The Duke-ification of Speech

Leonard Kaplan is the latest victim of what I'm calling "Dukeification" after the Duke lacrosse fake rape scandal.

Kaplan is the University of Wisconsin law professor who has evidently caused enormous pearl-clutching throughout the liberal university by actually expecting students to think.

Yet offend he did, during a discussion about conflicts between culture and the legal system in which he used Hmong immigrants as an example.

A few days later, third-year law student KaShia Moua sent an e-mail citing four “incredibly offensive and racist” remarks she said Kaplan had made during a “10-minute rant about the Hmong.” Among them: “Hmong men have no skills other than killing” and “All second-generation Hmong end up in gangs and other criminal activity.”

Proclaiming that Kaplan “has violated our rights as students,” Moua called a meeting “to hold Kaplan and our administration accountable.” Moua did not reveal she was not in the class and received her information secondhand.

Just like the Duke University's overreaction to the charges of rape, the UW administration pre-emptively issued apologies to offended students. There was even an investigation of Kaplan and students attempted to have him fired.

The problem, as with the Duke case, is that events didn't happen quite the way the professional offended class says they did.

Kaplan denies ever saying that Hmong men have no skills except killing. Other quoted comments, he says, were taken out of context. For instance, he did say many young Hmong men are involved in criminal activity, but explained that this is typical of new immigrant groups...

Kaplan’s fellow faculty members, some of whom initially sided with the offended students, are increasingly coming to his support.

“The quotes are obviously cruelly torn from the teaching context,” wrote professor Ann Althouse, a nationally read blogger and guest columnist in The New York Times. “It is irrational to think that a law professor would assert things like this as a matter of belief.”

Also rising to Kaplan’s defense are many of the students in his class.

“Professor Kaplan is the farthest thing from a racist,” says Jason Gonzalez, the lone undergraduate in the class. “He was talking about how some recent immigrant cultures don’t assimilate to our laws immediately, and was asking if it’s ethical and right to expect that, or whether the law and society should provide more assistance.”

Students who go to law school should expect that their preconceived notions, beliefs, and attitudes are going to be questioned and dissected. Playing devil's advocate is part of a law professor's job, forcing students to "think like lawyers" in trying to justify their beliefs and theories about the law. Students have to be able to handle having their closely-treasured sensitivities challenged repeatedly.

More than a few times in law school did I have professors say outrageous things to me and attempt to embarrass me. But most professors are truly interested in presenting material in interesting and thought-provoking ways. That some students get the vapors when confronted with unpleasant truths (many new immigrants fall into crime) speaks more to their fitness for law school than to the sensitivity of the professor.

300 Doesn't Give the Obligatory Anti-War Message...It Must Be Evil!

According to Dana Stevens at Slate, 300, based on a comic book (er, "graphic novel") is a story the Nazis would love.

If 300, the new battle epic based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, had been made in Germany in the mid-1930s, it would be studied today alongside The Eternal Jew as a textbook example of how race-baiting fantasy and nationalist myth can serve as an incitement to total war.

Why Nazis? Well, there's the fact that the heroes, the Spartans, are white and the villians, the Persians, are, well Persian.

Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both). The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him.

As Ace of Spades pointed out:

I do believe the Persians were somewhat darker hued than Greeks, and furthermore, given that their Empire extended far into Asia and Africa, they would tend to have darker foreign conscripts as well.

Stevens is most upset that there's no obligatory anti-war message in this movie, unlike so many others burped out by Hollywood.

One of the few war movies I've seen in the past two decades that doesn't include at least some nod in the direction of antiwar sentiment, 300 is a mythic ode to righteous bellicosity. In at least one way, the film is true to the ethos of ancient Greece: It conflates moral excellence and physical beauty (which, in this movie, means being young, white, male, and fresh from the gyms of Brentwood).

Frankly, any movie that doesn't give a nod to the anti-war, give-peace-a-chance-at-any-price crowd is worth my eight bucks. After reading Stevens review, I will make sure I see 300.

UPDATE: Comments from my husband caused me to go do some research on the Battle of Thermopylae.

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the invader in one of history's most famous last stands. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I could pass. After three days of battle, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Dismissing the rest of the army, King Leonidas stayed behind with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. Though they knew it meant their own deaths, they held their position and secured the retreat of the other Greek forces. The Persians succeeded in taking the pass but sustained heavy losses, extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks. The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a decisive naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war. The subsequent Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian navy destroyed and Xerxes was forced to retreat back to Asia, leaving his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle one last time. The Spartans assembled at full strength and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it Persian expansion into Europe.

Gingrich Had Affair During Clinton Probe

Sure to make the moonbats happy is the revelation that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had an affair during the time of the Clinton impeachment hearings.

Not to be a stickler for facts (oh, hell, who am I fooling?), but it wasn't the fact Clinton was having an affair while president that got him impeached. He was impeached because he lied under oath and obstructed justice. On a more personal level, he tried to use the power of the presidency to prevent a U.S. citizen from having her day in court.

I realize to the "it's just about sex" crowd that this will give them comfort and another clip for their "Republicans are hypocrites" file. But given that impeachment wasn't "about sex" but about lying--something you'd think Dems would be concerned about, given their delight in the Scooter Libby trial--the revelation about Gingrich doesn't do a thing to exonerate Clinton at all. It actually just makes me disgusted with both of them.

Captain Ed says Gingrich is airing the dirty laundry early in the hope that it will limit any damage to his political chances.

Gingrich, like Rudy Giuliani, has had two divorces and three marriages. John McCain has been divorced once. Only Mitt Romney, alone among GOP frontrunners, has remained married to the same woman. This contrasts sharply with the Democratic leaders in the 2008 race; neither Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, nor John Edwards have had a divorce.

It's an interesting dilemma. Everybody has known that the Clinton marriage was a sham forever, but it is a sham still in effect. And what's not to love about a trial lawyer who can buy you a house the size of Rhode Island?

Republicans need to spend more time recruiting family values people who haven't got as many divorces as Elizabeth Taylor. Unless, of course, they don't really care about such matters, which would make the Democratic noise machine correct,and who wants that?

The Guantanamo Bay Bar

The Wall Street Journal has this excellent column by Debra Burlingame about the lawyers hellbent on freeing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.

How we deal with alien enemy combatants goes to the essence of the debate between those who see terrorism as a series of criminal acts that should be litigated in the justice system, one attack at a time, and those who see it as a global war where the "criminal paradigm" is no more effective against militant Islamists whose chief tactic is mass murder than indictments would have been in stopping Hitler's march across Europe. Michael Ratner and the lawyers in the Gitmo bar have expressly stated that the habeas corpus lawsuits are a tactic to prevent the U.S. military from doing its job. He has bragged that "The litigation is brutal [for the United States] . . . You can't run an interrogation . . . with attorneys." No, you can't. Lawyers can literally get us killed.

The purpose of these lawyers isn't to "do justice," it's to free terrorists so they can attack our soldiers again.

We may never know how many of the hundreds of repatriated detainees are back in action, fighting the U.S. or our allies thanks to the efforts of the Guantanamo Bay Bar. Approximately 20 former detainees have been confirmed as having returned to the battlefield, 12 of them killed by U.S. forces. Of the eight detainees who were rendered back to Kuwait for review of their cases, all were acquitted in criminal proceedings, including (Nasser Nijer Naser) al-Mutairi, who has given press interviews admitting that he was shot in the November 2001 uprising at Qala-I-Jangi.

Mutairi's story is detailed earlier in the column. He was one of the 538 prisoners who swarmed a U.S. military interrogator in an uprising in 2002. The interrogator, Johnny "Mike" Spann, was a former Marine who held off the terrorists and allowed others to escape. His reward? "His beaten and booby-trapped body was recovered with two bullet wounds in his head, the angle of trajectory suggesting he had been shot execution style."

The column provides more information about this thug and why the Guantanamo Bay Bar, smugly wrapping itself in its lawyerly duty to serve its clients, undermines American efforts to get rid of these enemies.

At-Will Employment

The furor over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys has me asking one question: has Congress ever heard of at-will employment?

It's a simple concept that most of us in the hinterlands live under. I live in Texas, an at-will employment state, and the argument goes this way: I can quit my employer at any time for any reason or no reason. My employer, similarly, can fire me at any time for any reason or no reason. In short, you are hired to do your job and when either you or your employer decide it's not enough, you leave.

