles Times, but then neither does the majority of Americans. [go to Our American Times blog]