The Conservative Papers » Crime

Palestinian Authority Children’s TV Encourages Violence Against ‘Enemy’ Christians and Jews (VIDEO)

kalel — Thu, 24 May 2012 04:20:55 +0000

A new video exposed by the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) research institute shows that the Palestinian Authority is continuing to air television programs which teach children to hate Jews and Christians.

In the latest incident, a young girl was asked to recite a poem during a PA TV children’s program. This poem, according to the host of the show, teaches children “responsibility and belonging.”

The messages of “responsibility and belonging” in the poem include insulting Christians and Jews, referring to them as “the enemies of destiny” and encouraging violence against them.

PMW translated the clip and posted it on its website. The organization constantly monitors the PA-based media and translates sections of it which more often than not reveal what the PA – often touted as a “partner for peace” with Israel – really thinks about Israel and Jews.

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The following is the transcript of the poem as recited by the girl on the program:

“… The occupier stole my land and my grandfathers’ land…
Where is your sword, Khaled (Arab warrior)?
Where is your courage, Saladin (Muslim conqueror)?
But no one answered me.
Where is my weapon? I found it – a stone. I took it and threw it at the enemies of destiny. I taught the world that the Muslim in the name of Allah cannot be defeated…
They challenge us with the White House, and we challenge them with the [Islamic] awakening and the Kaaba [in Mecca]. They aren’t stronger than Khosrau and Caesar (rulers of Persian and Byzantine Empires).
They [Christians and Jews] are inferior and smaller, more cowardly and despised. They are remnants of the [Christian] crusaders and Khaibar (i.e., Jewish village destroyed by Muslims in 629)…
Oh Muslims of the world: Awaken, you have slept too long.
Your fathers and your sons are being massacred, your Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is defiled and destroyed.”

PMW recently exposed that a PA TV children’s program featured a child reciting a poem promoting Pan-Arabism. The poem, by an Egyptian writer, included the words “Our enemy, Zion, is Satan with a tail.”

The children’s program, entitled “The Best Home”, aired on April 7 on a PA television station run by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.

PMW Director Itamar Marcus told Arutz Sheva on Wednesday that the PA is continuing to present female terrorist mastermind Dalal Mughrabi as a role model.

Dalal Mughrabi led a group of terrorists who in 1978 sailed from Lebanon to Israel to carry out a terror attack in which 37 Israeli civilians were killed. It was the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history.Popular Posts:

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Jeremiah Wright can sink Obama

alpineski — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:33:27 +0000

President’s former pastors telling story of betrayal and bribery as well as Obamas Muslims past.

He’s back. And this time, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright threatens to engulf President Obama in a major scandal – one that could doom his re-election. Edward Klein in his recent biography of Mr. Obama, “The Amateur,” interviewed Mr. Wright about the president’s past. On tape and on the record, Mr. Wright claims that in 2008, the Obama campaign offered $150,000 to buy his silence. If this is true – and I stress if – Mr. Obama may have committed a crime, and if so, he should be prosecuted and sent to prison. Wrightgate could bring down the Obama presidency.

America was introduced to Mr. Wright in the spring of 2008. The racist, America-hating pastor quickly became an embarrassment to then-candidate Barack Obama. The more cable TV shows endlessly looped Mr. Wright’s extremist, bigoted tirades, the more of a political liability he became to the Obama campaign. Mr. Obama was in full panic; the long association with his radical pastor threatened to derail the Democratic nominee’s chances to defeat Sen. John McCain. Mr. Klein says that according to Mr. Wright, the Obama campaign sent an emissary. The goal: to bribe Mr. Wright in exchange for his agreement to disappear from public view until after the election.

In particular, Mr. Wright alleges that Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close Obama friend, sent an email proposing $150,000 to muzzle the pastor; Mr. Wright says he refused. (The Obama administration recently awarded a $6 million grant to the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Urban Health Initiative. Who runs the initiative? You guessed it: Dr. Whitaker.) Then, Mr. Wright claims, Mr. Obama personally visited him, urging the pastor to remain silent and do nothing that would cripple the Obama candidacy.

According to Mr. Klein, Mr. Wright directly contradicts Mr. Obama’s narrative of having little contact with Trinity United Church. Instead, Mr. Wright alleges that he was Mr. Obama’s close spiritual and political adviser, someone who for more than 20 years shaped the future president’s worldview. In fact, the pastor claims that he was like “a second father” to Mr. Obama.

