Earlier Posted at Campus Watch.

Juan Cole, professor of history at Michigan, former president of MESA, and erstwhile chaired professor at Yale, will take part in a "workshop" on May 3 at Brown University. Titled "The Study of the Middle East and Islam: Challenges after 9-11," the workshop will allow some of the most powerful forces in Middle East studies to don the mantle of victimhood (or better, to strut it, as it is a permanent feature of their moral cover).

Cole's biography for the workshop, in addition to the usual info, sports this claim:

Citing his blog, several prominent conservative commentators and journalists launched a public campaign against his potential hiring by Yale University last spring.

To which a proper rejoinder might be, "Citing his scholarship, senior professors at Yale and Duke refused to allow Cole to join them in their august institutions."

The full story of Cole and Yale, "Juan Cole and Yale: The Inside Story," was written by David White for Campus Watch and published August 3, 2006. Here are three key paragraphs from White's article:

According to several insiders, Cole's scholarship, which several professors deemed insufficient, was the decisive factor in the final decision against his appointment. Cole faced strong opposition from some of the most senior, influential, and highly-regarded members of Yale's history department, including prominent Yale historians Donald Kagan and John Lewis Gaddis. And that was kiss of death, because the Senior Appointment Committee wants a faculty vote that's nearly unanimous.

About the blog (emphasis added):

Regarding the role played by Cole's often polemical blog, sources close to Yale's decision argued that although it opened the eyes of many professors, it hardly killed Cole's chances. As Yale political science professor Steven Smith explained, "It would be very comforting for Cole's supporters to think that this got steamrolled because of his controversial blog opinions. The blog opened people's eyes as to what was going on. He was a kind of stealth candidate. I didn't know anybody that knew about this coming in; he was just kind of smuggled. And I think the blog opened people's eyes as to who this guy was, and what his views were.... It allowed us to see something about the quality of his mind."

And:

A current Yale political science professor argued, "when it came to crunch time, of course the blog was a factor, but it's not what people looked at most seriously. At the end of the day, it wasn't his blog; it was his scholarly work. And that's why he was denied the position."

Cole was also turned down for a job at Duke last year, although he hasn't argued that he was treated unfairly by external agitator types in that case. In fact, he hasn't mentioned it all on his blog, perhaps because he didn't want to draw attention to his efforts to leave Michigan, since he wrote on his blog last June that he wasn't trying to leave Ann Arbor:

Second, it is important in interpreting these things to know who initiated the looking. I am not actively seeking other employment, and did not apply to Yale; they came to me and asked if they could look at me for an appointment.

Another Campus Watch article, again written by David White: "Cole Case," covers the Duke story and strikes a familiar cord on Cole's academic record:

[A]ccording to several professors familiar with the proceedings, Cole's presentation was unimpressive. According to [Malachi] Hacohen, 'It was one of the worst job talks I have heard in my life,' '[it was] logically faulty,' and 'the talk seemed as if it were directed more to CNN viewers than to an academic audience.' Michael Munger, chair of Duke's department of political science, explained that Cole's lecture 'was just not at a level we were expecting…it was more like an undergraduate lecture.'

It's one of the wonders of the modern academic enterprise that its most privileged practitioners, whose academic freedom is untrammeled and who, especially in the case of Cole, are known for vitriolic attacks on critics (see the articles cited above for examples), capture the public eye by whining about critics. As I've argued before, they grew unused to answering for their words and deeds and, as everyone who was ever a teenager remembers, it's always easier to fling insults at one's opponents than risk defeat in debate. If the leaders of Middle East studies in America behave this shamelessly in the face of public criticism, imagine their behavior if the critics fall silent.

Hoi Tran, refugee from North Vietnam after the 1954 partition, became a South Vietnam Air Force fighter pilot, flying thousands of missions, his last to escape in 1975 to the U.S. Hoi Tran blogs at VietAmericanVets. He is the author of this guest post below.

Before, a quick review of history:

April 30, 1975: Before dawn, the last American helicopter lifted from the U.S. embassy’s roof, with the ambassador aboard.

Lewis Sorley’s A Better War is one of the best detailings of the last years of U.S. military efforts in Vietnam, years during which many of the previous failures were turned around but during which opposition to continuing mounted within the U.S., crowned by the resignation of Richard Nixon sweeping Democrats into legislative power.

The collapse of the South Vietnamese has been attributed to any number of causes, but over time three have stood out as the most prominent. One, a simple matter of fact, had to do with the termination of political support, reduction of materiel support, and eventually even denial of fiscal support to the South Vietnamese by their sometime American ally. This was the work of Congress…It stood in stark contrast to the uninterrupted support rendered North Vietnam by her Soviet and Chinese allies….

A second cause had to do with the task, never adequately accomplished, of providing effective leadership for a military establishment rapidly and hugely expanded over a relatively short time, and for expanded civilian bureaucracy as well….

A third key cause was failure to isolate the battlefield to cut off enemy infiltration and resupply, and to deny the sanctuaries in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam.

Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-1965 presents the inside documents and debates, from North, South and Washington, that had the U.S. refuse to sever the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos early on and then the U.S. to topple the administrative organization and population control of Saigon in 1963 after Northern cadre and supplies surprised D.C. war theorists, their anxieties fed by inept and mendacious reporting in major U.S. newspapers, overriding those with real war experience, like the Joint Chiefs.

Draw your own parallels to today.

(For what happens when a respected scholar challenges the liberal orthodoxy on Vietnam, see the academic travails of Moyar in this column at the New York Sun.)

Hoi Tran speaks to the third cause, and the parallel.

Two Different Wars, One Destructive Parallel

by Hoi B. Tran

After the fall of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN aka South Vietnam) on April 30, 1975, from the White House, President Ford issued an official statement: “The Government of the Republic of Vietnam has surrendered. Prior to its surrender, we have withdrawn our Mission from Vietnam. Vietnam has been a wrenching experience for this nation...History must be the final judge of that which we have done or left undone, in Vietnam and elsewhere. Let us calmly await its verdict”.

The hindsight of history substantiated with facts from recent declassified top-secret national security materials makes the long awaited verdict convincingly clear. America never lost the war in Vietnam militarily as trumped up by the liberal media and defeatist, biased writers. Ironically, America did abandon South Vietnam because of political division in the U.S. Congress and relentless attacks from the biased liberal media and misinformed or naïve antiwar activists in Washington D.C. (1). Sadly, the RVN was a victim of circumstance.

You need not be a rocket scientist to understand; the proxy war Americans fought in Vietnam over four decades ago and the current war on terror in Iraq are two completely different wars in every aspect of a war. However, in both wars, one destructive parallel exists. The biased liberal mainstream media (2), misinformed antiwar activists to include some former government officials and some Hollywood celebrities are champion in sabotaging our cause, crushing our will, praising and emboldening the enemy (3).

Distorted and negative reports by the liberal media enormously boosted the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the National Liberation Front (NLF) morale while destroying American resolve and support for the war (4). Below is the chronology of destructive events leading to the downfall of the RVN:

- August 8, 1968, Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon’s pledge (5) hinted to the North Vietnamese the U.S. will exit Vietnam at any price: “And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We shall not stop there -- we need a policy to prevent more Vietnams”.

- March 2, 1969, the Sino-Soviet split reached its peak and almost led to war. Exploiting this Sino-Soviet confrontation, the U.S played the China-Soviet card seeking detent with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China to extricate from Vietnam. The Soviet Union and China were two major patrons of North Vietnam.

- November 21, 1970, Jane Fonda, a famous American movie star praised communism in the U.S. In a speech at the University of Michigan in front of an audience of some two thousand students, she openly stated, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist."

- January 18, 1971, Senator George McGovern (D.-South Dakota) stated in a speech to announce his candidacy for the 1972 Democratic Presidential Nomination (6): “First, we must have the courage to admit that however sincere our motives, we made a dreadful mistake in trying to settle the affairs of the Vietnamese people with American troops and bombers. I have opposed that intervention from the beginning, while our President and other presidential prospects were supporting it. There is now no way to end it or to free our prisoners except to announce a definite, early date for the withdrawal of every of American soldier. I make that pledge without reservation”.

- July 1971, through China Ping Pong diplomacy and with the help of Pakistan President Yahya Khan, Henry Kissinger secretly met China Premier Chou En Lai paving the way for the February 21, 1972 summit meeting between President Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong in China (7). Sino-U.S. rapprochement began.

- June 20, 1972, Henry Kissinger met Chou En Lai again in Peking, China to discuss more on details of the Indochina issue (8).

- July 1972, Jane Fonda went to Hanoi and posed with communist gunners on a Soviet built anti-aircraft gun. She also made several anti-America pro-communist broadcasts on Hanoi radio. This is an excerpt of what she said:
“One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo- colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist”.

- August 23, 1972, in his second race for the White House, President Nixon reasserted he would fulfill his pledge 4 years ago in an attempt to win a second term (9): “As your President, I pledge that I shall always uphold that proud bipartisan tradition. Standing in this Convention Hall 4 years ago, I pledged to seek an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We have made great progress toward that end. We have brought over half a million men home, and more will be coming home. We have ended America's ground combat role. No draftees are being sent to Vietnam. We have reduced our casualties by 98 percent. We have gone the extra mile, in fact we have gone tens of thousands of miles trying to seek a negotiated settlement of the war. We have offered a cease-fire, a total withdrawal of all American forces, an exchange of all prisoners of war, internationally supervised free elections with the Communists participating in the elections and in the supervision”. This gave the North Vietnamese a clear signal the U.S. would accept any terms only to get the POWs back and to leave the RVN to deal with the communists!

