The National Association of Scholars has of late published a series of essays by higher education reformers under the rubric, "If I Ran the Zoo."

Today, John Leo, one of our staunchest opponents of the thought police and the editor of the Manhattan Institute's higher ed project, Minding the Campus, has outdone his peers with a Seuss-like poem that doubles as a dream reform plan for academe:

If I ran the campus I’d start out anew I’d make a few changes That’s just what I’d do

Here’s a simple suggestion
(Avoiding all fads)
I’d have some professors
Who teach undergrads

I hear you all snicker
I hear you all scoff
But I’ve got to believe
That many a prof
Would thrill to be meeting
A freshman or soph

TAs are beloved
They’re always the rage
Because they all work
For a minimum wage
(But do students want teachers
Who are just their own age?)

Remedial classes
I’m sure is a must
For teachers who give
Only A or A-plus

They really must practice
At home, if they please,
Traumatically giving
Some Bs and some Cs

This is just a taste; read the rest for an evening laugh.

Not having Boone Pickens’ millions, I wager a dollar to your dime if you can prove, by Barack Obama’s own definition, that he is patriotic.

At his Independence, Missouri speech (live stream here, or text here or AP report here) today on patriotism, Obama says:

I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice – to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause.

All you have to do is prove that Barack Obama ever personally sacrificed anything tangible “on behalf of a wider cause” instead of just benefiting and personally profiting.

That includes working in the various social services he mentions.

Here’s a partial list of how Obama might make himself truly patriotic, by his own definition.

• Publicly and explicitly denounce and separate himself from his radical supporters who have behaved, as Obama says, “by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself – by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day .”
That includes MoveOn.org, whose ad Obama mentions as unpatriotic for attacking “a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.” That will include John Kerry, as well, who has never renounced his VVAW activities.

• Divorce his wife, who said until recently she had no pride in America. As Obama says, “I believe those who attack America's flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.”
.
• Personally contribute from his wealth and show how he has ever volunteered for social services. As Obama says, “not only those who have signed up to fight for our country in distant lands, but those who are fighting for a better America here at home, by teaching in underserved schools, or caring for the sick in understaffed hospitals, or promoting more sustainable energy policies in their local communities.”

Then, we might see Obama truly sacrifice, not only his material benefits from being a politician, but many of his most ardent supporters, to be a patriot.

Obama's very thin record, not only in itself disqualifies him to be president, but what record there is of self-promotion and personal profit instead of any personal sacrifice.

READ about some of Obama's fibs in his speech.

The New York Times reporter Kate Zernike should be the source of a new term for purposely slanted, incompetent reporting: “Zernikizing.”

Her latest contribution to establishing the term is “Veterans Fight to Reclaim the Name ‘Swift Boat’. ”

Zernike starts with an important point, one often made by conservatives:

“Swift boat” has become the synonym for the nastiest of campaign smears, a shadow that hangs over the presidential race as pundits wait to proclaim that the Swiftboating has begun and candidates declare that they will not be Swiftboated.

Swift boat veterans — especially those who had nothing to do with the group that attacked Senator John Kerry’s military record in the 2004 election — want their good name back, and the good names of the men not lucky enough to come home alive.

Notice anything missing? You won’t find it in her piece: it is the Left that coined the term and who repeatedly use it.

Notice anything else missing? You won’t find it in her piece: it is conservatives who have repeatedly protested the pejorative use of the term, as charges made by the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth were substantiated beyond a doubt, like Kerry’s imaginative Christmas In Cambodia, and many others were well-documented by Swiftee witnesses.

So, Zernike’s undermining of these witnesses is displayed in her misleading statistic:

By the [Swift Boat Sailors Association] association’s count, about 3,600 men served aboard Swift boats in Vietnam, 600 officers and 3,000 enlisted. About 200 signed the letter that became the basis of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign in 2004.

Then, Zernike takes up the cause of several of the Swiftboat veterans who worked for Kerry in 2004 to collect on a bet by Boone Pickens.