Furthermore, Mr. Wright says Mr. Obama possessed an “Islamic background” and despite his conversion to Christianity has never abandoned his Muslim roots. In short, Mr. Wright appears to be confirming what I have argued for years: Mr. Obama is a cultural Muslim whose Christianity is deeply tied to black liberation theology – the belief that America and the West have an evil, imperialist civilization bent on oppressing the Third World.

Mr. Wright’s comments beg a fundamental question: Why now? Why is he speaking out about Mr. Obama at this moment? The racial firebrand admits he feels burned; Mr. Obama threw him under the bus to win the 2008 election. Mr. Wright is bitter and angry. Yet what if he is telling the truth? He has injected himself into the center of a potential political storm.

This is why his allegations must be investigated. House Republicans should demand that Congress subpoena Mr. Wright and force him to testify under oath – especially about his claims that the Obama campaign offered $150,000 to buy him off. Congressional investigators need to subpoena Dr. Whitaker as well and track down his supposed emails in which the offer was made. If true, the Obama team violated campaign laws and maybe worse.

Mr. Wright’s charges are possibly the tip of the iceberg, exposing the vast corruption at the heart of the administration’s Chicago-style politics. Who else has been offered cash in exchange for complicity?

Moreover, Mr. Obama’s Islamic roots are becoming increasingly apparent – despite the best efforts of the liberal media to cover this up. In 2008, any questions raised about his Muslim heritage were denounced as “Islamophobic” and beyond the pale. For example, I was accused by the New York Times of waging a smear campaign. Mr. Wright has shown that they were wrong. The evidence was there for all to see. It was obvious. Mr. Obama’s father and stepfather were Muslim; Mr. Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia; as a boy, he studied the Koran; he has openly admitted that the “most beautiful sound” is the Muslim call for evening prayer (not, say, the “Star-Spangled Banner”); he frequently refers to Islam as a “revealed religion” while denigrating Christianity; and he claims that America is a “post-Christian” nation.

Mr. Obama’s powerful sympathies for the Islamic world explain much of his foreign policy – apologizing for American behavior in the Middle East, appeasing Iran, engaging in long-term nation-building in Afghanistan, abandoning Iraq, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, empowering radical Islamists in Libya, backing the disastrous Arab Spring and the relentless undermining of Israel. In short, Mr. Obama is the true protege of Mr. Wright: an anti-colonial, anti-Western radical leftist who seeks to use U.S. power in the service of the Arab street. In many ways, he is our first Muslim president.

Therefore, it would be a great irony of history if the pastor who baptized Mr. Obama’s children, presided over his marriage to Michelle, guided his conversion to black liberation theology and spent more than two decades as his spiritual and religious mentor turns out to be the man who triggers the president’s downfall. Maybe Mr. Obama cannot outrun his past, after all.

By: Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.Popular Posts:

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Wright Says Obama Tried to Bribe Him

alpineski — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:36:28 +0000

When sermons of Obama’s Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright, surfaced during the Iowa primaries, it threatened to derail Obama’s campaign. ABC aired one where Wright screamed, “G-ddamn America!” Edward Klein interviewed Wright, who told him Obama’s team tried to buy his silence.

‘Man, the media ate me alive,” Wright told me when we met in his office at Chicago’s Kwame Nkrumah Academy. “After the media went ballistic on me, I received an e-mail offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election.”

“Who sent the e-mail?” I asked Wright.

“It was from one of Barack’s closest friends.”

“He offered you money?”

“Not directly,” Wright said. “He sent the offer to one of the members of the church, who sent it to me.”

“How much money did he offer you?”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Wright said.

“Did Obama himself ever make an effort to see you?”

“Yes,” Wright said. “Barack said he wanted to meet me in secret, in a secure place. And I said, ‘You’re used to coming to my home, you’ve been here countless times, so what’s wrong with coming to my home?’ So we met in the living room of the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ, at South Pleasant Avenue right off 95th Street, just Barack and me. I don’t know if he had a wire on him. His security was outside somewhere.

“And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.’

“And what did you say?” I asked. “I said, ‘I don’t see it that way. And anyway, how am I supposed to support my family?’ And he said, ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t speak in public. The press is gonna eat you alive.’