I know there are states like California where they don't have this sort of employment arrangement. That's why a lot of employers (such as mine) have closed their California branches to open Texas branches. Contrary to what union backers will tell you, there's nothing terrible about at-will employment. While I've been laid off from a job, I always found a comparable job (sometimes the same job).

The mess with the U.S. attorneys has wound up with a spokesman from the Attorney General's office giving a detailed list of why the various attorneys were fired. It seems to me that this is as embarrassing, if not worse, than just accepting the firing and going about one's business.

Cutting and Running, Take 3

Senate Democrats, not wanting to look less chicken than their House counterparts, announced today a newjoint resolution on cutting and running. The Dems want all troops out by September 2008...just in time for the November elections, don't you know.

The Reid Joint Resolution builds on the longstanding Democratic position on Iraq and the Levin-Reed Amendment: the current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution, Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should not be policing a civil war. It contains binding language to direct the President to transition the mission for U.S. forces in Iraq and begin their phased redeployment within one-hundred twenty days with a goal of redeploying all combat forces by March 31, 2008. A limited number of troops would remain for the purposes of force protection, training and equipping Iraqi troops, and targeted counter-terror options.

Exactly what are "a limited number of troops" and who determines how many that is.

Power Line says

The Democrats' press release says that the President's strategy in Iraq "is not working" and has "failed," but never mentions the surge, nor does it address widely-acknowledged indications that the new approach seems to be working quite well, so far. All of this is side-stepped by calling the conflict in Iraq a "civil war," a phrase the Democrats' press release uses no fewer than five times. Apparently the Democrats believe that calling the conflict a "civil war" means that the administration's policy has failed even if it succeeds.

Wasn't that the plan all along?

Can What You've Posted on the Internet Hurt Your Job Prospects?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, has published in top legal journals and completed internships at leading institutions in her field. So when the Yale law student interviewed with 16 firms for a job this summer, she was concerned that she had only four call-backs. She was stunned when she had zero offers.

Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.

The woman and two others interviewed by The Washington Post learned from friends that they were the subject of derogatory chats on a widely read message board on AutoAdmit, run by a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent. The women spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution online.

People have known for a while that companies use credit checks when they are considering employment, regardless of whether one's credit has any relevance to the job. Such checks, in my opinion, cross the line from honest and important information into an invasion of one's privacy (I hold the same opinion about job drug tests, btw. If the testing has no relevance to the job, don't do it).

Now, apparently, that overheated argument you had with that stranger in Saskatoon can disqualify you from a job. Worse, site administrators are loathe to delete offensive posts or threads, wrapping themselves in the freedom of speech argument.

This seems to me to be a bogus claim. Even the courts recognize limitations of free speech, primarily those forms that harm people. The people in the article weren't even participants in debate; they were simply the subjects of others' discussions. To have those actions held against a person seems to me to be the definition of unfair. It makes me wonder if we do need to put some pressure on web administrators to do some better policing of their sites.

Botched Abortion Leads Woman to Sue Doctors for Child Rearing Expenses (A Woman's Right to Choose)

A Woman's Right to Choose is a semi-regular feature of Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels.

A Boston woman is suing her abortion doctors after she gave birth to a healthy baby. She is suing for the costs of raising the child.

(Jennifer) Raper claimed in the three-page medical malpractice suit that she found out she was pregnant in March 2004 and decided to have an abortion for financial reasons.

Dr. Allison Bryant, a physician working for Planned Parenthood at the time, performed the procedure on April 9, 2004, but it "was not done properly, causing the plaintiff to remain pregnant," according to the complaint.

Raper then went to see Dr. Benjamin Eleonu at Boston Medical Center in July 2004, and he failed to detect the pregnancy even though she was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, the lawsuit alleges.

It was only when Raper went to the New England Medical Center emergency room for treatment of pelvic pain in late September that year that she found out she was pregnant, the suit said.

She gave birth to a daughter on Dec. 7, 2004.

She is seeking damages, including child-rearing costs.

I wonder what life will be like for this little girl growing up knowing her mother tried to kill her and then sued the doctors because she is alive?

The Libby Travesty

The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial today on the Libby verdict.

In hindsight, the defense seems to have blundered by portraying Mr. Libby as the "fall guy" for others in the White House. That didn't do enough to rebut Mr. Fitzgerald's theory of the case, and so the jury seems to have decided that Mr. Libby must have been lying to protect something. The defense might have been better off taking on Mr. Fitzgerald for criminalizing political differences.

For that, in essence, is what this case is really all about. We learned long ago--and Mr. Fitzgerald knew from the start of his probe in 2003--that Mr. Libby was not the source of the leak to columnist Robert Novak that started all this. Mr. Libby thus had no real motive to cover up this non-crime. What he did have strong cause to do was rebut the lies that Mr. Wilson was telling about the Administration and Mr. Cheney--lies confirmed as lies by a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004.

Mr. Libby did talk to some reporters about the Administration's case for war in 2003, and he did mention Ms. Plame in some cases. So the jury apparently decided that, when asked about those conversations by the FBI and grand jury, he had lied about his own sources of information about Joe Wilson and his wife. In other words, he has not been convicted of lying to anyone about the case for war in Iraq, or about Mr. Wilson or his wife.

Rather, he has been convicted of telling the truth about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame to some reporters but then not owning up to it. One tragic irony is that if Mr. Libby had only taken the Harold Ickes grand-jury strategy and said "I don't recall," he probably never would have been indicted. But our guess is that he tried to cooperate with the grand jury because he never really believed he had anything to hide. This may also explain why Mr. Libby never retained an experienced Beltway attorney until he was indicted.

This prosecution was a political hatchet job from the get-go. When Harry Reid says that the verdict was about "manipulating pre-war intelligence and discrediting war critics," he got it exactly wrong. None of the counts against Libby were about intelligence, and, as this editorial says, "Mr. Wilson was himself so discredited by summer 2004 that the John Kerry campaign dropped him as a spokesman once the Senate exposed his deceit." What Reid attempted to do was use the verdict to indict and convict the Bush administration of believing the same intelligence Bill Clinton believed. Frankly, this is appalling.

UPDATE: Just One Minute asks the salient question, Just what was the "smear" against Joe Wilson? The problem with this "smear" meme is that even the prosecutor Fitzgerald said it was Joe's wife who recommended him, not the vice president.

If the "smear" is that Wilson was lying about what he found in Niger, then that, too, is no "smear," but just the truth. Two bipartisan commissions discredited Wilson. The only smear is the job liberals are trying to do in turning the Libby convictions into an indictment on the White House.

At the same site, there is this excellent debunking of the insipid Media Matters talking points described as "media myths and falsehoods to watch for." The reality is that the myths and falsehoods are in Media Matters' attempt to bolster the Libby trial as anything other than a witch hunt against this administration.

Overturning Roe

I found a fascinating read at Prawfsblawg discussing what happens if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The post is in three parts (here, here, and here).

I found the analysis interesting and, of course, agree with some of the conclusions. First, Jessie Hill argues (like me) that it is unlikely the court will overturn Roe even if another conservative is appointed to the bench.

My guess is that the conservative wing of the Court would like to see Roe overruled but is not likely to put itself in a position to vote that way anytime soon. I think the most basic reason for this intuition is that it’s just psychologically difficult to vote to take away a constitutional right previously recognized. After all, conservatives also love to hate Miranda v. Arizona, but when push came to shove, only two Justices voted in Dickerson v. U.S. to overrule it. Moreover, although it’s very hard to know quite what to make of it, the Supreme Court did issue a surprisingly unanimous opinion in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, a case dealing with the constitutionality of New Hampshire’s parental notification law for minors seeking abortions, just after Justice Roberts joined the crew. Without wanting to make too much of it, I’d wager that this unanimity signals at least an unwillingness to make waves in this area right away, if not actual agreement with the substance of the opinion of the Court, which upheld the lower courts’ holding that the law was unconstitutional without a health exception (while remanding to the district court for a more carefully crafted injunctive remedy). I'd therefore expect the Court to consistently deny cert in any cases that might pose a direct challenge to Roe.

This has been my feeling since the first time I read Planned Parenthood v. Casey and circled O'Connor's reasoning. I wrote in the margins this is why Roe will never be overturned. Indeed, the fact that the Rehnquist court didn't overturn Miranda has lead me to believe overturning "found" constitutional rights is highly unlikely.