- November 14, 1972, to convince the RVN to sign the Paris Peace Accord, President Nixon sent a letter to President Thieu promising: “You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide by the terms of this agreement it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory action”.

- January 27, 1973, because of increasing political turmoil and antiwar movements in America, re-elected President Nixon forced the RVN to sign the flawed and deadly Paris Peace Accord to end the war in Vietnam.

- June 19, 1973, U.S. Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment forbidding any further U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia, effective August 15, 1973. The veto-proof vote is 278-124 in the House and 64-26 in the Senate. The Amendment paves the way for North Vietnam to wage yet another invasion of the South, this time without fear of U.S. bombing.

- August 9, 1974, under relentless political pressure and impeachment, President Nixon resigned his presidency. President Gerald R. Ford became the 38th U.S. President.

- September 1974, Congress cut military aid to the RVN substantially and appropriated only $700 millions. This was another deadly blow to the overall morale of the RVN!

- December 13, 1974, North Vietnam tested America’s will by attacking Phuoc Long. In response to Hanoi’s blatant violation of the Paris Accord, President Ford protested diplomatically only, as Congress had banned all military activity in Southeast Asia (10).

- December 18, 1974, Politburo conferred in Hanoi to plan their general offensive.

- January 8, 1975, Hanoi committed 20 divisions to invade the RVN.

- January 14, 1975, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger testified before Congress that the U.S. had failed to fulfill its promises to the RVN when Hanoi seriously violated the Peace Accord.

- January 21, 1975, President Ford stated in a press conference “the U.S is unwilling to re-enter the war”. This was a clear Green Light for Hanoi to proceed with the invasion.

- February 5, 1975, Van Tien Dung secretly infiltrated into South Vietnam to assume command of the final offensive.

- April 30, 1975, the RVN fell into the hand of the North Vietnamese communists.

That was thirty-two years ago. Born and grew up in Hanoi, North Vietnam, I had to leave my hometown to go to South Vietnam when the country was divided at the 17th parallel in 1954. In accordance with the Geneva Agreement, North Vietnam would be under communist regime and the nationalist Vietnamese would govern South Vietnam. That was my first evacuation in pursuit of liberty and freedom. In South Vietnam, I continued to fight communism to protect our way of life but we could not achieve our ultimate goal. In April 1975, I had to flee my motherland again, this time to America, a strange country on the other side of the Pacific. After resettling in America and becoming an American, I thought I would never see war again.

Unfortunately, global terrorist Al Qaeda, the enemy of freedom had committed an act of war against our country on September 11, 2001 on our own soil. Global terrorists had forced America into a war to defend freedom and liberty of her citizens.

The war on terror is entering its fourth year. As a concerned citizen, I have been closely following the progress on the war in Iraq. Lately, I began to see some dangerous déjà vu vis a vis the war on terror! It appears the same scenario is being repeated! The battle in the home front is more frustrating and vicious than the fight against the coward terrorists half way around the globe! In this current war on terror, the same trio, the biased liberal media, liberal defeatist members in Congress (11), former government official and misinformed citizens are doing their best to vilify our cause, weaken our military effort and erode our will (12). To make the matter worse, the liberal media and some defeatist members of Congress were capitalizing on the naivety of misinformed citizens to create hatred and despise toward the Administration in a time of war. Of course, terrorists applaud this effort. They would eagerly monitor this political division and antiwar developments in America like the communist in Vietnam did during the Vietnam War. And they are waiting for their liberal American allies in the mainstream media, in Congress and on the streets of America to help them defeat America from Washington D.C. All they need to do now is prolong the war and continue killing Americans in Iraq. This will provide their liberal American allies in America the necessary psychological ammo to cripple our will and eventually, destroy public support for the war.

Having gone through this in the Vietnam War and ended up being a victim of a political defeat over 30 years ago, this writer is concerned watching the same scenario unfolding in America. I strongly believe it is time for America to do what is necessary to win the war on terror rather than to appease the defeatist members of Congress or to fear criticism from the extreme liberal left media. I do not like war because I had lived and fought in the war in Vietnam for freedom almost my entire adolescent and adult life. However, in defense of freedom and our way of life, I will not hesitate to fight again if my health and age permit. This is a war we must fight and cannot afford to lose. If we lost, global terrorist will bring war and destruction to our own soil and our next generation will suffer. It is time to wake up America!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(1) From Enemy to Friend by Bui Tin. Naval Institute Press 2002, page 107 to 114.
(2) During the Tet offensive in January 1968, when U.S. and Vietnamese Forces almost wiped out the entire infrastructures of the National Liberation Front (NLF) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) in South Vietnam, Walter Cronkite, the most respected journalist in America reported, “the Vietnam war was unwinnable”.
(3) Bui Tin interviewed by Stephen Young: “Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us”.
(4) After the war, Col. Bui Tin, a high ranking North Vietnamese officer revealed in an interview with Stephen Young: “Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise;. Giap later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained the planned political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election. The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was”.
(5) Presidential Nomination Acceptance speech at Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida on August 8, 1968 published by Nixon/Agnew Campaign Committee: “And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We shall not stop there -- we need a policy to prevent more Vietnams.”
(6) Statement by Senator George McGovern (D.-S.D.) announcing candidacy for the 1972 Democratic Presidential Nomination on January 18, 1971 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. McGovern for President Press Release.
(7) The National Security Archive. President Nixon met Chairman Mao in China.
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/index.htm
(8) The National Archives. Dr. Kissinger met Premier Chou in China.
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK%206-20-72.pdf
(9) President Nixon’s remarks in his acceptance of the Presidential Nomination of the Republican National Convention on August 23, 1972 for the second term: “As your President, I pledge that I shall always uphold that proud bipartisan tradition. Standing in this Convention Hall 4 years ago, I pledged to seek an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We have made great progress toward that end. We have brought over half a million men home, and more will be coming home. We have ended America's ground combat role. No draftees are being sent to Vietnam. We have reduced our casualties by 98 percent. We have gone the extra mile, in fact we have gone tens of thousands of miles trying to seek a negotiated settlement of the war. We have offered a cease-fire, a total withdrawal of all American forces, an exchange of all prisoners of war, internationally supervised free elections with the Communists participating in the elections and in the supervision”.
(10) Bui Tin interview by Stephen Young: “Well, when Nixon stepped down because of Watergate we knew we would win. Pham Van Dong [prime minister of North Vietnam] said of Gerald Ford, the new president, "he's the weakest president in U.S. history; the people didn't elect him; even if you gave him candy, he doesn't dare to intervene in Vietnam again." We tested Ford's resolve by attacking Phuoc Long in January 1975. When Ford kept American B-52's in their hangers, our leadership decided on a big offensive against South Vietnam. We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect”.
(11) Meet the Domestic Enemy by John Perazzo on Front Page Magazine March 20, 2007. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27465
(12) Former Vice President Al Gore, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, George Soros, Cindy Sheehan…..

According to a global risk management survey of 320 organizations in 29 countries:

"Executives now see reputation as a major source of competitive advantage," said Ruth Joplin, Aon Global Risk Consulting managing director. "While intangible, reputation is one of the most important corporate assets and one of the hardest to protect," she added. "The lack of preparedness reported for this and other key risks is both surprising and somewhat worrying."

The behavior of Yahoo in China and the reactions are an exemplar case.

One of those instances, most egregious, is Yahoo’s informing China’s censors of a Yahoo user’s identity who dared to challenge one-party control. Yahoo is being sued, under American laws, for this act.

The suit may not be successful, given difficulties of penetrating China’s inner sanctums. However, China’s determination to control the Internet continues unabated. With China preparing for its worldwide showcase in the Summer 2008 Olympics, efforts to control the message increase.

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country's sprawling Internet of "unhealthy" content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine, state television reported.

With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo -- its 24-member inner council -- discussed cleaning up the Internet, state television reported. The meeting promised to place the often unruly medium more firmly under propaganda controls.

"Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance," said a summary of the meeting read on the news broadcast….

The Communist Party is preparing for a congress later this year that is set to give Hu another five-year term and open the way for him to choose eventual successors. In 2008, Beijing hosts the Olympic Games, when the party's economic achievements will be on display, along with its political and media controls.

Meanwhile, Yahoo’s annual meeting (and Google’s) will have to face a shareholders’ resolution – Yahoo losing an appeal to the SEC to avoid the resolution -- requiring it to comply with international norms for conduct.

[T]he Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected a request from Yahoo to "omit" a shareholder resolution proposed by those funds, to have Yahoo adopt anti-censorship policies….

Included in the language of both shareholder petitions is the following language: "Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are fundamental human rights, and free use of the Internet is protected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom to 'receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.' Technology companies in the United States. that operate in countries controlled by authoritarian governments have an obligation to comply with the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights."

Google has been a bit more restrained than Yahoo about cooperating with the Chinese censors, placing its servers outside China in order to avoid cooperation with China's censors. Although this has reduced some of Google’s functionality, Google continues to gain in the China market.

Industry analysts say Google's handicaps in China include its failure to aggressively promote online music and to offer its G-Mail service on Google.cn. The company refrained from offering e-mail in China after the controversy over Yahoo's China arm providing information that led to a reporter's being imprisoned….