“Barack said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your problem is?’ And I said, ‘No, what’s my problem?’ And he said, ‘You have to tell the truth.’ I said, ‘That’s a good problem to have. That’s a good problem for all preachers to have. That’s why I could never be a politician.’

“And he said, ‘It’s going to get worse if you go out there and speak. It’s really going to get worse.’
“And he was so right.”

(NY Post)

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‘I Am Not Going to Surrender My Office to the Federal Government,’ Sheriff Arpaio Says

kalel — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:26:20 +0000

By WALTER BERRY, Associated Press

A defiant Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, pounds his fist on the podium as he answers questions regarding the Department of Justice announcing a federal civil lawsuit against Sheriff Arpaio and his department, during a news conference Thursday, May 10, 2012, in Phoenix. According to the Department of Justice, after months of negotiations failed to yield an agreement to settle allegations that the sheriff's department racially profiled Latinos in his trademark immigration patrols, the lawsuit was filed.(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

PHOENIX (AP) — As defiant as ever, get-tough Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces a federal court showdown over charges that deputies on his trademark immigration patrols racially profiled Latinos in violation of civil rights law.

After months of negotiations failed to reach a settlement over the allegations, the U.S. Justice Department took the rare step Thursday of suing.

“We have invariably been able to work collaboratively with law enforcement agencies to build better departments and safer communities,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez said.

Arpaio and his department “have been a glaring exception,” said Perez, who heads the civil rights division.

The main issue that caused talks to break down last month was federal officials’ insistence that Arpaio agree to a court-appointed monitor for the department. Arpaio objected, saying it would undermine his authority.

“I am not going to surrender my office to the federal government,” a visibly angry Arpaio said at an afternoon news conference. “I will fight this to the bitter end.”

The lawsuit means that a federal judge will decide the escalating, long-standing dispute.

The Justice Department, which had been investigating Arpaio on civil rights allegations for more than three years and faced a similar impasse earlier in the investigation, said it was left with no choice but to sue the sheriff to seek the court-appointed monitor it wants to oversee the law enforcement agency.

The DOJ had filed another lawsuit against Arpaio that alleged his office refused to fully cooperate with a request for records and access to jails and employees. It was settled last summer after the office complied.

The latest lawsuit comes as part of the DOJ’s effort to enforce a law passed after the verdict in the Rodney King police brutality case and the Los Angeles riots. It bans police from systematically violating constitutional rights.

Normally, settlements are filed in court as part of lawsuits that aren’t contested by the police agencies.

Since the law’s passage, federal officials said that only once before has the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against a police department with which they were unable to reach an agreement.

In 1999, they filed a lawsuit against Columbus, Ohio, police, but the two sides eventually settled, Perez said.

The DOJ first leveled the allegations against Arpaio in December, saying a culture of disregard for basic constitutional rights prevailed at his office, which covers the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Arpaio’s office is accused of punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish and launching some patrols based on complaints that never reported a crime but conveyed concerns about dark-skinned people congregating or speaking Spanish.

The DOJ has been trying to require Arpaio’s office to train officers in how to make constitutional traffic stops, collect data on people arrested in traffic stops and assure Latinos that the department is there to protect them.

One of the examples cited in the lawsuit was a Latino woman who is a U.S. citizen and was five months pregnant when she was stopped as she pulled into her driveway.

When the woman refused to sit on the hood of a car as the officer insisted, the deputy pulled her arms behind her back, slammed her stomach-first into the vehicle three times and dragged her to his patrol car, the lawsuit said.

He shoved her into the back seat and made her wait about 30 minutes without air conditioning.

Eventually, the woman was cited for failure to provide proof of insurance, but the matter was resolved when she gave such proof to a court, the lawsuit said.

Among the other allegations was that sheriff’s supervisors used county accounts to send emails that demeaned Latinos, such as one that had a photo of a mock driver’s license for a fictional state called “Mexifornia.”

The lawsuit also said Arpaio and his office filed criminal cases and lawsuits against critics. “Nobody is above the law, and nobody can misuse the legal process to silence those with different opinions,” Perez said.

The lawsuit mentioned hundreds of sex-crime cases that Arpaio’s office either failed to adequately investigate or didn’t investigate at all over a three-year period ending in 2007. The sheriff’s office said the backlog was cleared up after the problem was brought to Arpaio’s attention.