The second part deals with the question of what would happen to all those abortion bans that were ruled unconstitutional with the Roe decision. This is quite interesting, especially since many legislatures wouldn't pass such laws now but might be reluctant to write new laws banishing them. In fact, I've often thought that the reason many states left these laws on the books was so the politicians would look sufficiently "pro-life" to voters.

The final part in the series discusses the way overturning Roe might affect substantive due process and bodily integrity.

Specifically, as Eugene Volokh has argued in a forthcoming Harvard Law Review article, the life and health exceptions required by Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Stenberg v. Carhart demonstrate that the Supreme Court has actually recognized two kinds of abortion rights – a right to choose abortion as a matter of reproductive choice, and a right to choose abortion as a matter of "medical self-defense," i.e., when one’s life or health would otherwise be endangered.

The author then goes on to pose an interesting question.

If Roe is overruled – and I realize it is difficult to analyze this issue without knowing exactly how Roe is overruled – would there be still be a right to choose abortion when it is necessary for health reasons (however defined)? If the answer is yes, this suggests that there is a freestanding constitutional right to protect one’s health – which is something I and some others argue, but not, by any means, a widely-accepted proposition. If the answer is no, this suggests that women seeking abortions have a right to protect their health that no other individual possesses – a right not only to have an abortion when medically necessary (per Roe) but also a right to have an abortion by the safest method available (per Carhart). Can it possibly be true that the Supreme Court has been favoring women seeking abortions over all other individuals in this way for all these years?

Read the rest of the series to find out more. I found the arguments fascinating and better thought-out than what one usually hears from the pearl-clutching lefties.

Libby Found Guilty

Not surprisingly, Scooter Libby was found guilty of four of the five counts facing him.

This show trial was not about Libby and whether he "outed" Valerie Plame. In fact, he was acquitted of making false statements, but convicted of lying to FBI agents, obstructing justice, and perjury. How one can not make false statements but be convicted of lying to FBI agents is a new one.

Sadly, this witch hunt has been about Fitzgerald's inability to indict anyone higher in the administration. I hope President Bush pardons Libby.

What others are saying:

Blue Crab Boulevard points out that those cheering today's verdict should think hard about the implications of prosecuting someone when the underlying crime has never been proven.

The droolers at the Carpetbagger Report cry that Libby might get pardoned (I hope so) and, as usual, get their facts wrong:

Have White House critics been vindicated?

You better believe it. Dick Cheney’s office became, to borrow a phrase, a “criminal enterprise.” They orchestrated a smear, leaked classified information, put an undercover CIA agent at risk, lied about it, and broke the law. For an already-failed presidency, today’s verdict inches Bush a bit closer to the “worst ever” top spot.

Not to confuse these guys with facts, but there was no leak (the executive can't "leak" classified information. When he publicizes it, it is, by definition, no longer classified). It's never been proved that Plame was a covert agent. Not only that, but Libby wasn't Novak's source for the column. Richard Armitage--no friend of this administration--was the source, yet he wasn't indicted. The truth is that Fitzgerald was hellbent on indicting a high-ranking person in the administration--Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or the President himself--and he came away with meaningless convictions against a guy no one heard of. Good going!

Captain Ed says the whole thing shows why special prosecutors are so abusive.

This brings to a close a three-year odyssey in which the only crime supposedly committed turned out not to be one at all, where the perpetrator was discovered before the current special prosecutor ever got the case, and the only person to face charges is someone who never leaked any information at all. It's about par for the course for special prosecutors, who have become a bane on our system of justice, operating without oversight and with no limitations, working until they find charges to file even -- as in this case -- no underlying crime was committed.

Not to say that Libby should have been let off the hook, if he indeed lied to investigators and the grand jury, as this jury concluded he did. Regardless of the pettiness of the probe, people cannot be allowed to lie to the police or under oath at hearings and trials. It undermines our system of justice even more than out-of-control special prosecutors.

Of course, I made this same argument in 1998, when Bill Clinton committed perjury during another court case. I notice that his defenders at the time now want to string up not just Libby, but also Dick Cheney, despite (a) Cheney breaking no laws, and (b) their formerly cavalier attitude towards perjury -- which Cheney never committed. Why would they want to impeach Cheney for not committing perjury, when they fought the impeachment of Bill Clinton after he indisputably committed perjury? (He pled guilty to it, in case some don't recall.)

Don't expect the moonbats to accept the idea that Cheney didn't commit perjury. The same people who think the government blew up the World Trade Center and that the 2004 and 2000 elections were stolen aren't going to give up their most cherished belief.

He's Getting in Touch with His Inner Preacher

Presidential candidate John Edwards said in an interview with Beliefnet.com,Jesus would be most upset with the selfishness of Americans and the country's willingness to go to war "when it's not necessary."

Actually, I think Jesus would be more upset at a slimy politician invoking his name to try to score bonus points on the campaign trail. More of that "Woe to you hypocrites" thing, you know.

UPDATE: Bryan at HotAir says,

Keep in mind that among the rationales for the Iraq war is that it would alleviate the Iraqi people’s suffering under Saddam. Keep in mind that Edwards chides America for ignoring the suffering of others. Keep in mind that Americans are consistently the most charitable people on the planet. And keep in mind that Edwards thinks the Iraq war, for which he voted, was unnecessary. America ignores suffering even though it leads the world in charity, but goes to war unnecessarily to alleviate suffering, and that’s also bad. Keep all that in mind. Congratulations! You have cognitive dissonance just like John Edwards!

The New Trend at the HuffPo

Apparently, the Huffington Post can't allow comments on any post about Vice President Dick Cheney. I guess their "anonymous" commenters can't control themselves. Sad.

What's a Non-Binding Resolution Worth?

Jackson Diehl has a column in today's Washington Post that poses the question, What's a non-binding resolution worth?

We've all heard the ruckus over non-binding resolutions on the war with Iraq. At times considered almost traitorous and at other times considered inconsequential, those resolutions are treated as simply the pontifications of politicians trying to ensure they get on the "right" side of the war.

But what about a non-binding resolution declaring that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against its Armenian population beginning in 1915? That, according to Diehl, is a more explosive topic.

The Armenian genocide which happened almost 100 years ago, is still very sensitive for both the Armenian communities in the United States and for the Turkish government. The one side wants a declaration of the atrocity, while the other side wishes to bury the past.

My thought is, Does having a non-binding resolution on a historical event from 100 years ago make sense? Does it have any positive results?

The Democratic Congressman bringing up the resolution, Adam Schiff, represents about 70,000 to 80,000 ethnic Armenians in his district. Certainly, the resolution is meaningful to them, and bringing up the resolution could be considered part of Schiff's responsibilities as their representative.

But what are the arguments against the resolution?

According to Diehl,

Imagine the 435 members of the House, many of whom still don't know the difference between Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis, solemnly weighing whether Schiff's version of events 92 years ago in northeastern Turkey deserves congressional endorsement. But the consequences of passage could be deadly serious: To begin with, Turkey's powerful military has been hinting that U.S. access to the Incirlik air base, which plays a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, could be restricted. Gul warned that a nationalist tidal wave could sweep Turkey and force the government to downgrade its cooperation with the United States, which needs Turkey's help this year to stabilize Iraq and contain Iran. Candidates in upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections could compete in their anti-American reactions.

No wonder the Bush administration as well as even Democratic-leaning foreign policy experts, such as Clinton-era ambassador Mark Parris, are trying to stop the resolution. Yet theirs, too, is a contorted campaign. After all, historians outside of Turkey are pretty much unanimous in agreeing that atrocities against Armenians worthy of the term genocide did occur. Though Congress may look silly with its "findings," the continuing inability of the Turkish political class to come to terms with history, and temper its nationalism, may be the country's single most serious political problem. Prominent Turkish intellectuals, including a Nobel Prize winner, have been prosecuted in recent years under laws criminalizing "insults" to Turkey -- such as accurate accounts of the genocide. In January a prominent ethnic Armenian journalist was murdered by an ultranationalist teenager.

This is certainly a serious international situation, one that could hamper our efforts in the Middle East. Is a non-binding resolution worth that?

Definitions of Right-Wing Extremists

As a follow-up to this post defining left-wing extremists, Joe Klein now has this post defining right-wing extremists:

--believes that America is always, in every instance, the ultimate force of moral authority in the world.

--believes that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11—even if not directly, he was just that sort of guy.

--sees transnational non-governmental groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as “the next threats” to U.S. sovereignty. Calls them Transies, derisively.