Schmidt [Google’s CEO] said Google was gaining market share but he declined to give figures. He expressed confidence that its greater financial and technical resources would help close the gap….

It may well be that corporate reputation also counts for competitive advantage, something Yahoo and other American companies ought to keep in mind as they sell out our values and impede the future freedoms of their customers.

Redstate performs an enlightening service today in its interview with one of the defense counsel for Marines charged in the Haditha case. The post is chock-full of important links, and covers many topics.

Most important is the attorney’s description of the emerging exculpatory evidence, formerly withheld by the Naval investigators, the political animus behind the prosecution, and the leak campaign by those either seeking to undermine the war effort or to curry favor with the hostile press or politicians.

This entire post should be read and archived.

The Washington state Supreme Court’s decision in favor of a talk show’s right to express political views is seen as a victory for free speech. However, behind that decision is the court’s opinion that this free speech may be abridged by act of the legislature, as the case turned on a media exemption in the state’s law, similar to that in federal law.

Former FEC attorney Allison Hayward (bio) at her blog agrees with me that some of the most trenchant comments on election law are coming from Bob Bauer, counsel to the Democrats in Congress.

Bob Bauer’s essay (they really are too good to be blogs) on the evanescent protection upheld in this case.

Bauer is an accomplished attorney because he can see the various sides of an issue. That doesn’t mean that he will not avidly pursue the position of his clients in court. It means that he will anticipate the opponents’ case in representing his clients.

I’ve featured Bauer’s writings several times, as they are right to the point of weaknesses in the case for the McCain-Feingold and campaign law fiascos that have done nothing to diminish corruption or heavy money interests but have done much to restrict the ability of more ordinary folks and organizations because of the weight of compliance with regulations. (My previous columns featuring Bauer are linked below.)

Bauer’s blogpost today is, again, must reading:

[I]t is not clear why media companies’ "news function," which in the end is still a corporate money-making function, affords them broader free speech rights than other corporations—even nonprofit corporations….

A traditional answer has always been that corporations in the business of news stay out of politics. This is plain nonsense, as conservatives point out in their case against NPR and the BBC, and as liberals now loudly charge against Fox….This much might be said for overtly political organizations: the audience is clear about what is being offered to them.

A corporation can say that its commentators and other personnel speak only for themselves, not for the company. But they pick these personnel. They claim for their efforts "fairness and balance," but airtime being a scarce resource, even sincere efforts in this direction can only go so far. In the end, their political effect is profound even if their intent is governed by the highest standards of nonpartisanship. Have we not recently heard a great deal from the government about how corporations, including and most prominently nonprofit organizations, must answer to the law, the campaign finance laws, for their "effects"?

This line of reflection is not to be confused with a proposal for the withdrawal of legal protections for media corporations. Better that at least some political speech be considered almost sacrosanct. But it should also bring to mind the essential arbitrariness of the protection granted, since a large corporation making money off the dissemination of "news" represents a large exception to the general resistance to speech rights for corporations, including rights claimed by nonprofit corporations in the advocacy business.

The Washington State Supreme Court refreshes this reminder with its observation that what has been given might be taken away, by the simple expedient of an amendment to the statutory exemption. While having to contend with constitutional limits on its actions, a legislature is not foreclosed from acting at all. For example, if concerned with on-air politics like those addressed in San Juan County, a legislature might chose to retain but qualify the broad exemption by regulating the election-season programming a news organization can carry.

During the debate on the Federal Election Commission’s Internet rules, many bloggers looked beyond the frailty of the media exemption and asked to be blessed with its benefits just like the traditional media. The rulemaking concluded to their satisfaction, this and other goals largely realized, but the opportunity was lost for them to stand for speech that is not reliant on the government for its recognition and protection. The media exemption is just that: an exemption, which only underscores its potential vulnerability….

The campaign finance laws are like this: on a step back, the view begins to look strange. The rules, favoring certain mammoth corporations and disfavoring diminutive nonprofits, are justified by this distinction or the other: giving free reign to the lucrative advocacy of "news commentary" but keeping nonprofit forms within strict limits. It makes a certain sense, just as the San Juan County decision does, but only because the "system" is so familiar that it is thought, mistakenly, to be part of the just and natural order of things.

The “just and natural order of things” was enshrined in the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Only those who seek to restrict the competition of ideas can see anything less than that as “just and natural.”

Media Self-Interest In Campaign Restrictions

Democrats Set New Restriction on Political Speech

527 Fisking

Straight Talk Express Falls Into McCain-Feingold Hole

How do you know when you’ve lost? When you’re dead or you’ve surrendered. Otherwise, you’re in the fight.

How do you know that you’re going to lose? When your death or surrender are certain.

If you’re not certain, and the stakes are worth it, you continue to fight.

If you don’t believe the stakes are worth it, then quit.

If those on your side don’t recognize who the enemy is, they’ll walk away or fritter away possibilities by turning on each other.

The Democrat leadership is certain that the United States, and those in Iraq who struggle to build, will fail. The Democrats don’t believe the stakes there and consequent are worth having either an open mind or perseverance.

There is no one knowledgeable who agrees with the Democrats. Regardless of whether a critic or supporter of U.S. strategy and tactics, all those knowledgeable recognize that the consequences of bugging out would be even worse than what’s there now. The Democrat leaders seek to cloak their irresponsibility in formulas for a small residual force -- that would be overwhelmed by the challenges -- or regional states’ cooperation -- by sworn adversaries and accommodators with little record of being or incentive to be constructive.

So, why does the Democrat leadership act this way?

There’s no doubt that most Americans are sick and tired of being involved in a mess, one that will go on for years more at least. They are not responding to anyone who argues for confidence, whether in the administration, McCain, Lieberman, experts, commentators. Most Americans won’t respond, as polls are wont to fluctuate, until they are shown more progress in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Democrat leadership is on its rant and determined that progress not occur not because they care about Iraq or national security but because they use dissatisfaction over Iraq to further their power over their favorite domestic program agenda.

It’s no longer a matter of facts. It’s a matter of sheer political power and sticktoitness now. Bush only has about a year to go. The prospects for a winning Republican presidential contender are strong for 2008. However, the prospects for a Republican takeback of Congress are weak, only possible if there’s major demonstrable progress in Iraq, even though the new Democrat majority in Congress will be seen to be overstepping with extreme programs and statements. Thus, only a Republican president can provide the time needed to continue the job in Iraq to a reasonable end, and avoid the most extreme of the Democrats’ domestic agenda.

It is, therefore, essential that Republicans do not commit fratricide during the coming presidential season, not only for national security reasons or domestic policy reasons but out of sheer character and patriotism. Otherwise, Republicans will be facilitators of losing, and share the responsibility for the consequences.

SEE “This Is Counterterrorism, Senator” for insight you may have missed elsewhere.

“One World, One Dream,” is the official slogan for the 2008 Summer Olympics to be held in China. May one wonder what that slogan means?

Preeminent civil libertarian Nat Hentoff offers an understanding:

…Memories of blood-soaked Tiananmen Square have faded around the world. But for those who remember, the Chinese government's massacre of thousands of students in June 1989 - horrifying as it was - pales in comparison with the more than 400,000 black Africans obliterated by China's close partner, Sudan, in Darfur - along with the mass rapes of so many painfully surviving black African women.

I expect the present Chinese leaders - as the glories of the 2008 Olympics approach - would not want any references to their complicity in the ongoing holocaust in Darfur….

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First and many other humanitarian organizations, religious groups and deeply concerned people around the world have been working insistently, without success, to stop this genocide. Focusing on the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, they can organize a last-chance rescue of the Darfur survivors by an international shaming of China. And I hope there will be nations who boycott the summer Olympics.

Here’s Amnesty International’s comprehensive report, “2008 Olympic Shames.”

Last weekend I was at a party where one of the guys was wearing a Tommy Bahamas shirt, usually over $100 at U.S. stores, that his wife bought him in China for $8. I commented that, aside from property infringement, purchase of such knock-offs exploited Chinese laborers at paltry wages. He replied that such knock-offs often come from the same factories as contracted for the legitimate items. We then discussed how difficult it is these days to buy anything not made in China, for example 5000 of Wal-Mart’s 6000 items come from China, and how such cheap products help the American poor and restrain American inflation.

There’s just part of the conundrum for Americans. We’re also of two or more minds about Chinese military and strategic capacities and plans, or how seriously China’s mercantile politics impacts world order or human catastrophes such as in Darfur (where China has been a block to firmer UN Security council action). We’re, as well, unsure about how much of China’s touted economic dynamism and growth is real, or how much masks economic weaknesses, bubbles, or coming problems that will affect the world’s economy and, even, environment.

Jack Risko brings together some of the major economic concerns:

We have previously discussed the Investor’s Business Daily claim that China’s GDP numbers are seriously overstated. This is very troublesome, as is China’s high money supply growth, and as are the other evident imbalances in China’s economic structure. In our view the extent to which China’s numbers are cooked will have a major impact, perhaps the single greatest impact, on how severe the next global economic downturn is, whenever that should happen.

Reporters Without Borders points out a “French website blocked for warning of risks of investing in China.”

“Internet filtering is not just a problem for political activists, it also affects those who do business with China,” the press freedom organisation said. “How do you assess an investment opportunity if no reliable information about social tension, corruption or local trade unions is available? This case of censorship, affecting a very specialised site with solely French-language content, shows the government attaches as much importance to the censorship of economic data as political content.”