“Faced with such an increase in crime and the risk of harm presented by unaddressed sexual assaults, a law enforcement agency ordinarily would be expected to prioritize more serious offenses, such as crimes of sexual violence, over less serious offenses, such as low-level immigration offenses,” the lawsuit said.

Arpaio said the Obama administration brought the lawsuit as a way to court Latino voters in a presidential election year. “They want to send a message that they are taking on the sheriff,” Arpaio said.

Justice Department officials said its investigation of Arpaio’s office took longer than they wanted because Arpaio refused to provide records and access to his jails for 18 months.

The sheriff has demanded that the Justice Department provide facts to prove its allegations. Federal officials have said a 22-page letter sent to Arpaio in December provided those details.

Arpaio is a national political fixture who built his reputation on jailing inmates in tents and dressing them in pink underwear, selling himself to voters as unceasingly tough on crime.

Along the way, he aggressively pushed for a stronger role for local police to enforce immigration law, launching 20 patrols looking for illegal immigrants since January 2008.

During the patrols, deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases, heavily Latino areas — over several days to seek out traffic violators and arrest other suspected offenders. Over the last three years, he raided 58 businesses suspected of breaking a state law by knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Lydia Guzman, leader of the civil rights group Respect-Respeto, said the federal lawsuit will go a long way toward convincing the public that Arpaio is abusing his power.

“The reason he has been digging in his heels is because he doesn’t want this to come out,” she said. “Once we’re in trial and it all comes out, it will be an opportunity for all of this to be exposed. The voters will see it.”Popular Posts:

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The Obamas SURRENDERED Both of Their Law Licenses in ’93 & ’08

kalel — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:17:44 +0000

BOTH OBAMAS SURRENDERED law licenses in ’93 & ’08!

This can be easily verified at https://www.iardc.org

Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee. It’s the official arm of lawyer discipline in Illinois; and they are very strict and mean as hell.

1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.

A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license. No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” your license five seconds before the state suspends you.

2 Michelle Obama “voluntarily surrendered” her law license in 1993. after a Federal Judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or STAND TRIAL FOR insurance FRAUD.

3. So, we have the first black President and First “Lady” – who don’t actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.
Source: http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/pres-barack-obama-editor-of-the-Harvard-law-review-has-no-law-license/

4. A senior lecturer is one thing, a fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law Professor at the University of Chicago.

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “served as a professor” in the law school-but that is a title. Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

6. “He did not hold the title of Professor of Law,” said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law.
Source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the_title.html ;

7. The former Constitutional Senior Lecturer (Obama) cited the U.S. Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence … not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video: http://www.breitbart.tv/did-obama-confuse-the-constitution-with-the-declaration-of-independence/

9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: “We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal.

10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech?

Source: http://liberty.com/node/2783Popular Posts:

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Interpol President: 1,000 Cyber Attacks Per Minute in Israel

kalel — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:12:26 +0000

Israel is hosting the three-day International Interpol Convention, which began on Tuesday in Tel Aviv.

Interpol convention in Israel

Some 200 senior delegates from law enforcement agencies across 40 European nations are attending the conference, which is headed by Interpol President Khoo Bon Hui and its Secretary-General Ronald Noble. The conference is being hosted by the Israel Police, with Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino taking part in it as well.

One of the central topics discussed at the convention is cybercrime, which has become a global concern. According to Khoo, “Here in Israel alone, a reported number of over 1,000 cyber attacks take place every minute. Experts have estimated that the cost of cybercrime is larger than the combined costs of cocaine, marijuana and heroin trafficking. In Europe, the cost of cybercrime has apparently reached 750 billion Euros a year.”

Noble said that cybercrime “is a crime problem that will continue to grow. From distant havens, cyber-criminals defraud, develop new underground markets for illicit trade, and threaten critical digital infrastructures.”

Noble noted that in addition to the above, “the Internet also facilitates the dissemination of violent, extreme and radical ideologies, enabling radical leaders to reach friendly ears right in our communities and in all corners of the world. The heinous murder, this past March, of three children and a rabbi in a Jewish day school in Toulouse and French soldiers in Montauban, is one tragic example.”

“I know that in Israel, your anti-cybercrime techniques are very good and are something that people from all over the world will want to learn from,” said Khoo, who noted that the Israel Police is very advanced and said that he is sure much will be learned from Israel during the conference.