This month, a group of veterans who served with Mr. Kerry took up the challenge by Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove anything in the group’s campaign against Mr. Kerry. [emphasis added]

Again, Zernike omits that Pickens says he challenged Kerry to disprove the ads, not anything else. Zernike could have performed some elementary journalism, like seeking witnesses, but didn’t. Here, the founder and editor of the American Spectator, at whose November 6 dinner Pickens made the wager, says Pickens said “ads.” Investigative journalist Thomas Lipscomb performed basic journalism, and quickly found two other attendees at the dinner who affirm Pickens said “ads.”

Together with Zernike’s discredited earlier mouthing of Kerry contentions (see here and here, here and here), Lipscomb may be justified in calling Zernike the “New York Times kneepads in residence reporter” for John Kerry. She certainly deserves journalism's Lewinski Award.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt05KC3Add8

In another one of those long, in this case 4278 words, articles by the New York Times, “Weighing the Costs of a Look Inside the Heart,” it again demonstrates its failure to conduct or convey elemental journalistic research. And, again, an agenda appears at work. The result is that certain key facts and distinctions are omitted, which surely could have found space within this long article, that would have conveyed more and important information.

The agenda is rationing of health care. Rationing is inherent in the various schemes for “universal” or “single-payer” or “government-run” or “nationalized” health care. There’s no doubt that some degree of rationing already occurs for those relatively few who truly can’t afford insurance or co-pays but earn a bit too much to benefit from government programs. But, by shifting their earnings and taxes to the benefit of those few, the schemes would subject everyone else to rationing.

I’m a decades-long participant in HMOs, and even advocate them in areas like mine where their panels are so large and inclusive of the quality providers that there’s nothing material to be gained by not being in one. However, most prefer more freedom of choice, as in PPOs, though their premiums are higher, and polls consistently show overwhelming majorities not favoring government-run health care. The fear is tangible and sometimes real that in case of an extreme circumstance or particular set of facts they will be denied covered care.

It’s true, as the NYTs article says, that we collectively overuse medical care, and that costs. The problem is that, first, most of that is a personal decision and, second, the only way to drastically cut that cost would be wholesale imposed rationing that would often discriminate against many cases where the extra measure would save lives or make them more salutary. Third, many of the treatments proposed for rationing show demonstrated benefits but are, while not 100% proven – whatever that means, if even possible, discriminated against due to their cost. In that case, it’s ironic that those who advocate greater preventive medicine, also advocate against preventive medicine.

The gist of the NYTs article is that overuse of heart CT scans is expensive, deliver large doses of radiation, may be spurred by self-interest profits by some doctor owners of CT machines, and the test and diagnoses not certain. As generalizations, that may be so. But, the NYTs fails to mention there are large-scale, reputable studies of those cases where it is proper and beneficial.

For example, the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology Foundation in 2007 examined all the literature and studies to reach a “Clinical Expert Consensus Document on Coronary Artery Calcium Scoring By Computed Tomography in Global Cardiovascular Risk Assessment and in Evaluation of Patients With Chest Pain.” Patients who either score low or high (high already evident for additional treatment) on risk predictors are not indicated for the test. Patients who are scored intermediate risks are indicated for the test, as “such patients may be reclassified to a higher risk status based on high CAC score, and subsequent patient management may be modified”. Many other peer journal articles affirm this finding. This test, calcium scoring, is – as the NYTs mentions only briefly in passing – “a less extensive form of scanning,” but is grouped in with the NYTs negativity toward coronary CT scanning in general.

The NYTs article ends with a quote from an opponent of CT scanning, “We’re spending a lot of money on technology of unclear benefit and risk.” The NYTs want us to forfeit individual or independent expert judgments to centralized government-run entities whose track-record on cost-benefit analysis is proven repeatedly faulty and causing higher risks. No thank you to a British National Health Service.

Barack Obama’s new “presidential” seal declares “Vero Possumus.” As pointed out here, those familiar with possums would translate that as “"It's the truth, I'm lying like a possum!" It’s more like “laying,” but free speech is the road kill.