--doesn’t hold a passport, as a matter of principle: there’s nothing over there except depravity.

--believes that capitalism creates perfect justice, and that any attempt to tax or regulate it constitutes “social engineering.” (Doesn't believe in evolution, but does believe in social darwinism.)

--believes global warming is a left-wing myth.

--believes in the Second Amendment to the Constituion, but has some “problems” with the First.

--believes that any form of universal health insurance is socialism, even the tax credit system first proposed by the Heritage Foundation.

--believes that there are inferior races.

--believes that there are inferior religions.

--believes in a global conspiracy led by Jewish bankers, Hollywood executives and journalists.

--believes, despite the above, that Israel is absolutely wonderful, and that when it achieves full dominion over its Biblical lands—especially Judea and Samaria—a great battle will be fought and Jesus will descend from the clouds.

--believes that homosexuals are condemned to hell.

--only receives news from Fox or right-wing radio talk show hosts.

--believes Hillary Clinton is a dangerous radical.

--regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to mock liberals.

I think it is a fairly balanced list if taken in context with the first one.

Pearl-Clutching from the Left

The other day, Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot. Since then, every leftist blabbermouth has been crawling out of the woodwork demanding that conservatives everywhere denounce Ann. I did so, largely because it was a good opportunity to state my growing distaste for Coulter's brand of humor.

Coulter's intemperate remarks have allowed liberals to trash CPAC and label anyone there (particularly anyone who clapped) as homophobic haters who "showed their true colors." Of course, such blather is complete nonsense, but that doesn't stop the left from using the fodder.

Now, the left isn't merely asking conservatives to denounce and shun Coulter, they have the audacity to say that there's nobody on the left to compare, and that liberals never condone violence against their enemies. Gosh, I guess they don't watch Bill Maher, who thought the assassination of the Vice President would be a good thing.

Or listen to Julianne Malveaux, who said about Justice Clarence Thomas,

"The man is on the Court. You know, I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that’s how I feel. He is an absolutely reprehensible person."

Maybe they don't read. That would explain why they've forgottenNicholas Baker's book Checkpoint, which has two characters discussing assassinating the POTUS. I guess that's not violent.

I'm sure that when the St. Petersburg, Florida Democratic Club took out an ad advocating assassination of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, it wasn't nearly as viscious as Ann Coulter saying a baseball bat is the most effective way of talking to Democrats these days.

What about Charles Brooker of the Guardian who said we "need" for someone to assassinate President Bush?

"John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?"

Ah, but those are just isolated crackpots, the moonbats would say. They aren't anybody big among liberals, selling millions of books like Ann Coulter does.

Well, there's NPR's well-known Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, who said "[I]f there is retributive justice [Sen. Jesse Helms] will get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it." Is that violent enough? But it's not like that's the only thing Totenberg has said. She also said of General Jerry Boykin "I hope he’s not long for this world."

And let's not forget Ward Churchill, who said the people killed on 9/11 were "little Eichmanns" who deserved it.

There's also the numerous lies perpetrated by Michael Moore, his labelling terrorists in Iraq "freedom fighters," and that he sat with Jimmy Carter at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

How about celebrities? We have Al Franken joking about the execution of Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. There's Linda Ronstadt saying after the Republican victory in 2004 "We have a new bunch of Hitlers." There's Cameron Diaz, who thought rape could be legalized with a Republican victory. There's Richard Dreyfuss calling for the president's impeachment because he disagrees with various policies. And there's Alec Baldwin, who called the vice president a terrorist.

Is that enough?

This, of course, isn't including the numerous comparisons of Republicans to Nazis (see here, here, here, here, here, and here for a tiny sampling of the 1,370,000 hits one gets with "Republicans" and "Nazis").

I'll stop here. The pearl-clutching by lefties over Ann Coulter is both ridiculous and hypocritical. They cry, they whine that a guy did a survey that showed liberals use vulgarity 18 times as much as conservatives, they point fingers at Ann Coulter and compile convenient lists of offensive remarks by her (would that they did the same to any liberal), but they turn around and call Republicans every vile epithet possible. They accuse Republicans of wanting to starve children, of approving of rape, of terrorism, homophobia, racism, sexism, and global warming. It's inane for liberals to complain that "conservatives are worse" in the war of words when they pile on the overheated rhetoric to such a degree.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

UPDATE: Patterico lists more than 20 examples of leftist hate speech. But don't expect them to admit to any of this.

Best Buy Confirms Secret Website

I got this story from the Liberal Avenger.

Under pressure from state investigators, Best Buy is now confirming my reporting that its stores have a secret intranet site that has been used to block some consumers from getting cheaper prices advertised on BestBuy.com.

Company spokesman Justin Barber, who in early February denied the existence of the internal website that could be accessed only by employees, says his company is "cooperating fully" with the state attorney general's investigation.

Barber insists that the company never intended to mislead customers.

I'm glad there are people vigilant enough to pursue these problems. I'm not smart enough. My husband says that whenever he has bought something from Best Buy, he buys it on-line, then just picks up the item in the store.

Lying about Pro-Lifers to Protect the Right to Choose

Chuck Colson has a nice column discussing the media bias of Time magazine in their piece on crisis pregnancy centers.

Time has some positive things to say about the nation’s 2,300 pregnancy resource centers. These clinics offer alternatives to abortion, information about fetal development, and material help for women who choose not to abort. But sad to say, Time also repeated a number of myths perpetrated by the abortion industry and its advocates.

For example, Time suggests that pregnancy resource centers, while willing to help mothers during pregnancy, are indifferent to their financial needs after their babies are born.

Not true: Pregnancy care centers often form long-term relationships with women, offering economic and other help years after the baby is born.

I've heard this argument by pro-abortion supporters for years. I suppose if the after birth care isn't trumpeted, it doesn't exist. But usually, the pro-abortion types are more concerned about government support of women having children. In other words, if a person says they are pro-life but don't support high taxes for things like welfare, child care, free meals, etc., then they aren't sufficiently "pro-life" to those people. I've even had people make the ridiculous claim that women have abortions because their employer doesn't have flex time.

But, of course, these arguments are ridiculous, designed to divert attention from the good work crisis pregnancy centers do. This is what Colson points out about the myths involved.

Time also quotes abortion advocates who claim that crisis pregnancy centers lie to women and traumatize them in an effort to coerce them into giving birth. Interestingly, Time did not quote any women who said that this had happened to them. The only people quoted were abortion advocates.

Even more telling are polls of those who use pregnancy care centers: One conducted by the Family Research Council revealed that women by overwhelming numbers had only positive things to say about how they were treated. So where are all the women who think they were treated badly?

Planned Parenthood leader Christopher Hollis tells Time that pregnancy care centers play a “dangerous game with women’s lives.” I have a question for Mr. Hollis: How many women have been killed by pregnancy care centers?

As far as I know, the answer is zero. Unfortunately, abortion clinics cannot make that same claim. Just ask the families of the women who have died at the hands of abortionists.

I would love for someone to come forward and explain how they were mistreated at a crisis pregnancy center. I've known more than a couple of women who went to CPCs and none of them has complained of being duped, tricked, or deceived by anyone there. Even if someone went to a CPC expecting an abortion referral, they would know quickly that such centers don't do them. There's no trickery involved. The problem for Planned Parenthood is that CPCs take money from them by persuading women to keep their babies instead of aborting them.

Why The Lost Tomb of Jesus Is a Hoax

The Lost Tomb of Jesus has been all but debunked as a hoax by now. Scholars and archaeologists have explained why it is completely impossible (including that the name on the ossuary for "Jesus" actually says "Hanan").

Bible Belt Blogger (Frank Lockwood) has a more spiritual explanation for why this "documentary" is wrong.

Point 1. Honest Christians gave their lives defending a faith which declares that "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." Some of them died fairly soon after the crucifixion. Presumably, these martyrs would not have died to defend a lie.

But what about those loathsome, dishonest Christians, you ask: the kind that pop up in the DaVinci Code? Maybe they covered up Jesus' death to promote their own economic and political best interests. Which brings me to:

Point 2. Shifty, sneaky Christians wouldn't have left Christ's gravestone lying around Jerusalem for 2,000 years if he had in fact died. From the beginning, critics of Christianity have argued that this "resurrection" was all a hoax. Critics of the Christian faith suggested that his follower's had absconded with his decomposing corpse soon after Good Friday. The gospels raise acknowledge this allegation. Why are Roman soldiers standing watch outside the tomb? To keep graverobbers away.