The press freedom organisation added: “The free flow of information online is not only a human rights issue, it is essential to lasting economic growth and the creation of solid trade relations with other countries.”

Reporters Without Borders, also, exposes the censorship of foreign media that sets the stage for Olympics 2008 coverage being close to whatever Beijing desires.

Disturbing lapses in application of new rules for foreign media
Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern today about a series of incidents that show that some officials within the state apparatus have no intention of respecting the new regulations for foreign journalists. In the past few days, a BBC crew was expelled from a city in the central province of Hunan, the correspondent of a website based abroad was banned from working and two news media were prevented from covering the recent People’s Congress meeting.

"The government clearly has not done all that is necessary to ensure that the correspondents of foreign news media really are able to move about and work freely," the press freedom organisation said. "What was the point of proclaiming new regulations if they are not respected?

Here’s Reporters Without Borders’ 2007 comprehensive report on Chinese internal repression.

I’m a big fan of China’s films, shop at Wal-Mart, and will be glued to the screen during the Olympics. At the same time, the 2008 presidential campaign will be entering full steam. Will any of the candidates have even a mention for China’s other impacts on human rights at home (and here from Human Rights Watch) , self-enriching political exploiters, its gross pollution, its mercantile trade and politics overriding world order, its burgeoning military capable of winning against the U.S. in a takeover of Taiwan by 2010?

China's rapid beefing up of its military might should give it the edge over Taiwan for the first time by 2010, Jane's Defense Weekly said Tuesday…. a boost aimed at making its forces capable of a quick, decisive invasion of Taiwan while deterring US intervention, the authoritative magazine said.

"China is working hard to transform its Vietnam War-era defense establishment into a credible regional military power with a new generation of indigenous equipment, designed to thwart more advanced adversaries," said Jane's.

For details on China’s military buildup, see the Defense Department’s “Annual Report To Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2006.” (Will the Democrats claim in 2010 that they were misled, or will they read it?) Heritage Foundation, previously, published an extensive evaluation of “China’s Military Power.”

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has an update for subscribers today, Activists Turn Up Heat on Beijing Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee is trying to distance itself from political causes. "We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments in how they behave," Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC's coordination commission for the Beijing Games, said yesterday. But after being asked about the Darfur and Tibet protests, IOC president Jacques Rogge admitted, "We certainly are going to have more of this. We know that."…

China's Olympic organizers say this isn't the proper forum for a discussion of international affairs. "I heard some people are saying they would boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to protest China's policy over Darfur. They are either ignorant or ill-natured," Assistant Foreign Minister Zhai Jun told reporters after his trip to Sudan.

“Hurumpf” say those being starved and murdered.

My Examiner column is up, “Should teachers sue their unions for pension mismanagement?”

Teacher unions are among the highest spending and most powerful lobbyists for various liberal causes. Teachers unions may be the next target of class action law suits for cozy self-enriching deals with the providers of overpriced retirement plans for teachers. Union coffers get filled while teachers’ retirement funds are lessened.

Ironic, that those who teach our children math are lax about the subtraction from their own pockets.

Blog reports about Marvin Kalb’s Harvard Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy study, The Israel-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict, (40-page PDF) are quoting heavily from the report on the study at World Politics Watch, How the Media Partnered With Hezbollah: Harvard's Cautionary Report.

The World Politics Watch summary is accurate, and telling, of the biased impact of coverage provided by the Western and Arab media.

However, the World Politics Watch concluding paragraphs are stronger than Kalb’s study. World Politics Watch calls for vigilance and responsibility by Western reporters, and even moreso by their editors and the talking heads at home, not to be taken in, not to permit themselves to be part of propaganda exercises by our enemies, and to more clearly label any such reports as such and say what’s missing.

In the actual study, Kalb’s conclusions bemoan the suspicions of MSM coverage roused by bloggers who exposed fake reporting and photography. All that Kalb, weakly, says about the ethical and professional irresponsibility of the major media is, “The challenge for responsible journalists covering asymmetrical warfare, especially in this age of the Internet, is new, awesome and frightening.”

Kalb doesn't mention that there is only one allowable prescription for the major media, to stick by professional standards rather than sensationalist irresponsibility. It also wouldn’t hurt if the MSM displayed some ethical standards, recognizing the difference between right and wrong, between friend and foe.

Excerpts from the World Politics Watch article are below. But, read the entire PDF of the actual study.

Marvin Kalb, of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, methodically traces the transformation of the media "from objective observer to fiery advocate." Kalb painstakingly details how Hezbollah exercised absolute control over how journalists portrayed its side of the conflict, while Israel became "victimized by its own openness."…

Journalists did Hezbollah's work, offering little resistance to the Islamic militia's effort to portray itself as an idealistic and heroic army of the people, facing an aggressive and ruthless enemy. With Hezbollah's unchallenged control of journalists' access within its territory, it managed to almost completely eliminate from the narrative crucial facts, such as the fact that it deliberately fired its weapons from deep within civilian population centers, counting on Israeli forces to have no choice but defend themselves by targeting rocket launchers where they stood. Hezbollah's strong support from Syria and Iran -- including the provision of deadly weapons -- faded in the coverage, as the conflict increasingly became portrayed as pitting one powerful army against a band of heroic defenders of a civilian population….

By contrast, armed Hezbollah fighters were all but invisible to the media. Also invisible were Hezbollah's thousands of rockets and rocket launchers strategically positioned near schools, hospitals and apartment buildings.

Within Hezbollah territory, journalists were led through scenes of the destruction caused by Israel. Journalists rarely complained about Hezbollah's restrictions, but they frequently complained about Israel's efforts to limit coverage deemed useful to the enemy. Still, circumventing Israeli restrictions proved easy in a country like Israel, while in Hezbollah-controlled areas it proved all but impossible. Cameras enjoyed full access to civilian victims of Israel's actions, but never to the perpetrators of violence against Israel….

Before long, Hezbollah had achieved a definitive propaganda victory. The media had not only acquiesced to tell Hezbollah's version of the war, they had started contributing to the creation of the narrative, with at least one Reuters photographer altering photographs to make Israeli attacks look more damaging. And many reporters simply failed to offer much context….

The Harvard paper shows the need for journalists to brace themselves and remain vigilant when they cover conflicts between open societies on one side, and media-controlling militias on the other. These conflicts, which we will undoubtedly continue to see, demand that journalists make a greater effort to provide context and to keep from become willing collaborators with one side. Islamic militant groups, such as al-Qaida and others, have openly described their strategy of manipulating the media and winning on the "information battlefield." Hezbollah, too, had a well crafted, and ultimately successful media plan.

The challenge to keep from being used will be greatest for journalists in the field, but editors back in the newsroom also must look closely at what their organizations produce. They must be aware that their reporters on the ground are the target of media campaigns by those they cover, and that reporters can become emotionally allied with one side, as we saw last summer in Lebanon.

While most attention is focused on Guiliani, Romney, McCain and Thompson, there’s one man in the race for the presidential nomination who deserves much more attention from us – Duncan Hunter.

Duncan Hunter was not at 9/11, like Guiliani. Duncan Hunter was not businesslike savior of the Olympics like Romney. Duncan Hunter was not a POW like McCain. Duncan Hunter is not a fine, folksy actor of principles like Thompson. Any of the leading candidates would be infinitely better than the defeatist chorus line the Democrats dance with.

Duncan Hunter, however, quietly served on not one but all those fronts as the leading Republicans. And, he isn’t a fancy dancer away from country, responsibility or truth as are the Democrats.

As Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, no one contributed more to making sure we had what we need to fight. As innovator in defense procurement, and loud voice for fairer trade so we have the capacity to stage first class weaponry, he’s shown more business-sense than the exporters of our industry to virtual slave-labor cheap wage countries. As a highly-decorated combat enlisted man in Vietnam, Hunter’s courage under fire and oneness with the man with boots on the ground is unsurpassed. As a straight-talking common-man, Hunter’s messages are clear and grounded in a lifetime of real experience.

I know that the others have the lead, and will probably retain it, and that electing a president is about appealing to the center. But, when it comes to actually governing, not getting rolled by the enticements of Washington, the permanent opposition to American greatness, the chattering class ignorant of service and sacrifice above all, we need a real man and patriot in the White House, who knows how to get things done and won’t budge till it is. Duncan Hunter is that man. He’s not only the guy you want to share a beer with; he’s the man who deserves to be bought a round.

Check out his website. Learn more about him. Sign up for him, at least as indicator to the maneuvering politicos who control the Republican Party about where the heart beats and the mission America requires.

As the late Shelby Foote might have put it, it's a curious thing. Academics employ myriad strategies to enforce ideological conformity in their own ranks. Hiring practices keep conservatives off the short list, tenure decisions toss out the occasional renegade who made it into academe, and social and professional ostracism are employed liberally to punish the ingrates who get out of line.

Yet when they turn their attention to the extramural (beyond the walls) world, which most of us simply call earth, these same professors suddenly discover the virtue of dissent. That's nowhere truer than in war, to which the academic left's opposition is directly proportional to the benefits any war might confer upon America.

Put succinctly, if it's in defense of America, it's an offense to the world.

Just ask John Kerry.