Last week I presented agreeing opinions from leading campaign law attorneys, Left and Right, on the troubles with their being overly complex, out of date, and futile (here and here).

The leading “progressive” campaign law attorney, Bob Bauer, now serves Barack Obama. Bauer presents a useful typography re: critics of campaign finance law. Bauer, also, points out there are “new approaches.” But, he fails to mention what they might be, and his link to a conference last year only says, “The details of a fresh program were left to another day, but the presenters were prepared to consider how resources for political action and mobilization might be supplied, not restricted.”

Obama has a good advocate in that respect, Obama’s online fundraising outstripping former efforts.

One wouldn’t expect Bauer to, then, reflect that since all the law’s barriers to free speech haven’t stopped candidates from tapping seamy sources, that only leaves the independent citizen at a speech disadvantage since they can’t afford to deal with the complexities.

Two critics from the Right, however, are more forthcoming. Former Federal Election Commission chair Brad Smith points out, more even-handedly,

… both major party candidates seem determined to make one thing clear - this election is not about you, your hopes, your ambitions, your desires for government policy. No, this election is all about them, and their plans for you….

But what Obama actually said was that he believes that campaign contributions are corrupting, except that his donors, and he, are somehow different - uncorruptable, unlike the rest of you slobs out there. Moreover, Obama wanted to take tax money, it appears, but not if the rest of us were still allowed to speak. …

McCain's camp made equally clear the contempt it has for voter participation in campaigns: “[Senator McCain] wishes that 527s did not exist on either side,” said McCain strategist Steve Schmidt. "[McCain] abhors these groups,” added John Weaver, the Arizona senator’s former chief strategist. Damn citizens, talking about things the candidates don't want to talk about!

What kind of campaign is it, when the two leading candidates seem to be working tirelessly to keep the public on the sidelines? What does it mean when the two leading candidates think that the voices of citizens interfere with their campaigns - their plans to tell America what is good for them?

Remember that this fall - this election isn't about you - it's about them. And remember that when someone - McCain, Obama, Democracy 21, Common Cause, whomever - says we need more "campaign finance reform." It isn't about making you heard, it's about making them heard.

Ed Morrissey also calls a possum a possum:

Now Obama wants to generate massive amounts of private donations from supporters of the public-financing system in order to gain a money advantage over an opponent who remains in the public financing system that Obama lionized. The only “independence” this represents is an independence of Obama from his principles, and that applies to anyone who donates to this effort while supporting public financing.

We, the people, are treated as dumb possums, free speech road kill. The rising and overwhelming hypocrisy of campaign finance law advocates during this campaign is another reason so many who are serious about public policy are turned off, while screeds from yahoos and apologetics from hacks seem to fill and contaminate public discourse.

Few remember that there were more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than of Palestinians from Israel. In 1948 there were 856,000 Jews living in Arab countries. By 2005, only about 5,000.

This Monday, through Wednesday, in London a cooperative of 77 Jewish communities and organizations in 20 countries, Justice For Jews, will hold a conference and briefing to Parliament on the plight of these Jews.

"When the issue of refugees is raised within the context of the Middle East, people invariably refer to Palestinian refugees," Justice for Jews said in a statement. "There is almost no awareness of the fact that 850,000 Jews living in Arab countries were forced out of their homes during the period surrounding Israel's creation."

The congress aims to highlight the human rights violations and the individual and communal losses suffered by members of Jewish communities that had lived for centuries in the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf and who "were stripped of their jobs, businesses, homes, passports and ancient heritage by most Arab governments," according to the organizers of the two-day conference. …

Historian Martin Gilbert will speak on the "Historical Narrative and the UK's Response to Middle East Refugees," and former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler will speak on "International Law and Middle East Refugees."

More than $100 billion of Jewish individual and communal assets were confiscated by Arab Governments. One of the objectives of Justice for Jews is to include recompense for these assets in any larger considerations of Palestinian grievances. Over the last 60 years, tens of billions of dollars have been disbursed by the international community to provide services and assistance to Palestinian refugees. During that same period, there were no UN resolutions; no support provided by UN agencies; nor any financial assistance forthcoming from the international community to ameliorate the plight of Jewish and other refugees from Arab countries.