Noble strengthened Khoo’s comments and said that “cybercrime is an area where the Israeli Police have an extraordinary reputation, worldwide, for being able to investigate, fight it, prevent it, from a crime perspective, a fraud perspective and also from a security perspective.”

He added that “the Interpol National Central Bureau in Jerusalem, that is 100 percent staffed and controlled by the Israeli Police, is one of the fastest in responses, one of the more comprehensive in giving answers and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I would put the Israeli Police in the top category, whatever that category might be, in terms of their professionalism and their expertise.”Popular Posts:

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Muslims Remove Israeli Flags From Bypass Roads

kalel — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:31:49 +0000

A group of Arabs activists removed Israeli flags from main bypass roads between cities in the northern Binyamin region early Saturday, the Ma’an news agency reported.

'Palestinian' flag

The activists replaced Israeli flags with Palestinian Authority flags, according to Ibrahim Burnat, one of the participants. Burnat told Ma’an that a group of young men left Ramallah at 3 a.m. to complete the task.

“On one of the main roads between Ramallah and Nablus (|Shechem), activists quickly scaled ladders to reach the Israeli flags on electricity poles and replaced them with Palestinian flags,” the news agency reported.

Arab blogger Maath Musleh reported on Twitter that, “The Israeli flags that were removed from Nablus – Ramallah road will be burned” in central Ramallah.

Burnat said that the campaign “angered Israeli settlers [when they saw what had occurred, ed.],” but was completed quickly and quietly, without confrontations.

He continued to note that a series of similar efforts are underway, but declined to disclose the details “because they will also be performed secretly.”

According to the report, Burnat said the group did not want to disclose its identity, as its goal is to support the “Palestinian cause,” not partisan agendas.Popular Posts:

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Top Five Cliches that Liberals Use to Avoid Real Arguments

kalel — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:50:09 +0000

By Jonah Goldberg

One of the great differences between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives will freely admit that they have an ideology. We’re kind of dorks that way, squabbling over old texts like Dungeons and Dragons geeks, wearing ties with pictures of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke on them.

Barack Obama

But mainstream liberals from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama — and the intellectuals and journalists who love them — often assert that they are simply dispassionate slaves to the facts; they are realists, pragmatists, empiricists. Liberals insist that they live right downtown in the “reality-based community,” and if only their Republican opponents weren’t so blinded by ideology and stupidity, then they could work with them.

This has been a theme of Obama’s presidency from the start. A couple of days before his inauguration,Obama proclaimed: “What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry” (an odd pronouncement, given that “bigoted” America had just elected its first black president).

In his inaugural address, he explained that “the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”

Whether the president who had to learn, in his own words, that there’s “no such thing” as shovel-ready projects — after blowing billions of stimulus dollars on them — is truly focused on “what works” is a subject for another day. But the phrase is a perfect example of the way liberals speak in code when they want to make an ideological argument without conceding that that is what they are doing. They hide ideological claims in rhetorical Trojan horses, hoping to conquer terrain unearned by real debate.

Of course, Republicans are just as guilty as Democrats when it comes to reducing arguments to bumper stickers. (Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has written that “the president’s economic experiment has failed. It is time to get back to what we know works.”) But the vast majority of Republicans, Ryan included, will at least acknowledge their ideological first principles — free markets, limited government, property rights. Liberals are terribly reluctant to do likewise. Instead, they often speak in seemingly harmless cliches that they hope will penetrate our mental defenses.

Here are some of the most egregious examples:

‘Diversity is strength’

Affirmative action used to be defended on the grounds that certain groups, particularly African Americans, are entitled to extra help because of the horrible legacy of slavery and institutionalized racism. Whatever objections opponents may raise to that claim, it’s a legitimate moral argument.

But that argument has been abandoned in recent years and replaced with a far less plausible and far more ideological claim: that enforced diversity is a permanent necessity. Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, famously declared: “Diversity is not merely a desirable addition to a well-run education. It is as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics and of Shakespeare.”

It’s a nice thought. But consider some of the great minds of human history, and it’s striking how few were educated in a diverse environment. Newton, Galileo and Einstein had little exposure to Asians or Africans. The genius of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato cannot be easily correlated with the number of non-Greeks with whom they chatted in the town square. If diversity is essential to education, let us get to work dismantling historically black and women’s colleges. When I visit campuses, it’s common to see black and white students eating, studying and socializing separately. This is rounding out everyone’s education?