Viewed in this light, this seemingly peculiar project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies makes sense, at least in the intramural (inside the walls) world of most faculty members. Titled Breaking Ranks: An Oral History Project on Iraq War Veteran Dissent, it:

[S]eeks to document the stories of veterans and soldiers who oppose US involvement in the war in Iraq. While a number of oral history collections focusing on those who support US policy in Iraq have been initiated across the country, these interviews provide a unique critical perspective on the war.

Here's the official site, some of the text of which reads:

The book reflects on common themes and sociological distinctions in the experience of these young men and women through the recruitment, training, and combat periods. It also explore their postwar experience, which includes, for most, significant anti-war activism and service to fellow veterans, as well as coping with their wartime physical and mental injuries.

Will this discover this generation's John Kerry, who will return from war to heap calumnies on his brothers in arms? It's still early, but rest assured that his ideological supporters in his old Ivy League are doing their best to find his youthful soul mate.

We grew up together. Israelis are my brothers and sisters.
America is my strength. Israel is my soul.
The spirit of each are one.

Israel’s birth was difficult. Its roots stretch back thousands of years.

But, in its first words to the world, Israel borrowed from America’s birth, and at the same time stayed true to its own.

"The first moment someone put pen to paper to formulate the Israeli Declaration of Independence was when Mordechai Beham [then only recently appointed to the People's Administration's Justice Department, later the nascent state's Justice Ministry] sat in a small house on Rehov Arnon 5 in Tel Aviv and copied the American Declaration word for word," Shachar explains. "Our document developed out of that Declaration," he notes, offering another symbolic connection to "the historical connection that is today very strong between the two peoples."

Some of the issues can be controversial, he added. For example, "every schoolchild knows that the state of Israel is Jewish and democratic, and says this is anchored in the Declaration of Independence. But this is not true. After Tzvi Berinson [later a Supreme Court justice], in a draft from around May 7, characterized the state as 'Jewish and democratic,' the word 'democratic' was removed.

"It's important to know that when the state's founder sat down to decide what the principles of the state would be, they made a conscious decision to erase the word 'democratic' and to settle for 'Jewish.'"

Israel did not have to be redundant. Judaism is justice.

Israel’s anthem, Hatikva, is “The Hope.” Hope sustained us across centuries of oppression and death.

As long as deep in the heart,
the soul of a Jew yearns,
and towards the east
an eye looks to Zion,

our hope is not yet lost,
the hope of thousand years,
to be a free people in our land,
the land of Zion and Jerusalem.
to be a free people in our land,
the land of Zion and Jerusalem.

People danced in the streets in 1948, even as surrounding countries attacked. The experience of one man represents the redemption found in Hatikva.

In Zion Square an old man with a trombone and a girl with a guitar were playing a spirited "Hava Nagilla" and, spying the violin case of one of our crowd called Leopold Mahler - a professional violinist and Holocaust survivor who never ever wanted to play again - persuaded him to unpack his instrument and join in. Picking up the rhythm, Mahler began reworking it into wildly spiraling variations, his notes fluttering this way and that, improvisation upon improvisation, as if man and instrument were rediscovering each other in shared delight after a long separation.

Justice is always in arguments with itself. That’s its nature. At birth, Israelis were divided but came together. At 59, disagreements continue. But, let no one doubt the unity, the strength, or the soul.

One of the barriers to Americans having a clearer knowledge and view about China may be the extent to which America’s China scholars are influenced by Chinese funding or by China’s internal restrictions on information.

This affects Americans and America’s international interests in major ways: Our economy floats on waves of cheap Chinese imports, which restrain domestic inflation and increase purchasing power of our poor and middle class. But, the huge resulting trade deficits may lead to a major stock market downdraft (via a devalued dollar, already down to over $1.35 per Euro, reduced foreign investment in our bonds, and reactive Fed interest raising) that would inflate prices, and reduce the personal finances, security and purchasing of the middle and upper class, plunging the U.S. into serious recession.

Our stretched military faces a rising Chinese military spending and capacity, which may at some point outmatch our ability to protect Taiwan or keep vital sea lanes open.

Our diplomacy in favor of human rights, even policing against ongoing genocide in Darfur, is repeatedly stymied by China, and Russia (another burgeoning problem), in the UN Security Council, while China pursues mercantile politics throughout the Middle East, Africa and Latin America to feed China’s basic materials needs. Even otherwise outspoken environmentalists are quieted about the humongous negative effects of China’s pollution, watershed despoiling, and mass migrations of population onto indigenous peoples’ land to displace their culture (like in Tibet).

This sell out by American academia is not unique to China. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are, similarly, funding many U.S. chairs, professors, foundations, and think tanks. Their views are appearing with regularity in the U.S. media, and their undermining of Israel and of basic U.S. foreign policy is increasing.

The article highlighted below could, as well, be written about the MidEast satrapies’ influence on American academia and public discourse.

With HT to Daniel Drezner (Are China Scholars Bought and Paid For by Beijing?), I linked to what Drezner called a must read” at the Far Eastern Economic Review by Carsten Holz, an economist and professor in the social science division of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Some extended excerpts, but the whole article is a “must read”:

Academics who study China, which includes the author, habitually please the Chinese Communist Party, sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously. Our incentives are to conform, and we do so in numerous ways: through the research questions we ask or don’t ask, through the facts we report or ignore, through our use of language, and through what and how we teach.

Foreign academics must cooperate with academics in China to collect data and co-author research. Surveys are conducted in a manner that is acceptable to the Party, and their content is limited to politically acceptable questions. For academics in China, such choices come naturally. The Western side plays along.

China researchers are equally constrained in their solo research. Some Western China scholars have relatives in China. Others own apartments there. Those China scholars whose mother tongue is not Chinese have studied the language for years and have built their careers on this large and nontransferable investment. We benefit from our connections in China to obtain information and insights, and we protect these connections. Everybody is happy, Western readers for the up-to-date view from academia, we ourselves for prospering in our jobs, and the Party for getting us to do its advertising. China is fairly unique in that the incentives for academics all go one way: One does not upset the Party.

What happens when we don’t play along is all too obvious. We can’t attract Chinese collaborators. When we poke around in China to do research we run into trouble….

With the introduction of each new element of reform and transition, cadres enrich themselves: the dual track price system, the nonperforming loans, the asset-stripping of SOEs, the misuse of funds in investment companies and in private pension accounts. The overwhelmingly irregular transformation of rural into urban land may well qualify as “systematic looting” by local “leaders.” Local cadres are heavily invested in the small, unsafe coal mines they are supposed to close, and nobody knows how they obtained their stakes in these operations….

We speak of the Chinese “government” without further qualification when more than 95% of the “leadership cadres” are Party members, key decisions are reached by leadership cadres in their function as members of Party work committees…

We see the “ends”—successful reform—and don’t question the “means.” The Party’s growth mantra is faithfully accepted as the overarching objective for the country and the one measure of successful reform. Nobody lingers on the political mechanisms through which growth is achieved. The mafia runs China rather efficiently, so why worry about how it is done, and what the “side effects” are? We obviously know of the labor camps into which people disappear without judiciary review, of torture inflicted by the personnel of state “security” organs, and of the treatment of Falun Gong, but choose to move on with our sterilized research and teaching. We ignore that China’s political system is responsible for 30 million dead from starvation in the Great Leap Forward, and 750,000 to 1.5 million murders during the Cultural Revolution. What can make Western academics stop and think twice about who they have bedded down with?

If academics don’t, who will? The World Bank and other international organizations won’t because they profit from dealing with China. Their banking relationship depends on amicable cooperation with the Party, and a de facto requirement of their research collaboration is that the final report and the public statements are acceptable to Party censors. The research departments of Western investment banks won’t because the banks’ other arms likely depend on business with China.

Does this all matter? Does it matter if China researchers ignore the political context in which they operate and the political constraints that shape their work? Does it matter if we present China to the West the way the Party leadership must like us to present China, providing narrow answers to our self-censored research questions and offering a sanitized picture of China’s political system?

The size of China’s economy will exceed that of the U.S., in purchasing power terms, by 2008 or 2009. China is a country with which Western economies are increasingly intertwined: A quarter of Chinese industry is foreign-owned and we depend on Chinese industry for cheap consumer goods. Ultimately, our pensions, invested in multinationals that increasingly produce in China, depend on the continued economic rise of China. But does the West understand that country and its rulers? At what point, and through what channels, will the Party leadership with its different views of human rights and the citizens’ rights affect our choices of political organization and political freedoms in the West (as it has affected academic research and teaching)? And to what extent are China researchers guilty of putting their own rice bowl before honest thinking and teaching?

I will be writing more about China in the near future.

Of course, the prosecutors of the Haditha Marines wouldn’t put it that way, but their actions reveal the weakness of their case. One knowledgeable participant in military law calls the prosecutors wide-scale granting of immunity unprecedented and indicative.

Aside from the immunity granted to one of the previously charged Marines, discussed here, and previously here and here with respect to the entire case, it’s now been revealed that another 7 Marines have been granted immunity.

A legal expert said by giving so many people immunity, prosecutors are taking a "conservative" approach to the case.
"These are legitimate moves by the prosecutor, who is very cautious," said Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who teaches law of war at Georgetown University Law Center.

In other words, the prosecutors are trying to bolster their weak evidence.

The local newspapers to Camp Pendleton add information missing from the Washington Post treatment.

The San Diego Union Tribune adds:

However, not all the Haditha immunity deals are guaranteed to boost the prosecution's chances. The testimony of Lt. William T. Kallop, the sole officer at the killing scene, could support defendants' contention that they were following lawful orders.