What does Mary claim (in the book of John) when she discovers that the stone has been rolled away? "They have taken my Lord, and I don´t know where they laid him," she said.

Clearly, if you're trying to convince the world that your spiritual leader has been bodily resurrected, you don't scrawl his name in limestone at the local graveyard and dump his bones in a limestone box.

Point 3. Plenty of people believed Jesus was a con-artist. If he had died and been buried in a tomb with his name scrawled illegibly, his final resting place wouldn't have gone unnoticed for 2,000 years. This con-game would've been exposed long before now.

Well said.

The Politically Correct Lexicon

Can't tell your black from your African American? Your GLBT from your GLBTQ2IA? Your Hispanic from your Latino from your Chicano? Cheer up! The Politically Correct lexicon is here to help you. (Via ifeminists.net).

The list is an interesting mix of generational as well as culture speech. For example, when I was growing up "black" was the preferred term. Then "African American" came into vogue. Now, it seems that "black" is back in fashion.

There was also all that confusion about what to call brown people who come from Mexico, Central America, South America, or the Caribbean. This lexicon gives some distinction between the various words used interchangably in society.

Regardless of how you feel about the politically correct movement and its effects on speech, this article is worth a read.

Virginia to Mandate HPV Vaccine for Girls

Following Texas's dubious lead, Virginia is poised to mandate vaccination for HPV for young girls.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Thursday he will sign legislation requiring all sixth-grade girls to get vaccinated against a virus that could lead to cervical cancer.

Days after saying he had qualms about making the vaccine mandatory, Kaine predicted that the law is "going to be a model for other states to follow " and emphasized that it will be easy for parents to opt out.

There's no mention in the article about why parents might want to opt out or how much the vaccines will cost taxpayers. It seems to me that this is a bandwagon everyone wants to jump on because they think it makes them look "compassionate," as opposed to "reckless."

UPDATE: According to this article, the chairman of the panel that recommended the new HPV vaccine for young girls warned lawmakers not to make it mandatory.

Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP), also said he and panel members told Merck & Co., the drug Gardasil's maker, not to lobby state lawmakers to require the vaccine for school attendance.
"I told Merck my personal opinion that it shouldn't be mandated," Dr. Abramson told The Washington Times. "And they heard it from other committee members."
Dr. Abramson said he opposes mandating Gardasil, which prevents the cervical-cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV), because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles and he is not sure states can afford to inoculate all students.
"The vaccines out there now are for very communicable diseases. A child in school is not at an increased risk for HPV like he is measles," Dr. Abramson said.
In addition, Dr. Abramson said a discussion about making the vaccine mandatory should not be had until states show the money is available to vaccinate every child, adding, "I don't see that yet."

The story goes on to point out that there's also some controversy about giving the vaccine to girls so young.

Middle-school girls inoculated with the breakthrough vaccine will be no older than 18 when they pass Gardasil's five-year window of proven effectiveness -- more than a decade before the typical cancer patient contracts HPV, The Washington Times reported last week.
Infectious disease specialists and cancer pathologists say the incubation period for HPV becoming cancer is 10 to 15 years -- meaning the average cervical cancer patient, who is 47, contracted the virus in her 30s and would not be protected by Gardasil taken as a teen.
Dr. Abramson said the panel thinks the vaccine will last for at least 10 years. Even if it provides 10 years of protection, it would still leave girls given the inoculation in the sixth grade vulnerable during their late 20s and early 30s, when most cervical-cancer patients contract HPV. At that point, another round of Gardasil would be necessary.

The vaccine has only been tested for about five years, meaning there's no data on long-term effectiveness or side effects. I'm leary of mandating a vaccine for a non-communicable disease to girls who are still growing. If adults wish to get this vaccine, that can be their choice.

UPDATE x2: Parents of three Texas girls have filed suit over Texas Governor Rick Perry's executive order mandating the HPV vaccine.

UPDATE x3: According to this article, a report from the Centers for Disease Control estimate that 20 million U.S. women have some form of HPV.

Thanks, Ann

Thanks, Ann. For giving the third place John Edwards campaign a much needed publicity boost.

For raising campaign money for the Edwards campaign.

For giving cover to the leftosphere who think you represent all conservatives.

As Bryan at Hot Air put it, Ann puts the organizers of CPAC in a bind.

She doesn’t care that she’s putting the CPAC organizers in a bind, since she’s their biggest draw but also their biggest liability. She probably doesn’t care that she’s John Edwards’ spokesmodel. She probably likes the attention. It’s all about Ann. And that’s the problem.

Ann Coulter used to be funny. She's always been ballsy, and showed you could hit your opponent in the solar plexus without using a bunch of four-letter words. That's the reason I liked reading her stuff. She was bitingly funny and said what we all knew about liberals, especially those who run screaming from that label.

But somewhere along the way, she became more of a liability than an asset for conservatives. Perhaps it was the documenting of every possibly offensive remark (all pulled out of context, of course) by Media Matters. Or maybe it was when conservatives I respect started declaring that they were done with her. In any event, I'm more angry that Ann's stupid "joke" (which is what she claims it was) overshadowed CPAC and that she's given cover to the moonbats who think four-letter words add emphasis for their tired rants.

P.S.--I've made it to the big time. Patterico quoted me in his latest post on Ann.

Ann, when you’ve lost sharon, you’ve lost your base. Trust me on this.

That's completely correct. It's time for Ann to take a sabbatical.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Let's Just Stipulate That Every American Owned Slaves at Some Point

The geneology-as-fitness-for-presidency standard is reaching new lows.

Not only do we have Mitt Romney, a practicing Mormon, with polygamous forefathers (who woulda thunk it?), and the six degrees of separation moment when we discovered that a forefather of Strom Thurmond owned a forefather of Al Sharpton, now we have a new shocker.

Genealogists have uncovered a new ingredient in the melting pot identity of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who hopes to become the first black president. His white maternal ancestors once owned slaves.

Mr. Obama is the American-born son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. The genealogists, led by William Addams Reitwiesner, studied the family history of Mr. Obama’s mother and determined that Mr. Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfather, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves listed in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky.

Mr. Obama’s great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Mary Duval, also owned two slaves, the records show.

Isn't that a pretty tenuous tie? You have to go back seven generations to find slave holders in Obama's family. Does the fact that Obama's relatives owned slaves 155 years ago have any relevance to, well, anything?

Other than a renewed interest in finding one's family skeletons before the New York Times does, I can't think of any reason for this mad scramble to find dirt on the forefathers of present day presidential candidates (and notable figures). Slavery has been outlawed for 142 years. At some point, we've got to give current people a break from the curse of it. Even the Bible had a limit on how many generations a curse lasted.

Bill Maher Sorry Assassination Attempt Failed

Last week, many bloggers took the Huffington Post to task for editing the comments at this post on the assassination attempt on Vice President Dick Cheney while he was in Afghanistan.

The moonbats were in rare form that day, mourning the bad luck of the would-be assassins. Michelle Malkin had a PDF file of the comments at HuffPo, which were scrubbed so that they didn't make the commenters look like the completely despicable losers they are.

You'd think after the furor those comments caused that no one would be stupid enough to repeat the gist of them. But then, you wouldn't have met Bill Maher.

Maher lost his Politically Incorrect gig after he made stupid comments on the show after the 9/11 attacks. You'd think he would have learned from that that making ignorant statements on television will get you canned. Well, evidently Maher didn't learn a thing and now we can only hope HBO is looking at his latest statements, this time about the attempted assassination of the vice president. (Via Newsbusters.org)

Maher: What about the people who got onto the Huffington Post – and these weren’t even the bloggers, these were just the comments section – who said they, they expressed regret that the attack on Dick Cheney failed.

Joe Scarborough: Right.

Maher: Now…

John Ridley: More than regret.

Maher: Well, what did they say?

Ridley: They said “We wish he would die.” I mean, it was (?) hate language.

Barney Frank: They said the bomb was wasted. (laughter and applause)

Maher: That’s a funny joke. But, seriously, if this isn’t China, shouldn’t you be able to say that? Why did Arianna Huffington, my girlfriend, I love her, but why did she take that off right away?

A funny joke? Does he mean a funny joke the way Ann Coulter made a funny joke about John Edwards?

But Maher wasn't done.

Ridley: It’s one thing to say you hate Dick Cheney, which applies to his politics. It’s another thing to say, “I’m sorry he didn’t die in an explosion." And I think, you know…

Maher: But you should be able to say it. And by the way...