Similarly, we’re constantly told that communities are strengthened by diversity, but liberal Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam has found the opposite. In a survey that included interviews with more than 30,000people, Putnam discovered that as a community becomes more ethnically and socially varied, social trust and civic engagement plummet. Perhaps forced diversity makes sense, but liberals make little effort to prove it.

‘Violence never solved anything’

It’s a nice idea, but it’s manifestly absurd. If violence never solved anything, police would not have guns or nightsticks. Obama helped solve the problem of Moammar Gaddafi with violence, and FDR helped solve the problem — far too late — of the Holocaust and Hitler with violence. Invariably, the slogan (or its close cousin “War is not the answer”) is invoked not as a blanket exhortation against violence, but as a narrow injunction against the United States, NATO or Republican presidents from trying to solve threats of violence with violence.

‘The living Constitution’

It is dogma among liberals that sophisticated people understand that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document.” The idea was largely introduced into the political bloodstream by Woodrow Wilson and his allies, who were desperate to be free of the constraints of the founders’ vision. Wilson explained that he preferred an evolving, “organic,” “Darwinian” Constitution that empowered progressives to breathe whatever meaning they wished into it. It is a wildly ideological view of the nature of our political system.

It is also a font of unending hypocrisy. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, conservatives argued that the country needed to adapt to a new asymmetrical warfare against non-state actors who posed an existential threat. They believed they were working within the bounds of the Constitution. But even if they were stretching things, why shouldn’t that be acceptable — if our Constitution is supposed to evolve with the times?

Yet acolytes of the living Constitution immediately started quoting the wisdom of the founders and the sanctity of the Constitution. Apparently the document is alive when the Supreme Court finds novel rationalizations for abortion rights, but when we need to figure out how to deal with terrorists, suddenly nothing should pry original meaning from the Constitution’s cold, dead hands.

By the way, conservatives do not believe that the Constitution should not change; they just believe that it should change constitutionally — through the amendment process.

‘Social Darwinism’

Obama this month denounced the Republican House budget as nothing more than “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Liberals have been trotting out this Medusa’s head to petrify the public for generations. It does sound scary. (After all, didn’t Hitler believe in something called “social Darwinism”? Maybe he did.) But no matter how popular the line, these liberal attacks have little relation to the ideas that the “robber barons” and such intellectuals as Herbert Spencer — the “father” of social Darwinism — actually followed.

Spencer’s sin was that he was a soaked-to-the-bone libertarian who championed private charity and limited government (along with women’s suffrage and anti-imperialism). The “reform Darwinists” — namely the early-20th-century Progressives — loathed such classical liberalism because they wanted to tinker with the economy, and humanity itself, at the most basic level.

More vexing for liberals: There was no intellectual movement in the United States called “social Darwinism” in the first place. Spencer, a 19th-century British philosopher, didn’t use the term and wasn’t even a Darwinist (he had a different theory of evolution).

Liberals misapplied the label from the outset to demonize ideas they didn’t like. They’ve never stopped.

‘Better 10 guilty men go free .?.?.’

At least until George Zimmerman
was in the dock, this was a reflexive liberal refrain. The legendary English jurist William Blackstone — the fons et origo of much of our common law — said, “Better that 10 guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” In fact, this 10 to 1 formula has become known as the “Blackstone ratio” or “Blackstone’s formulation.”

In a brilliant study, “n Guilty Men,” legal scholar Alexander Volokh traced the idea that it is better to let a certain number of guilty men go free — from Abraham’s argument with God in Genesis over the fate of Sodom, to the writings of the Roman emperor Trajan, to the legal writings of Moses Maimonides, to Geraldo Rivera.

As a truism, it’s a laudable and correct sentiment that no reasonable person can find fault with. But that’s the problem: No reasonable person disagrees with it. There’s nothing wrong with saying it, but it’s not an argument — it’s an uncontroversial declarative statement. And yet people say it as if it settles arguments. It doesn’t do anything of the sort. The hard thinking comes when you have to deal with the “and therefore what?” part. Where do we draw the lines? If it were an absolute principle, we wouldn’t put anyone in prison, lest we punish an innocent in the process. Indeed, if punishing the innocent is so terrible, why 10? Why not two? Or, for that matter, 200? Or 2,000?