Kallop reached the Haditha site minutes after the roadside bomb went off, according to military reports. In testimony given later to investigators, he said the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, and another Marine heard gunfire coming from a nearby house.

Kallop told the investigators that he ordered Wuterich and the other men in his platoon to “take the house.”

“I'm convinced that we did nothing wrong,” Kallop is quoted as saying in documents The Washington Post obtained from anonymous sources.
The Marines also killed people in two other homes and a nearby vehicle.

“During the four years as a military trial lawyer, I don't recall a defense witness ever being given immunity,” said Tom Umberg, a former military defense counsel, prosecutor and judge.

Umberg theorized that Kallop's immunity deal might help the prosecution avoid certain problems if the defendants file appeals. He also said prosecutors might use some portions of Kallop's testimony to their advantage.

The San Diego area North County Times adds:

"There are a lot of problems and it may well be that this list of immunity grants is evidence of that," said Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich. "There are things about the government's case that have yet to come out that are very troubling." …

Zaid said a North County Times report last week that described several problems confronting prosecutors, including a questionable investigation of the Haditha incident by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, underscores emerging issues in the case.

"What surprises me is this increasing number of grants of immunity," Zaid said Friday. "Are they looking to hold only a small number of people accountable for public relations reasons?

Some, if not all, of the immunity grants that have been approved by Lt. Gen. James Mattis are reportedly unconditional, meaning those men would not face any jeopardy if they make incriminating statements or do not testify as fully as prosecutors may wish. Mattis is the convening authority over the case as head of all Marine Corps forces in the Middle East….

Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps lawyer who teaches law at Washington's Georgetown University, said Friday that the number of men granted immunity strikes him as odd.

"If they are granting immunity to individuals who aren't alleged to have done anything wrong, you have to wonder if it is necessary. If they did do something wrong, why aren't they being prosecuted?"

Solis said that prosecutors may be working hard to find men willing to testify and not invoke their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to buttress the case.

The attorney for one of those granted immunity, the officer who ordered the Marines to clear the houses, says:

Mr. McNeil continued, "News coverage of this event and Lt. Kallop's involvement has contained numerous inaccuracies and false statements. I will not comment on this except to say that I am confident that the true facts of the situation will be revealed in the course of legal proceedings,and like Lt. Kallop I am hopeful that a fair and impartial judgment of these events can then take place."

Mr. McNeil concluded, "I continue to be concerned about the numerous
leaks of confidential information in this case, much of which has been
misleading, biased and/or inaccurate."

Not to be delayed in that pursuit of prosecution via news leaks, the Washington Post obtained a copy of the report in June 2006 by Army Major General Bargewell. The WP summary's lead paragraph:

The Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq ignored "obvious" signs of "serious misconduct" in the 2005 slayings of two dozen civilians in Haditha, and commanders fostered a climate that devalued the life of innocent Iraqis to the point that their deaths were considered an insignificant part of the war, according to an Army general's investigation.

Later in the WP story:

Though Bargewell found no specific coverup, he concluded that there also was no interest at any level in investigating allegations of a massacre….

His investigation found that Marines and officers present that day immediately reported numerous civilian deaths to superiors but that the reports were "untimely, inaccurate and incomplete" -- failures he attributed to "inattention and negligence, in certain cases willful negligence."

The standards for reporting incidents involving civilians have been increased since. By some critics telling, that requires in midst of action reporting comparable to full after action police reports in domestic cases, creating in effect another restraint on aggressive responses to attack. This may be justified by the exigencies of guerrilla warfare, to avoid alienating population. But others experienced see it as possibly overshadowing the primary way to squelch it – death to attackers – and as harmful to morale and outside the reasonable bounds of military training and capacity.

In any event, the Haditha hearings are proving to be quite a spectacle, not only as to the throw-the-book charges levied by the prosecution in a politicized atmosphere, and the weakness of the witnesses touted by the media at the time to the global glee of U.S. adversaries, but also as to the extent that the prosecution has had to go to hang anyone in a court of law.

If a “hoe” is someone who turns “tricks,” then Hillary Clinton must be the highest paid one in America and, also, right up there with John Kerry as one of the most bald-faced hypocrites.

Colbert King, a black editor at the Washington Post, says, “From Clinton, Hip-Hop Hypocrisy.”

Put me in the camp of those who implore Sen. Hillary Clinton to give it back -- "it" being the reported $800,000 that's sitting in her presidential campaign coffers thanks to a fundraiser hosted in her honor March 31 in the Pinecrest, Fla., home of a huge Clinton fan who refers to himself as Timbaland….

You would not be reading about Clinton or about Timbaland -- who entered this vale of tears 36 years ago in Norfolk under the name Timothy Mosley -- were it not for the fact that he is a well-heeled hip-hop producer and noted performer of the kind of misogynistic and denigrating lyrics that informed Don Imus's derogatory comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team….

… [I]t must be asked why she was down in Florida making nice to -- and pocketing big bucks from -- a rapper whose obscenity-laced lyrics praise violence, perpetuate racist stereotypes and demean black women.

Colbert then presents some of Timbaland’s lyrics, gross, racist, derogatory, degrading, violent dribble.

Hillary appeared today at Rutgers, in full hypocrisy saying:

"Will you be willing to speak up and say, 'Enough is enough,' when women or minorities or the powerless are marginalized or degraded?" Clinton said in her speech to about 700 people at a university forum on women and public leadership. "Will you say there's no place , if there ever was, there certainly isn't now , for disrespect or bigotry to be seen as funny?"…

Referring to Stringer and her players, Clinton said, "They are living, human markers of our progress in this country, how far we have come, and how much farther we have to go together."

"She and her players have shown us the difference between bravery and bravado," Clinton said.

And, Hillary has shown us the difference between a hypocritical “hoe” and someone fit to be president.

UPDATE: "Captain" Ed Morrissey weighs in Saturday morning, with "Hillary Pandering To The Pimp Culture."

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell lauded yesterday’s failure by the Democrats in the Senate to scuttle the successful arrangements of the Part D Medicare prescription benefit:

“Today the Senate protected healthcare access for tens of millions of seniors as well as price negotiations to ensure they pay the least amount of money for the prescription drugs they need,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said.
He added that the bill would do “nothing” to provide seniors with a better drug benefit.

Wall Street Journal editor Kimberley Strassel writes about what is at stake:

Republicans won a big victory this week, shooting down a Democratic plan for more government-run health care….

…That was a top Democratic promise this last election, as the party sought to play off public anger over health-care costs. Liberals saw it as an important step toward their all-government, health-care nirvana. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid also felt this was an issue on which they could once again roll Republicans, by flashing the impoverished-senior-citizens card.

Instead, Dr. McClellan's new model came online and wowed the older class. Private companies have flocked to offer a drug benefit, giving most seniors a choice of 50 innovative plans. The competitive jockeying has slashed prices from an expected $37-a-month premium to an average $22. The cost of Medicare Part D for taxpayers was 30% below expectations its first year--unheard of in government. And Medicare Advantage, which allows seniors to choose between private insurers, has grown to encompass nearly one in five beneficiaries.

However:

Good things or no, the reforms are still at risk. There was a time when Democrats believed in Medicare reform, but now most prefer it as a political stick to beat President Bush. There are also liberals--Henry Waxman, Pete Stark--who understand this is a crucial moment in the national debate over government-versus-private health care, and will do what they can to sabotage the reforms.

Expect, therefore, more votes over Medicare's right to price-fix. If a broad bill can't pass, liberal politicians will instead target individual, high-cost drugs, arguing that since Medicare foots most of the bill for these products, it should have the right to "negotiate." The real goal will be to get any foot in the price-setting door, making it harder for private companies to craft flexible drug packages, and laying the groundwork for more price-setting down the road.

Expect, too, a push to starve the competitive programs of cash. Critics know how effective this is, having siphoned dollars out of the old Medicare Advantage program in the 1990s, causing private plans to drop out, and giving the program a bad name. Dr. McClellan's reforms, and a Republican Congress, have re-energized the program, but the key to future success is in the budget. Republicans would do well to spend more time touting the competition successes of the reform, rather than the drug giveaway.

One of the major arguments raised by Democrats is that the Veterans Administration already negotiates drug pricing. What they fail to mention is that the VA does this by severely restricting the range of prescriptions available.

The Lewin Group analyzed the difference from the VA formulary to the privately negotiated formulary of a Part D plan:

Based on the data contained in the November 2006 VA National Drug File (NDF), the VANF includes 581 unique chemical compounds that are used in prescription drugs….In contrast, the formulary used by the Part D prescription drug plan (PDP) with the highest enrollment includes 1,003 such compounds – 422 (73%) more….

This comparison is consistent with a recent study by the Lewin Group that focused on VANF and Part D coverage of the 300 drugs with the highest prescription volume among individuals aged 65 and older. That study found that coverage of these drugs by the highest-enrollment Part D PDP’s (averaging 282 drugs, or 94%) was substantially better than VANF coverage (193 drugs or only 65%).

You mean there’s gambling here?

Bob Bauer, counsel to the Democrats in the Senate and House, is a leading lawyer on campaign finance laws. At his blog he reminds us of the self-interest that the major media has in pushing for restrictive campaign finance laws: their profits from the spending and their control of the message received by the American people.