Frank: Excuse me, Bill, but can I ask you a question? Do you decide what the topics are for this show?

Maher: Yeah, I decide the topics, they don’t go there.

Frank: But you exercise control over the show the way that she does over her blog.

Maher: But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause)

Scarborough: If someone on this panel said that they wished that Dick Cheney had been blown up, and you didn’t say…

Frank: I think he did.

Scarborough: Okay. Did you say…

Maher: No, no. I quoted that.

Frank: You don’t believe that?

Maher: I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.

It's always interesting when a moonbat decides they want to wrap themselves in the First Amendment so they can say things that are patently offensive. To compare a blog that decides to edit its comments (so they won't look as embarrassing to the blog) to government control of speech is a complete misdirection. Nobody is calling for the government to squash the rights of moonbats to sound like idiots. What has happened is that rabid lefties have been shown for the fringe elements they are.

I condemned Ann Coulter for being a bomb-thrower by calling John Edwards a faggot. It seems to me that saying the world would be better off if the Vice President were assassinated is considerably worse than that.

Definitions of Left-Wing Extremists

Joe Klein has a nice post on his political blog about the beliefs of left-wing extremists.

--believes the United States is a fundamentally negative force in the world.

--believes that American imperialism is the primary cause of Islamic radicalism.

--believes that the decision to go to war in Iraq was not an individual case of monumental stupidity, but a consequence of America’s fundamental imperialistic nature.

--tends to blame America for the failures of others—i.e. the failure of our NATO allies to fulfill their responsibilities in Afghanistan.

--doesn’t believe that capitalism, carefully regulated and progressively taxed, is the best liberal idea in human history.

--believes American society is fundamentally unfair (as opposed to having unfair aspects that need improvement).

--believes that eternal problems like crime and poverty are the primarily the fault of society.

--believes that America isn’t really a democracy.

--believes that corporations are fundamentally evil.

--believes in a corporate conspiracy that controls the world.

--is intolerant of good ideas when they come from conservative sources.

--dismissively mocks people of faith, especially those who are opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

--regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives.

Klein took some heat in the comments for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, but his assessment of the moonbat left is dead on. Just go to Pandagon or Daily KOS and write something even mildly supportive of the War on Terror or President Bush and you'll see at least 75% of the above mentioned attributes on display.

The Dubious Hysteria Surrounding Jose Padilla

John Hinderaker has an interesting post on the hysterics by the left over Jose Padilla, a questionable martyr if ever there was one. Hinderaker discusses this post by Cenk Uygur, a contributor for Huffington Post.

Uygur takes up the cudgels for Jose Padilla, who, Uygur says, went through "1,037 days of sensory deprivation in a 9-by-7 foot cell." The problem is, Uygur evidently is under the mistaken impression that "sensory deprivation" means "solitary confinement." The two are unrelated. In fact, far from being subjected to sensory deprivation, Padilla had visitors, including an imam, read his Koran, and sometimes went outdoors to shoot baskets or sunbathe.

Uygur says that "[t]hey didn't let him see a lawyer for over two years." I don't know what his appointments schedule was, but Padilla's lawyers were making motions on his behalf in federal court within two weeks after he was apprehended in Chicago, and they have never stopped since. Uygur laments that "[Padilla] was never given any of his Constitutional rights." This is simply ludicrous. The taxpayers have spent a small fortune on lawyers for Padilla; the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court have all issued rulings on the statutory and Constitutional issues presented by his case. Perhaps Uygur disagrees with those rulings. If so, he doesn't say why, nor does he have any apparent expertise to critique them.

Now Uygur is up in arms because the government says they lost the DVD of the last interrogation with Padilla. To Uygur, this is just a cover for government torture of Padilla. But as Hinderaker points out, the government has recorded every interrogation with Padilla precisely to debunk the leftist basement conspiracy theorists' claims of torture and mistreatment.

It's one thing to want the government not to mistreat prisoners, but Padilla shouldn't be the poster child for such a cause. The behavior that landed him in jail justifies the precautions that have been taken.

More Democrats Determined to Lose

According to this article at The Raw Story, progressive (read: liberal) Democrats (isn't that redundant?) are tired of all this dancing around surrender in Iraq by their leadership. Now they want a resolution to pull out the troops ASAP.

Consensus-seeking negotiations on a measure that would limit President Bush's troop escalation in Iraq have angered Congressional progressives. RAW STORY has learned that they are readying a response that will call for a more rapid withdrawal of US troops from America's four year-long war.

A Democratic aide close to the Congressional Progressive Caucus told RAW STORY that some Democrats will push for withdrawal when the next bill on Iraq War funding comes to the House floor.

Democrats can surrender. All they have to do is defund the effort. Anything else is subject to filibuster in the Senate and a presidential veto. But most Americans don't want us to surrender. They want us to win. Do Dems have the courage of their convictions to actually de-fund the war? I doubt it.

The Bomb-Throwing Ann Coulter

According to Bryan at Hot Air,

Ann Coulter is speaking at CPAC as I write. As is typical, she gave a brief speech full of her usual witticisms, including a few brilliant attacks on Al Gore’s green hypocrisy. All was good.

Unfortunately, Ann had to ruin it with this sentence:

"I’d say something about John Edwards, but if you say ‘faggot’ you have to go to rehab."

Naturally, the moonbatosphere is all up in arms (see more examples here, here, here, and here for starters).

My question is: why? Why interject that word, something that would be so embarrassing for every Republican candidate (like, for example, Mitt Romney, who had said before Coulter's performance, "I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!") at this event?

I used to like Ann Coulter. Used to. I read her books and columns and laughed at the way the lefties came unglued any time her name was mentioned in a comment thread. I even defended Coulter's flamboyant rhetoric in multiple threads at Patterico's Pontifications. But even I have tired of Coulter's bomb-throwing. It's counter-productive. It gives cover to whacked out lefties. And it isn't even funny.

Someone needs to tell Ann her 15 minutes of fame is over.

Ann is getting taken to task from the left as well as from the right. It's good to see some lefties not tarring all conservatives with Ann's over-the-top rhetoric.

Michelle Malkin points out that lots of folks weren't pleased with Ann's "joke."

Blue Crab Boulevard says, "She's using a very charged word that was simply not needed and will cause a backlash. It's a bald-faced provocation, unnecessary and almost certain to backfire. Heck, you can insult politicians more easily, more humorously and better than that."

Captain Ed says Ann shouldn't be invited to CPAC anymore.

At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality. Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn't require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as "faggots" or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles.

It just gives cover for the "all Republicans hate homosexuals" crowd.

The Genius of Ronald Reagan

Family and friends who have known me most of my life would recognize the change in political philosophy necessary for me to write the headline for this post. In my younger days, I was liberal to the core and despised Ronald Reagan as the "amiable dunce" the left painted him as.

My opinion about Reagan changed, as did my politics, with time and maturity. Churchill is attributed with saying, "Any man who is not a socialist by the time he is 20 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head." I suspect that statement is true, and so, my changed opinion of Ronald Reagan.

This piece explains the "economic war" Reagan waged against the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Recall the hand-wringing of liberals during that time period that we were going to be hit by Soviet nukes all because Reagan called the U.S.S.R. what it was: an evil empire. Liberals were sure we were going to be incinerated by the Soviets because Reagan refused to pretend we were all friends. Aside from the war of words, Reagan also waged an economic war.

The Reagan administration suspected that Soviet intelligence was stealing critical technology from the West. Not until 1981, however, was an organized Soviet program discovered, when French intelligence obtained the services of a 53-year-old defector named Colonel Vladimir Vetrov. Vetrov became known as "Farewell"...

(NSA staffer Gus) Weiss learned that the KGB had created a unit called Directorate T, tasked to plumb the R&D of Western nations. Directorate T’s operating arm was named Line X. Through this apparatus, said Weiss, "a master plan" was developed to acquire American high-tech products and know-how.

The material Weiss read confirmed his worst nightmares: Line X had been so successful, said Weiss, “that the Soviet military and civil sectors were in large measure running their research on that of the West, particularly the United States.” Radar, machine tools, semiconductors—much of which went into Soviet defense.

Colonel Vetrov spilled the beans on Directorate T, divulging the names of over 200 Line X officers stationed throughout the West and more than 100 leads on Line X activities.