Taken literally, the phrase is absurd. Letting 10 rapists and murderers go free will almost surely result in far more harm to society than putting one poor innocent sap in jail.

When you hear any of these cliches — along with “I may disagree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it,” which is another personal favorite — understand that the people uttering them are not trying to have an argument. They’re trying to win an argument without having it at all.

tyrannyofcliches@gmail.com

Jonah Goldberg is editor at large of the National Review Online and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His book “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas” will be published Tuesday.

Obama Intimidates Contributors to Mitt Romney Publicly

alpineski — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:52:05 +0000

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Are you next?

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for “betting against America,” and accuses you of having a “less-than-reputable” record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Are you worried?

Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.

Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled “Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney’s donors.” In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having “less-than-reputable records,” the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that “quite a few” have also been “on the wrong side of the law” and profiting at “the expense of so many Americans.”

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having “outsourced” jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a “lobbyist”) and Thomas O’Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a “bitter foe of the gay rights movement.”

These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.

“We don’t tolerate presidents or people of high power to do these things,” says Theodore Olson, the former U.S. solicitor general. “When you have the power of the presidency—the power of the IRS, the INS, the Justice Department, the DEA, the SEC—what you have effectively done is put these guys’ names up on ‘Wanted’ posters in government offices.” Mr. Olson knows these tactics, having demanded that the 44th president cease publicly targeting Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, which he represents. He’s been ignored.

The real crime of the men, as the website tacitly acknowledges, is that they have given money to Mr. Romney. This fundraiser of a president has shown an acute appreciation for the power of money to win elections, and a cutthroat approach to intimidating those who might give to his opponents.

He’s targeted insurers, oil firms and Wall Street—letting it be known that those who oppose his policies might face political or legislative retribution. He lectured the Supreme Court for giving companies more free speech and (falsely) accused the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to bankroll U.S. elections. The White House even ginned up an executive order (yet to be released) to require companies to list political donations as a condition of bidding for government contracts. Companies could bid but lose out for donating to Republicans. Or they could quit donating to the GOP—Mr. Obama’s real aim.

The White House has couched its attacks in the language of “disclosure” and the argument that corporations should not have the same speech rights as individuals. But now, says Rory Cooper of the Heritage Foundation, “he’s doing the same at the individual level, for anyone who opposes his policies.” Any giver, at any level, risks reprisal from the president of the United States.

It’s getting worse because the money game is not going as Team Obama wants. Super PACs are helping the GOP to level the playing field against Democratic super-spenders. Prominent financial players are backing Mr. Romney. The White House’s new strategy is thus to delegitimize Mr. Romney (by attacking his donors) as it seeks to frighten others out of giving.

The Obama campaign has justified any action on the grounds that it has a right to “hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable,” but this is a dodge. Politics is rough, but a president has obligations that transcend those of a candidate. He swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that gives every American the right to partake in democracy, free of fear of government intimidation or disfavored treatment. If Mr. Obama isn’t going to act like a president, he bolsters the argument that he doesn’t deserve to be one.

A version of this article appeared April 27, 2012, on page A13 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The President Has a List.Popular Posts:

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U.S. Supreme Court Ruling: PA, PLO Can’t be Charged in Torture Death

kalel — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:29:00 +0000

The Palestinian Authority and PLO cannot be sued for the death by torture of a man killed in PA custody, the United States Supreme Court has ruled. The court found that the Torture Victim Protection Act allows for civil suits against individuals only, and not against organizations.

PA police officer

The family of PA resident Azzam Rahim, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had sought to sue the PA and PLO for Rahim’s death in 1995.

The family alleges that Rahim was tortured to death in PA custody. The PA and PLO have denied the charges.

In a unanimous ruling, justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Protection Act does not apply. “We hold that the term ‘individual’ as used in the act encompasses only natural persons,” the court stated. “Consequently, the act does not impose liability against organizations.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had argued that failing to hold organizations liable would leave many victims of torture and their families with no legal recourse. The court said Congress had been aware of the law’s limitations when it was passed.

Senior PA officials have admitted that PA forces torture prisoners. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of turning a blind eye to – or even facilitating – the torture, which has been carried out by US-trained troops.

In a recent case, the PA allegedly tortured a former PA intelligence agent for selling a home to Jews. The former agent has been sentenced to death.Popular Posts:

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Source material can be found at this site.