Former US presidents have recognized the justice of this:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made the following assertion after the rights of Jews displaced from Arab countries were discussed at ‘Camp David II’ in July, 2000 (From White House Transcript of Israeli television interview):
“There will have to be some sort of international fund set up for the refugees. There is, I think, some interest, interestingly enough, on both sides, in also having a fund which compensates the Israelis who were made refugees by the war, which occurred after the birth of the State of Israel. Israel is full of people, Jewish people, who lived in predominantly Arab countries who came to Israel because they were
made refugees in their own land”.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, after successfully brokering the Camp David Accords and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, stated in a press conference on Oct. 27, 1977:
“Palestinians have rights… obviously there are Jewish refugees…they have the same rights as others do.”

The David Project’s award winning documentary,

The Forgotten Refugees explores the history and destruction of Middle Eastern Jewish communities, some of which had existed for over 2,500 years. It chronicles the impact of the Arab Muslim conquest, the development of Judeo-Arab culture, and the modern rise of Arab nationalism that drove out hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes and communities. This destruction is a significant loss for the Jewish people and for the Middle East.

Featuring testimony from Jews who fled Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Morocco and Iran, the film explores the rich heritage and destruction of the Middle East's age-old Jewish communities. Personal stories of refugees are interspersed with dramatic archival footage, including the mission to rescue Yemenite Jews.

View excerpts from the film.

Andrew Bostom provides MUCH more details in Remembering a Mass Jewish Exodus.

Katie Couric’s CBS News tonight features “Caring For America's Women Warriors.”

Around 250,000 female veterans and active-duty women use health care from the Veterans Administration….

"This is the first time in our nation's history that we've had this many females, and especially combat veterans who are females, entering the VA system," Duckworth says. "I don't think, overall, any of the systems are quite ready for that."

A recent study found that outpatient care for women lagged behind men in a third of the facilities, something the VA is working hard to correct. Currently, only a third of VA hospitals have seperate clinics for women.

Dr. Val Jones interviews Dr. Iffath Hoskins at Jones’ blog. Hoskins is a leading OB/GYN, a Reserve Marine who served in Iraq. Hoskins comment:

Now about 15% of military personnel are women. Of course, women have many of the same sorts of health problems as men (migraine headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc.) and the VA system is adept at handling those concerns. But when it comes to female reproductive health, contraception, pregnancy, and disorders of menstruation, the VA system is simply not equiped to handle that.

Hoskins also speaks of a survey she took in Iraq:

Overall the survey clearly showed that there was never a concern about whether or not the women were weapons-qualified. The respondents did not believe that the presence of women affected the success of their mission - but it certainly created distractions.

The VA better speed up its PMS care for these weapons qualified women warriors.

When any federal agency grows from a few hundred to over ten thousand, and is affecting decisions made by a major federal agency right down to the lowest level, one would expect both that problems would occur and that they’d be investigated.

That investigation has not occurred for JAG, the military’s Judge Advocate General, whose legal officers are now present right down to the company level.

I previously wrote about how “JAG Needs Refocus,” and that “JAG At Center Of Lawfare Vs. Warfare Conflict.”

Now, with the runamock trials of the Haditha Marines, their present and future effect on combat operations and morale, as well as the concentration of the military upon developing better counterinsurgency doctrine and tactics, the role of JAG urgently requires in-depth investigation.

One would think the Defense Department’s Inspector General might be a good place to start. It says its mission is “Promote integrity, accountability, and improvement of Department of Defense personnel, programs and operations to support the Department's mission and serve the public interest.” And, the Inspector General Act of 1978 doesn’t restrict the IG’s scope.

In the Congress’ zeal to investigate anything to do with trying to knock down the Bush administration, how about demanding an investigation of an agency that has grown during his administration into a national embarrassment and possibly deadly one at that.

The decision by court martial judge Col. Folsom of undue command influence in the prosecution of Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is being appealed by the prosecution.