Weiss planned an ingenious response: Thanks to Farewell, Reagan’s NSC was in possession of a Line X shopping list of Soviet-needed technology. Weiss offered a suggestion: U.S. counter-intelligence could supply some of these technologies, but with a fatal catch: the products would appear genuine but would prove defective...

By mid-1982, shipments of defective products were arriving in the USSR—contrived computer chips that found their way into Soviet military hardware, flawed turbines, faulty plans for chemical plants, and more. The results were at times literally explosive:

In one dramatic example only recently shared by NSC staffer Tom Reed to Washington Post reporter David Hoffman, in the summer of 1982 rigged software triggered a huge explosion in the gigantic Siberian gas pipeline—an extremely expensive project designed to provide the USSR with essential hard currency. The software was designed to pass Soviet quality-acceptance tests, to work temporarily, and then to malfunction. The software that ran the pumps, turbines, and valves in the pipeline was programmed to produce pressures beyond the capacity of the pipeline’s joints.

According to Reed, U.S. satellites picked up the explosion, which was so enormous that NORAD feared a small nuclear device had been detonated.

Ironically, Reagan had spent two years trying to get Western European leaders to join him in blocking construction of the pipeline; they refused. Alas, he found a device.

It is interesting that the "amiable dunce" never forgot who our enemies were or that our only choice was to defeat them. I hope the current American president remembers that.

What Will They Do When They No Longer Have George Bush to Kick Around?

Excellent article by Gerard Baker on the ceaseless George Bush-bashing of Europe and what will happen when he isn't around to kick any longer. This same column could be used about the American left, as well, just change "Europeans" to "moonba"--er, "Democrats."

This escapism is not confined to President Bush’s critics in Europe, as the current battle over Iraq in Congress demonstrates. The Democrats have majorities in both houses. They could, if they wished, move to end the war in Iraq, which most of them — having once supported it — now oppose. They could vote to cut off funding for US troops and force the Pentagon to bring them home.

But they won’t do that. That would involve taking responsibility for a dangerous war. They would much rather, carp and cavil and pass “nonbinding” resolutions that express dissatisfaction with the war but leave the actual job of ending it to the Bush Administration.

This is why it may be a good thing if Americans were to elect a Democrat next year. Certainly, he or she could change the tone of US diplomacy by speaking more contritely about Iraq, by sounding more concerned about climate change, perhaps even by agreeing to hold talks talk with the Iranians to try to persuade them to drop their nuclear programme.

But it’s likely that sooner or later a Democrat would have to have his or her “Nixon Goes to China” moment. Just as Bill Clinton discovered in the 1990s, when the Europeans were happy to sit back and let Serbs slaughter Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims, a Democrat will find a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the task.

In the dread modern vernacular of management-speak, the Democrats need to take ownership of American leadership in a turbulent world. Though it can be fairly argued that President Bush’s incompetence has made things worse, the challenge of radical Islamism was not invented by the Bush Administration.

Even as some future Democratic president proclaims his commitment to renewing alliances, he is sure to be greeted with all kinds of explanations as to why the Europeans are just not quite ready to make that a joint ownership. When that moment comes, everyone will be urgently wishing they still had George Bush to blame.

I remember watching the Europeans dither over Bosnia, unwilling and/or incapable of actually addressing the problem. Lefties love Europe precisely because they do not deal with real world issues. Instead, Europe just wrings its collective hands at every world event, whether that event is Bosnia or Darfur or Iraq. Even when the terrorists are aiming their bombs at the Europeans, they find some way to say it must be America's fault and that America has to fix it.

It is sad to say the world deserves a Democratic president, but it is true. I'm not willing to abdicate being an adult and voting for one. I'll still vote for the adult party.

The Killing of Eve

I wrote here about a series in the Washington Times about India and abortion. (H/T GetReligion)

GetReligion has a new article about the series after the third installment was released. Terry Mattingly of GetReligion was afraid the series would be politicized--turned into something about left and right--as opposed to being about "a connection in India, and in China, between modern technology and the ultimate form of sexism — an attempt to favor males by preventing females from even being born."

The problem posed isn't so difficult for people like me who are very pro-life. I was more curious about the differing use of technology--the ultrasound--by women in India, who want to abort female babies, and pro-lifers in this country, who use the ultrasound pictures as a way to discourage women from having abortions.

I asked how pro-choice women square their support of abortion with what women in India use that "choice" for. While I've had a couple of people try to answer that question, I'm still not satisfied with the answers (not because I don't think the commenters aren't being honest or trying to present a reasonable answer, but because I'm not sure I can wrap my mind around the concept yet. But I'm trying).

A documentary was made about doctors who either performed abortions after 20 weeks or who gave referrals to women more than 20 weeks pregnant. Both actions are illegal under Indian law, but that doesn't stop anyone. The documentary caused an enormous furor for daring to speak the truth.

The descriptions of women killing their babies (both before and after birth) is shocking.

In Rajasthan's violent desert culture, baby girls were drowned in boiling milk or abandoned in a sand dune. Whole villages went decades without female children.

The question I kept asking myself was What happens in these cultures when there are no women to have children? The answer: sex trafficking.

Currently, women-starved parts of western India are importing women. The best trafficking season, reports Supriya Awasthi, South Asia director for Free the Slaves, a New Delhi-based advocacy group, is in the summer during the monsoons, when people are most hungry and desperate.

Girls from Nepal and Bangladesh constitute 70 percent of all trafficked girls. Top Nepalese hubs are the capital Katmandu; Sindhupalchowk, a district north of Katmandu; and Makwanpur, which is east of the capital.

They end up at a slave market known as Phoolbagh in the Purnia district of Bihar, India's poorest state. Girls are then traded to circuses or loaded on trucks or trains bound for states like Punjab and Haryana, which have the country's worst male-female sex ratios.

Miss Awasthi particularly remembers one 12-year-old she ran into in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. She had been raped by five men and was three months pregnant. She had a baby boy, who died.

People go to huge lengths to unload their girl children, she said. "The government bans child marriage but nothing substantial has been done so far.

"The police can be moved to take action only if there is pressure from the local people who complain to local bureaucrats. Or a court can direct police to act. Or they will act out of pressure from the media."

The shortage of women here has opened the market for "paros," or trafficked women, purchased for 12,000 to 15,000 rupees, or $260 to $330. Those under 14 go for less: 5,000 to 10,000 rupees, or $110 to $220.

Aphrael noted that as the number of women went down, their value would increase and, perhaps, the status of women in these countries would improve. I didn't argue the point, but, as this article points out, almost the opposite is true. As the number of women in these places is reduced, their monetary value goes up but their value as people is reduced even further.

I find this series shocking, horrifying, and depressing. There are organizations fighting the trafficking of people, but I want this to be a major concern both for our government in its foreign policy and for non-government organizations.

Whom would a President Giuliani nominate to the United States Supreme Court?

That's the question Hugh Hewitt asks in his column at townhall.com today.

The question is a good one, especially in light of this article at The Politico today.

A Politico review of the 75 judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state's lower courts found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1. One of his appointments was an officer of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Judges. Another ruled that the state law banning liquor sales on Sundays was unconstitutional because it was insufficiently secular.

A third, an abortion-rights supporter, later made it to the federal bench in part because New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a liberal Democrat, said he liked her ideology.

Cumulatively, Giuilani's record was enough to win applause from people like Kelli Conlin, the head of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, the state's leading abortion-rights group. "They were decent, moderate people," she said.

In an interview with Hewitt, Giuliani said he would want to appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito, but that's obviously not what his record shows. On the other hand, New York is New York, and appointing more liberal judges shouldn't be surprising.

As Hewitt notes, just behind the War on Terror, the appointment of judges should be the top priority for conservatives. Who would appoint better judges?

I'm still very undecided in this race. I haven't seen a candidate so far that excites me, but it is still extremely early in the race. I like Giuliani in some ways, largely for his law and order approach. I also like him because--let's face it--he seems to be the most electable candidate Republicans are fielding.

Would he appoint judges like Roberts and Alito? Or would he give us another Sandra Day O'Connor? Remember, she was an appointee of that most conservative of Republicans, Ronald Reagan.

More on Those Carbon Offsets

The Economist has a timely article discussing why carbon offsets don't work in the real world like they do on paper.