As McGough points out, reform editorialists prefer a race judged by “ideas” and by other non-monetary factors such as “personalities” or “positions.” All candidates in this reformed system, bidding for recognition on these measures, become necessarily more dependent on media coverage and evaluation. We know that, especially in the early phases of a campaign—indeed for the better part of it—the public’s interest is only casual, and impressions of the candidates, their personalities and positions, are conveyed primarily through the media. In a system in which public funding reigns, no one candidate can have the capacity to shape this coverage to his or her advantage with sheer, brute spending. All of the campaigns would then depend heavily on a qualitative media judgment passed on their "seriousness," that is, a judgment passed on the quality of their ideas and positions and personalities. This would be more or less the primary basis for what is now known as the "winnowing" of the field, but even more than now influenced by the press and outside the competitive control of the candidates.

After all, who today decides which candidate has “won” a debate?

This is not a case against public funding, which some will defend on balance with a mix of arguments, but there can be little question that those organizations editorially “outraged” by campaign fundraising are not without an interest in the reforms they advocate. Even if it is not always visible or acknowledged—even to themselves.

John Kerry’s advice for Imus to redeem himself:

When asked by Dominic Carter if he would appear again on a Don Imus Show, Kerry gave an affirmative answer, provided the show wouldn’t be “the same old the same old.”

“It would depend on what the context of the show was obviously,” Kerry said. “If he goes back to doing the same old same old I’d have trouble doing that, but if it’s a different show and he says it’s going to be different sure.”

What’s up?

Well, it seems that Kerry faces his Massachusetts constituents in 2008, with a large proportion of regular folks -- many such of Imus’ listeners enjoy his style and Imus is a Kerry supporter – and Kerry may face trouble with Massachusetts voters.

According to the Suffolk survey, which has been accurate before:

Kerry, who has said he’s running for re-election instead of president again in 2008, isn’t exactly being welcomed back with open arms, according to the 7News-Suffolk survey. Only 37 percent of 400 voters polled said Kerry deserves re-election; 56 percent said it’s time for someone else.

Kerry’s best hopes: That the Republicans in Massachusetts can’t find someone more dynamic, which may even be possible for a weak Republican party; That a Kerry opponent can’t top his millions cubbyholed from 2004 and doesn’t have a centimillionaire wife; That Massachusetts voters have no self-respect.

The only thing that Kerry has ever been definite about is himself. All other things are “nuanced” subjects for either expediency, evasion, excuse, exaggeration or escape.

I hope Imus gets to do one more show, and Kerry is his guest. Imus should have real fun.

Though a Kerry supporter in 2004, even Imus’ reaction to Kerry’s “nuances” was incredulous:

Mr. Imus seemed to agree. "I was just back in my office banging my head on the jukebox," Mr. Imus said. "This is my candidate, and ... I don't know what he's talking about."

Seems many voters in Massachusetts may, and are tired of hearing about what Kerry would/wouldn’t do or be or say to exalt himself.

The Left created a new verb, “swiftboating,” to represent false political charges that are, again a term endlessly repeated in the media, “unsubstantiated” in reference to the case presented by the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth against John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign.

The Swift Boat veterans presented much corroborated evidence and witness reports, and other researchers confirmed many elements. Largely due to the unwillingness of John Kerry to come clean about his record, however, there are elements that have not been firmly tied down. The major media, then till now, have mostly failed to investigate the charges or press Kerry for his claims or records, and some major venues collaborated with Kerry to squelch the charges.

So, that works to leave those still defending John Kerry’s record with leeway and ink to quibble or to besmirch the Swift Boat veterans. But, Kerry dares not to reveal his full records or go into court. Instead, he relies upon allies in the media to evade, obfuscate and to smear.

First, let’s get some terms clarified.

“Substantiated” has a legal definition:

Substantiated means supported by proof or evidence. It is something that is supported or verified by corroborating information.

“Unsubstantiated,” on the other hand, as a Marine Corps leaders manual says, is of two types:

* The act did not occur. Preponderance of information indicates no abuse/neglect occurred.
* Unable to resolve. After all information was made available, it remained unclear whether abuse occurred.

I’ve written extensively about many aspects of the case, enough to fill a book of its own. Not to belabor the points here in an overlong post, I’ll refer the reader to a few key pieces.
In October 2004, I detailed the treatment by the New York Times of the Swift Boat charges, as “unsubstantiated,” and summarized how they were substantiated. (The entire piece is “below the fold” in the read more.)

I wrote a review in the academic site H-War of John Kerry’s hagiographic biography by Douglas Brinkley:

What was distinct about "Tour of Duty" was its focus on the candidate's relatively minor and short involvement in a major event, the opinion and sworn evidence of many other knowledgeable participants in the same events of the extent to which it strayed from or colored the facts, the failure of the author to check sources with known contrary witnesses and records, and, as it came out, the extent to which the sources of the facts relied upon by the author were denied by the candidate to the public (Kerry's journal and full military records)….

Thus, certainly contrary to his objectives, John Kerry unleashed a historiographic "perfect storm", one which all observers credit with turning his campaign across the margin of defeat..

Kerry lied that he couldn’t release his journal due to an agreement with Brinkley, which Brinkley refuted. The media did not press Kerry to release his journal.

Kerry has refused to open his military records to the public, as promised by him, only releasing them – and there’s doubt whether they’re complete – to the Boston Globe, L.A. Times and AP, the first two of which the inside his campaign Newsweek reporters observed were acting as a conduit for the Kerry campaign during its August 2004 efforts to counter the Swiftees. As the leading investigative reporter into Kerry’s claims, Thomas Lipscomb, wrote me:

The strange case of the John Kerry military records, which he had promised to release publicly, is that three great news organizations conspired to withhold them from the public. Not only did Kerry not make his military records public as promised, but three of the largest news organizations in the world gave him protective coloration by withholding them. All the public received were summaries in the opinions of the three news organizations, which had already shown an appalling inability to analyze the Kerry military records.

John O’Neill, a highly accomplished lawyer, challenged John Kerry to sue him: "I invite him to sue me for libel." Kerry hasn’t.

Kerry has repeatedly sought to legally intimidate others, failing, and then withdrawing their legal efforts once it appeared they would have to face depositions and the courts. One distinguished group of Vietnam veterans has fought back in the courts, to get Kerry and friends to reveal their falsities in a court of law.

The suits by Kerry's associates were suddenly dropped earlier this year just as they and several of their allies faced depositions under oath and subpoenas of their military records….

The countersuit by the veterans of the VVLF and Sherwood will give the opportunity to prove that the original action by Kerry associates Campbell and Bjornson was frivolous and expose another layer of truth about what really happened in Vietnam.

John Hinderaker, an accomplished lawyer who writes at Powerline, summarizes the veracity of the Swift Boat TV ads.

In short, the charges against John Kerry were substantiated. The only degree to which they are unsubstantiated is in Kerry’s refusal to expose his full records and in finally nailing Kerry down in a court of law. Apparently, Kerry learned a lesson from Alger Hiss, and avoids to go into court.

Read more....

The New York Times’ editor of news surveys and election analysis reports its surprise at a March NYT/CBS poll that, “younger people are more supportive of the war and the president than any other age group.”

Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have lived through many other wars. Twenty eight percent of that age group said the United States did the right thing, while 67 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

This is nothing new, said John Mueller, author of "War, Presidents and Public Opinion," and a professor of political science at Ohio State University. "This is a pattern that is identical to what we saw in Korea and Vietnam, younger people are more likely to support what the president is doing," he said.

The explanations that the NYT’s presents are from cherry-picked quotes by seniors putting down younger voters as ignorant and inexperienced. One senior, 73, says, “They don’t care because there is no draft,” belied by Mueller’s statistics about younger during Vietnam also being more supportive -- despite the impressions created by those highlighted in the media.

If one gets to the end of the NYT’s treatment, a better explanation emerges:

Younger people are also more optimistic. Forty-nine percent of them said the United States was either very likely or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, while only 34 percent of older people said the same thing.

Other explanations might have been offered, if the NYT’s was interested, as more concern for their longer future and their children, than are seniors, having to live in a world besieged by fanatics, for example. Or, being less world-weary and withdrawn, more willing to face challenges. Or being more optimistic or positive in general.

Perhaps a future poll will delve further. Or, perhaps not, not wanting to find answers contrary to the meme.

Recall that during the 2004 campaign, none of the pollsters bothered to ask Vietnam veterans what they thought of John Kerry.

The media treatment of the Marines accused of murdering 24 Iraqis in Haditha exhibits many of the excesses and prejudices as in the Duke “rape” case. The charges fit a template for opposing the war, fed by selective prosecution leaks, which only due to strict evidence requirements and expensive defense lawyers is not railroading the Marines. Nonetheless, the damage to morale in and out of the armed forces, to the reputation of the United States, and to support for the war will have been done, regardless of the ultimate outcome.

Columnist Leonard Pitts comments on the Duke case media coverage:

It requires us to reassess how we know what we know. Is it fact, or just a narrative squeezed through the meat grinder? Truth, or just its emotional equivalent?
Or, as an editor told me once: Be rigorous in fact-checking stuff you don't know. Be more rigorous in fact-checking stuff you do.

Similarly, David Broder comments:

The role of the media in the Duke lacrosse team's phony rape story and the Don Imus' firing left large parts of the so-called establishment press looking embarrassed and besmirched…. Rereading some of the coverage of the case is a painful exercise in journalistic excess – and one-sidedness. … Now we know better. But how often do we have to relearn the lesson that leaks from prosecutors can be biased and unfair?