The watershed ruling found that the legal adviser, Col. John Ewers, should not have sat in on meetings and discussions with two generals who have overseen the case. That degree of participation by Ewers, who also investigated the killings in the city of Haditha, Iraq, irreparably tainted the decision to charge and prosecute Chessani, Folsom ruled.

The notice of appeal delays the case indefinitely. The appeal document was signed by the lead prosecutor in the case, Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, and sent to Chessani's attorneys late Wednesday….

"In our opinion, the ruling is appeal-proof," Rooney said Wednesday during a telephone interview. "He spent a lot time saying why he ruled the way he did, citing numerous instances of case law to back up his opinion."

The appeal goes to the Navy and Marine Court of Criminal Appeals. Prosecutors have 20 days to write their arguments and provide them to the defense, which has 20 days from receipt of that document to respond.

Folsom's rationale, Rooney said, included a finding that prosecutors failed to meet the required proof beyond a reasonable doubt that command influence didn't harm Chessani.

"The court can only overturn the ruling if it's clearly erroneous, and the evidence is clear that it isn't," he said.

The appeals court is not under any time constraint to issue its finding. Whichever way it does rule can be further challenged before the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

"We feel very good about our chances," Rooney said. "The unfortunate thing is that Col. Chessani has to continue to sit behind a desk for an indefinite amount of time while it's decided. I would have hoped someone would have looked at Judge Folsom's ruling and said, 'Enough is enough, let this Marine retire.'"

The Navy-Marine Corps Court of Appeal “reviews all petitions for extraordinary relief properly filed before it.” If the prosecution is denied there, the only grounds for reversal of Col. Folsom’s ruling being legal error or factual insufficiency, the prosecution may appeal again to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) and from there to the US Supreme Court, the prosecution facing the same task of proving legal error or factual insufficiency.

The prosecution’s zeal may be tied to the same grounds for dismissal -- undue command influence -- of the charges against the remaining Haditha defendant, SSgt Wuterich.

Although a different judge is assigned to Wuterich's case, his attorneys have a similar motion pending.

"We believe the same defect exists in our case as in Chessani's case," Wuterich attorney Neal Puckett said.

Instead of this, likely, losing waste of everyone’s time, and more of Chessani’s life, the prosecution could have chosen to either request a reinvestigation of the charges and refiling or of ending this farce.

The JAG prosecution is, instead, making a farce of itself, or adding to the already evident display of farce.

SEE DOD Inspector General Should Inspect JAG

OF COURSE see Michelle Malkin

[HT: Theo]

Barack Obama and Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari gave two different versions of their phone conversation to the media. Who’s lying? If not lying, at least, this portends added confusion in effecting policy in this critical region. Obama is meeting today, for the first time, with his foreign policy advisory board. Perhaps they can help straighten out Obama’s message, if not his thinking, although given the prominent place of such as Madame Albright that is a lot of hope to have.

After Barack Obama’s phone conversation with Iraq’s foreign minister two days ago, Obama rushed to the media to say, as ABC reported:

Asked if there's any flexibility on how troop withdrawal would play out, Obama repeated his longstanding belief that U.S. troops can be removed from Iraq "at a pace of one to two brigades per month."

"At that pace we would have our combat troops out in approximately 16 months. I've also consistently said that I will consult with military commanders on the ground and that we will always be open to the possibility of tactical adjustments. …

Asked by ABC News if Zebari expressed any concern that the withdrawal of U.S. troops under an Obama administration would undo any security gains, Obama said Zebari did not raise that issue….

However, today’s Washington Post editorial reports on its board’s meeting with Iraq’s foreign minister about what WaPo calls Obama’s “badly outdated plan for Iraq.”:

Mr. Obama was trying to distinguish himself in the Democratic primary race by offering a timetable for withdrawal. Nineteen months later, the situation in Iraq has changed dramatically, with violence down 75 percent from its peak and the Iraqi government and army in control of most of the country. But Mr. Obama has not altered his position: He still proposes withdrawing most U.S. troops according to a fixed timetable, set to the most rapid pace at which commanders have said American forces could be pulled out.