MANY readers profess puzzlement as to how carbon offsets could fail to reduce one's carbon footprint. The answer is that they probably do reduce one's carbon footprint, but by nowhere near the one-for-one ration that seems to be implied by the extraordinarily low price of carbon offsets. Unless they are implemented under a cap-and-trade system, these sorts of environmental efforts are plagued by something called the rebound effect, which is to say that using more efficient technologies causes the price to fall, which causes people to use more of the carbon-emitting substances in question. This is particularly true in markets for things like electricity, which are characterised by monopoly providers and extremely high fixed costs for existing plant, making it unlikely that carbon emitting generators will actually be taken offline (and made worse by the fact that the dirtiest power is supplied by the baseload plants, which are least likely to be taken offline). If you are salving your conscience by buying carbon offsets, which allows you to cheerfully emit 20 times more than the average person, then even a conservatively estimated rebound effect means that carbon offsets are increasing the amount of emissions.

The story gives a couple of examples of how this works, but what it comes down to is basic economics. If you make something cheaper and easier to do, you will get more of it. Buying carbon offsets in a different locale doesn't clean the air where you are. It cleans the air in some other place while encouraging polluters in your own area.

The article does a good job of explaining how all this works and is worth the read.

John Edwards MMORPG Headquarters Trashed

Shakespeare's Sister is really upset that some uglies trashed John Edwards' Second Life campaign headquarters.

Completely pathetic. I mean, just truly, deeply, contemptibly sad. Only an absolute slack-jawed moron could so thoroughly delight in such wanton destruction of a virtual property because of ideological differences.

I'm so utterly sick of there being not the teensiest wee shred of "live and let live" among the worst elements of the rightwing—they've got to silence and destroy everything and anyone who disagrees with them. They live to ruin and demolish and spoil—and if anyone different than them has the temerity to be having fun or feeling good for one bloody second, the sorry blighters can't resist swooping in to piss all over the parade, then revel in their own success. Bullies—all of them.

I happen to agree that it is childish and stupid to trash a campaign headquarters located in a virtual world. Of course, I think vandalizing real world stuff is infinitely worse.

Maybe I just remember things better than lefties do. I seem to recall a number of violent incidents perpetrated by the left against the George W. Bush campaign in 2004.

1. Protesters stormed a Bush-Cheney headquarters in Orlando, defacing posters and dumping protest letters.

2. Shots were fired into a Knoxville, Tennessee Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters, shattering glass and damaging a door.

3. Three computers were stolen when people broke into the Washington state Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters.

SS makes the sort of statement I hear a lot from lefties: people on the right are oh, so much more hateful than people on the left. I have to wonder if we are really inhabiting the same planet anymore when I get e-mail from Echidne of the Snakes saying that conservatives are more hateful (without bothering to condemn hate speech from the left) and now this take by SS on fantasy game vandalism.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television but which Get Used on the Internet. A lot

Patrick Ishmael has a great post on the potty-mouth posters on the Internet, who uses those words and how much.

But how different are the Rightosphere and Leftosphere when it comes to "dirty" language? Which side produces the most profanity-laced diatribes? Via Instapundit, I happened upon this interesting challenge from InstaPunk:

I propose an exercise to be performed by those who have the software and expertise to carry it out. The exercise is this: Search six months' worth of content, posts and comments, of the 20 most popular blogs on the right and the left. The search criteria are George Carlin's infamous '7 Dirty Words.' [Click this link for the list of expletives.]

And this is what I found, using what I deemed -- through a mix of TTLB and 2006's Weblog Award lists -- to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. I couldn't account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn't make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin's "seven words" versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

This isn't surprising to anyone who actually reads blogs. Just reading my blog, it is always the lefty bloggers who think they are being "edgy" by using words that used to cause your mom to wash out your mouth.

But why such a big difference? Is it really necessary for expression to use vulgarity 146,000 times on a site in six months?

It's not that I've never used that sort of language. I started out my career in journalism in a newspaper sports department (as one of two women, I might add). You get a potty mouth really quick when you're on deadline and don't have all the copy you need for your page.

But the people on Daily KOS, who use the seven words 146,000 times in six months, consider this to be the speech that the First Amendment is designed to protect. While the First Amendment may give one the right to use such language in common conversation, using it constantly shows a lack of maturity...and a small vocabulary to boot.

UPDATE: Acephalous runs the same tests and comes up with dramatically reduced numbers for lefties. I wonder if he ran it on righties (other than one or two?). My bet is still on moonbats being bigger potty mouths than conservatives.

Parents Sue School After Daughter Disciplined for Saying "That's So Gay"

"That's so gay."

You hear that phrase everywhere. Teenagers, especially, use it. A lot.

Should using that phrase be punishable by school officials as harassment?

Officials at a Santa Rosa, California, high school are going to find out. The parents of a student who used the phrase and was punished are suing the school.

When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, "Do you have 10 moms?" she shot back: "That's so gay."

Those three words landed the high school freshman in the principal's office and resulted in a lawsuit that raises this question: When do playground insults used every day all over America cross the line into hate speech that must be stamped out?

After Rice got a warning and a notation in her file, her parents sued, claiming officials at Maria Carillo High in Santa Rosa, Calif., violated their daughter's First Amendment rights when they disciplined her for uttering a phrase "which enjoys widespread currency in youth culture," according to court documents.

Testifying last week about the 2002 incident, Rice, now 18, said that when she uttered those words, she was not referring to anyone's sexual orientation. She said the phrase meant: "That's so stupid, that's so silly, that's so dumb."

But school officials say they took a strict stand against the putdown after two boys were paid to beat up a gay student the year before.

"The district has a statutory duty to protect gay students from harassment," the district's lawyers argued in a legal brief. "In furtherance of this goal, prohibition of the phrase 'That's so gay' ... was a reasonable regulation."

While I'm all for free speech, I also don't think the school's actions were unreasonable. The purpose of school is to teach children what is acceptable and not acceptable in society. If this student had used a racial or ethnic slur, I doubt the parents would be so quick to sue.

The parents do have an argument that the school did nothing about the other students taunting their daughter for being Mormon. But the way to combat that bigotry is not by supporting their own daughter's thoughtless speech. It seems to me this is a situation where all the students can learn that words (actions) have consequences...sometimes unpleasant ones.

Faith-Based Initiatives Debate Reaches Supreme Court

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation case.

The issue in the case is whether taxpayers, merely by being taxpayers, have standing to sue the government when a government expenditure violates the First Amendment's freedom of religion clause. The issue is a sticky one; only in religion cases can taxpayers sue on the basis of being taxpayers. In all other cases, a plaintiff must show more direct harm from government action in order to sue.

The arguments got twisted and heated, as this law.com article shows.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer looked skyward Wednesday as he tried to come up with a "more amazing" hypothetical during arguments in a key church-state case. With or without divine intervention, he found one: Could the federal government fund churches and ministers of a single religion nationwide "dedicated to the proposition that this particular sect is the true sect," without fear of taxpayer lawsuits against it?

"Horrible hypothetical," growled Solicitor General Paul Clement, but he went on to say yes. "The bottom line is that there would not be taxpayer standing." With a helpful suggestion from Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., Clement qualified his point by asserting that adherents of other religions could file suit against such a program on the basis that they were being discriminated against. But Clement held firm on the point that taxpayers, merely as taxpayers, could not challenge a network of government-funded churches.

Thirty-nine years ago, Flast v. Cohen carved out a religious exception to the rule about taxpayer standing. There have been many challenges to that exception ever since.

There seemed to be some confusion as to what would qualify as a violation and what should not.

Washington, D.C., lawyer Andrew Pincus, representing the foundation, said Clement had drawn "arbitrary lines" that did not conform to Court precedent or to the First Amendment's history. Pincus is a partner at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

Roberts, nodding toward the Court's marshal, Pamela Talkin, asked whether, under the foundation's theory, a taxpayer could sue her for saying "God save this honorable Court" at the start of Court sessions.

Scalia offered another hypothetical, asking whether taxpayers could sue when Air Force One and Secret Service agents are used in the course of a presidential trip to a religious event.

Pincus said taxpayer standing would not extend to religious activities that are "incidental" to government expenditures, and he served up his own hypothetical: government funds "paying for bagels at a prayer breakfast" would not, he suggested, trigger a valid lawsuit. Scalia later skewered that hypothetical, arguing that if the bagels went only to prayer breakfasts for evangelical groups, someone who is Jewish might feel that is not incidental or trivial at all: "You know, what could be worse than not buying bagels for a Jewish prayer breakfast?"

I'm sure Scalia's joke will be the important part of the argument on the lefty blogs today.