Last June I wrote about the weakness of apparent evidence leaked by those supposedly close to the prosecution, “The “Fog” in NYT’s Haditha Investigation Story.” Last December, I wrote about the process that will be followed in determining responsibility, and that the media may well have its share, in “U.S. Media May Hope Haditha Charges are Dismissed.”

The weakness of the prosecution’s case may be seen in the immunity deal it just struck with one of the charged Marines, in return for his testimony.

Last week, the North County Times reported that the government's prosecution of the Haditha incident is fraught with problems, according to sources with intimate knowledge of the case.

The difficulties include conflicting statements from Iraqis whose testimony led to the charges and an incomplete forensic reconstruction of the events that have resulted in prosecutors delaying the start of hearings against some of the accused, the sources said.

Also at issue are interrogations of suspects conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Iraq during which agents allegedly refused to provide attorneys for some of those who asked for them and refused the men bathroom breaks, the sources contend.

In January, a team of prosecutors from Camp Pendleton went to Iraq and spent several weeks in Haditha interviewing witnesses and seeing the four houses that were assaulted following the roadside bomb attack.

Part of the reason for that trip, according to several sources, was because the forensic reconstruction done by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was considered lacking.

His attorney hasn’t responded to press inquiries, and the details of the deal haven’t been released. However, of note is that this is not a plea bargain, accepting guilt for a lesser charge, but an immunity, indicating the strong need for the prosecution to bolster its case.

Counsel for another charged Marine does not appear too anxious about this.

"Obviously, the government is looking towards ensuring they secure a conviction on someone at the expense, from their viewpoint, of sacrificing other potential prosecutions," said Mark S. Zaid, one of Wuterich's lawyers. "Its inconsistent with the policy the government says it's trying to enforce ... that there are some kinds of conduct that are not acceptable."

Zaid said the incident was a terrible tragedy and "people clearly died, but this is what happens in the fog of war." He said the Marines were acting as Iraqi "police chaperones one day and Marines the next" and didn't have the training they needed to act as military police.

"The immunity deal doesn't change anything," he said. "The facts are the facts."

Yes, the facts are the facts. The military justice system, compared to the civilian, is particularly suited – by act of Congress – to adjudicating such difficult cases, and does provide for more layers of fairness and review.

When that is done, how will the New York Times report it? If its treatment of its jump-to-conclusion coverage in the Duke case is an indicator, if the Marines are not found guilty or of far reduced charges, the New York Times will not apologize to the Marines or Americans.

I know that one can draw from the Virginia Tech massacre all sorts of extenuated lessons that are off base, and that distract from the facts of the event itself.

Many commentators have remarked that if students or faculty had been allowed to carry firearms at VT, the rampager might have been stopped in his deadly tracks. That is an extenuated argument, but one worth considering. This is another such.

As Judith Klinghoffer says, “I know I am going to get hate mail and I may be rushing to judgment. But it all seems to follow such a familiar pattern,” in writing “As Sheep To The Slaughter Yet Again” at her History News Network blog.

Of course, standing up to bullies is no longer the expected even of trained fighters. How can one expect young people at a university to behave more courageously than British marines confronting Iranian bullies? We better. For as Gandhi expected, in the current atmosphere bullies are multiplying and the price of continuing to go as sheep to slaughter is getting higher and higher by the day.

As individuals, as nations, we see natural running away from vicious challenges to our decency, our way of life, and our very lives. We see those few brave enough to stand against the door denigrated and deserted by their effete critics, while barbaric acts they try and fight to prevent or punish are ignored, excused or even supported.

VT, Flight 93, Iraq are around the corner from all of us.

In 1961, the certified liberal FCC Chairman, Newton Minow, called TV “a vast wasteland,” particularly for including too much entertainment without a message and not including enough public affairs programming. Minow's leadership of the fledgling PBS, with its overwhelming political leaning, exhibits what is deemed suitable public affairs programming -- programming the masses, that is.

Today, liberal critics of the media criticize it for including too much choice. As Adam D. Thierer, author or editor of five books on such topics as intellectual property and media regulation, writes in City Journal, “It’s a Golden Age of media—but not for long, if the Left has its way":

In truth, one can make a strong case that the new media—and the Internet, above all—are facilitating a more rigorous deliberative democracy and a richer sense of community. “In modern American political history, perhaps only the coming of the television age has had as big an impact on our national elections as the Internet has,” observes Raul Fernandez, chief executive of the software firm ObjectVideo. “But the effect of the Internet may be better for the long-term health of our democracy. For while TV emphasizes perception, control, and centralization, Internet-driven politics is about transparency, distribution of effort, and, most important, empowerment and participation—at whatever level of engagement the consumer wants.”

As for community, “the Digital Age hasn’t mechanized humanity and isolated people in a sterile world of machines,” believes Richard Saul Wurman, author of Information Anxiety. The Internet, he points out, has enabled people across the globe to band together and communicate in ways previously unimaginable.

What unifies the two schools of leftist media criticism, beneath their apparent opposition, is pure elitism. Media abundance (which the scarcity critics must implausibly wave away as a mirage) has meant more room for right-of-center viewpoints that, while popular with many Americans, the critics find completely unacceptable….

…, it seems: they won’t rest until all of us are watching, reading, and listening to the content that they prefer.

Unfortunately for the Left, free enterprise and choice does not agree with their agenda. How infuriating is reality!

Pace University will be screening the milestone documentary “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” on campus, April 18th. The event, sponsored by Pace Hillel, will include a speaker from Obsessionthemovie.com and an open forum with a question and answer session following the movie. Pace University is participating in the nation-wide Obsession screening event designated as Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Dozens of colleges across the nation will be showing the film this week as part of the center’s new program, the Terrorism Awareness Project, in order to awaken students and faculty to the gravity of the threat of radical Islam to our nation and civilization.

The event is primarily for students and faculty but is open to the public as well. Pace Hillel President Michael Abdurakhmanov mentioned that he would enjoy seeing local outside support, and asked me to spread the word, so I am writing this as an announcement of the event to readers, colleagues and local media. No RSVP is required, but since seating is limited to 130, and appropriate security will be in place, people interested in attending should arrive early to guarantee a seat. Event information is as follows:

Pace University
1 Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038
1-800-874-PACE
Entrance: Spruce Street - use the side gate entrance to walk through security and up to the second floor, Lecture Hall South. There will be signs.
Time: 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Copies of the film and refreshments will be available for free

This screening at Pace in particular, is a spectacular breakthrough for academic freedom due to Michael’s courage to stand up to Pace administrators and the campus chapter of the Muslim Students Association, that launched a campaign to silence him and censor the film, complaining that it was critical of Islam and would incite hatred against Muslims. His successful battle since November that I’ve been covering and actively supporting here on Democracy Project culminated in Pace President Caputo issuing a public apology to Hillel and the Pace Jewish community. Once in the glare of the media spotlight, Caputo revealed the shame of an academic institution that was caught red-handed suppressing free thought and speech, admitting, “…Hillel was coerced and intimidated into not showing the film Obsession last semester.” He vowed to restore a commitment to “a University community that values its diversity of thought” and “an atmosphere at Pace in which a free exchange of ideas may flourish.”

In a letter of gratitude to all supporters, Michael wrote: “Only several hours after the situation went public the support from across the country came pouring in. What seemed to be a horrible ordeal for any student to go through now became one of the best moments of their lives…. Students in this country should know and be encouraged to stand up for what they feel is right and to never feel alone.”

Once the injustices were exposed in the media, calls for interviews flooded in from far and wide. Concerned lawyers offered advice and put legal pressure on the school, and dozens of companies and organizations such as The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and many others wrote letters and called Pace administrators to demand that they right the wrongs. Michael wrote: “Due to all of these combined efforts the Pace Administration released a public apology to the Pace Hillel for the actions taken against them this past fall.” The University is also making amends with plans for a special "Spiritual Center" for Hillel and other religious organizations on campus.

The importance of this film cannot be stressed enough, as well as the efforts by courageous individuals to promote it in the hostile environment for free expression on campus. This is the most urgent battle of our time, since Obsession reveals a clear perspective that is rejected on campus and ignored in the media. Rather academia and journalists schooled in radical thought constantly condemn the Bush administration and disregard and botch world history and the real root causes of the present war against the West.

High School teachers and professors who have already shown the film in their classes have said that many of their students came away with a totally different perspective on the war in Iraq. While Muslim students complained that it is anti-Islam, as a professor of International Relations mentioned in an email, others realized that the Islamic world wasn’t suddenly transformed into a Jihad against the West because of the current foreign policy of the Bush administration as they had come to believe. Students said they were shocked to learn the truth about the radical Islamists vow to destroy the infidel Americans and Jews. One High School teacher who recently showed the film in class said her students were stunned by the scenes of “Death to America” chants in mosques and madrassas and the suicide bombing footage showing the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in the name of fundamentalist Islamic theology.

We must all applaud and actively support the efforts of students and faculty who are bold enough to speak out and show this documentary on campus and in their classrooms. These are the front lines in the war of ideas and it is our civic duty to be willing to join the battle in whatever capacity we can.

Ah, the irony of the Democrat leadership’s statist ideology contradicted by two of its core constituencies. Let’s see who the Democrat leaders decide to screw: minorities or ideologues.

In their drive to oppose the private market expansion of Medicare benefits via higher benefit HMO’s, Democrats have been calling to cut back on the subsidies to thes