Mr. Zebari, who has served as foreign minister in every Iraqi government since 2003, finds Mr. Obama's proposal worrying. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, he said that after all the pain and sacrifices of the past five years, "we are just turning the corner in Iraq." A precipitous withdrawal, he said, "would create a huge vacuum and undo all the gains and achievements. And the others" -- enemies of the United States -- "would celebrate."

Mr. Zebari said he told Mr. Obama that "Iraq is not an island." In other words, an American withdrawal that destabilized the country would also roil the region around it and embolden U.S. adversaries such as al-Qaeda and Iran. "We have a deadly enemy," Mr. Zebari said. "When he sees that you commit yourself to a certain timetable, he will use this to increase pressure and attacks, to make it look as though he is forcing you out. We have many actors who would love to take advantage of that opportunity." Mr. Zebari says he believes U.S. forces can and should be drawn down. His point is that reductions should be made gradually, as the Iraqi army becomes stronger.

Jenifer Rubin at Commentary’s Contentions blog concurs:

I speculated that something seemed odd about Barack Obama’s account of his conversation with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshay Zebari. Obama said that Zebari didn’t express any concern about Obama’s immediate withdrawal plans. Well, according to Zebari that is a lie. …

There seems little reason for Zebari to lie about his private meeting with Obama. That leaves us to conclude that Obama either didn’t listen to or didn’t understand what Zebari said or misrepresented what he heard from the Foreign Minister. That is deeply troubling. An explanation seems in order from Obama.

ABC’s Jake Tapper also notes that “Obama and Iraqi Foreign Minister Have Different Memories of their Conversation.”

For blow-up (pardon the expression) go here.

Denver in the summer is more pleasant than Chicago, but it remains to be seen how many protestors will trek to the Democratic Convention in late August. There are fissures among protest groups, between the more and less radical (“conservative liberal groups” they’re called). There are false presentations of self as non-violent by one of the groups, Recreate-68, while their own statements provide some doubt of their pledge. Then, there’s the self-styled anarchists, whose latest pronouncement is full of threat.

These range from reclaiming space occupied by the police state, to targeting corporate fundraisers and the city’s infrastructure of capitalism, to blockading the spectacle of delegate voting….

The alliance between the supposedly more restrained R-68 and the anarchists is merely tactical:

The task of R68 has been to lay the logistical foundations for the protests. Unconventional Denver has a much narrower mission of organizing direct action at the convention. R68 has had a lot of media exposure because press presence is part of their role. In addition, to say that R68 is overshadowing the work of anarchists is to truly misunderstand both R68 and its relationship with Unconventional Denver. From the beginning, R68 has been a solid group of radicals friendly to anarchist politics, with many core members being self-described anarchists themselves. Unconventional Denver is working closely not only with R68, but also with a number of other anti-DNC organizers, to ensure an effective and supported strategy of direct action.

The Denver police are preparing, among other measures stocking up on pepper spray. The ACLU is suing for the Denver police to reveal its preparations.

City officials say releasing the information is "contrary to the public interest" because it could disclose important tactical information, potentially jeopardizing security.

Will the Democrats welcome their security being jeopardized, as they are unconcerned about the rest of America’s? Tune in the last week of August.

Stephen Boyd, a coach and teacher, served with the National Guard in Mosul in 2005-6 and is now returned, in southern Iraq. He writes his hometown newspaper on what’s changed, for the better, about the horrors he’s seen (read the entire at the link), and what we should do now.

My first tour here was in 2005-2006, and I was in Mosul (Ninevah in the Bible where Jonah’s tomb is today) in northern Iraq and in western Baghdad. Mosul is a city of about 2 million people and my job there was working with the Iraqi police, army and border patrol. I traveled to Tal Afar where we went block by block in the city running out the Al Qaeda terrorists. The terrorists were torturing and murdering the local population, and were trying to establish Islamic law there in September 2005….

I cannot tell you how many times local Iraqis would say to me in Mosul and Baghdad to please get rid of these people….

I don’t think the average American knows what is really happening in Iraq today. I can tell from being here 2 years ago that things are changing. Our mission now is not mostly patrols but what General Petraeus calls counterinsurgency operations (COIN). The goal is to put the Iraqi army out front, like we did in Basrah and Sadr City recently, and let them fight these terrorists and thugs. It is also to teach the Iraqis to be good citizens, educate them so they can get better jobs and learn to read and write, and find out what is driving the insurgency because unlike the Vietnam Conflict there is no government with an army trying to control the government, just Islamic fascists who want a Taliban like state here…. I work with detainees that are going to be released and to get them to put their weapons down and help stabilize Iraq….

These are guys who a year ago were fighting against us, but are now being paid to hunt down Al Qaeda, foreign fighters and other terrorists. When I was here last time these places in the Al Anbar were death traps and we called it the “wild, wild west” since it was located in western Iraq and so dangerous. Now there is very little violence there…. Many of them have been trained in Iran, and Iran uses them to spy on us. Iran tries really hard not to leave their “fingerprints” on any of the attacks in Iraq. These are the people we are dealing with in Iraq and if we leave now with the mission incomplete, these groups will fight and gain control of Iraq or cut it into pieces….

Many people will say that these people have been fighting for a thousand years and can’t be helped. Others will say we should never have come to Iraq. The truth is that if we leave Iraq today, then Al Qaeda and the religious extremists like the Takfiris and Moqtada Al Sadr win, and these groups will turn Iraq into violent turmoil. The best thing America can do is see this mission through. I believe the mainstream media has failed Americans. I noticed that the mainstream media was missing when we were opening new schools, water treatment plants and a hospital in Iraq when I was in Mosul. They were also missing when I stood in a tower in Mosul in August 2005 as I watched thousands of Iraqis walk for miles and wait for hours in 100 plus degrees weather to come vote in their elections. How many Americans would stand in that heat and wait for hours? I watched a young man carry his crippled father on his shoulders just so he could come vote. The media showed the horrible pictures of Abu Ghraib, but where were they when we opened up the vocational schools here at Bucca for 18,000 detainees? Where were they when my friend’s patrol in Baquoba picked up a little girl whose legs were blown off in an IED attack by terrorists and helped her get prosthetic legs and now she can walk again? These are the things Americans should hear about. Not just the bombs and deaths. Americans should be proud of what they are doing in Iraq.

And, proud of young men like Stephen Boyd.

Earlier this morning I predicted a punt by the military judge in Lt. Col. Chessani’s court martial, not dismissing but sending the case for a new review by the now commanding general at Camp Pendleton. Instead, the judge has dismissed the charges, but “without prejudice,” which means almost the same as a punt because the charges can be refiled, then passed on by the now commanding general at Camp Pendleton. However, as the AP reports, judge “Folsom barred Marine Forces Central Command from future involvement in the case.”

Realistically, that “involvement” will still occur, but informally and more hidden.

The Marine Corps JAG should finally disavow its command politicized rush to judgments, condemnatory trumped up charges, and stop this nonsense and the judicial torture of Lt. Col. Chessani.

Michelle Malkin has the appropriate cartoon. To fight the smears, Malkin suggests, "Call John “Cold-blooded” Murtha for comment: 202-225-2065."

Whether judge Folsom found then-Lt. Gen. Mattis' testimony believable or not that there wasn't "undue command influence" upon him, undue command influence can also occur by "appearance" of such, and Mattis including the prosecution's investigator in 25 meetings to evaluate the case certainly is a bad appearance.

Reuters reports,

"We are grateful for the judge's ruling today. He was truly the last sentinel to guard against unlawful command influence," said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, which represented Chessani.

"Tragically, our own government eliminated one of its most effective combat commanders," Thompson said in reference to Chessani. "The insurgents are laughing in their caves."

As usual, local North County Times reporter Mark Walker has the necessary detail to understand the ruling and what comes next:

Prosecutors have three days to appeal the ruling. If they don't, the judge, Col. Steven Folsom, ordered that a new investigation be conducted. If the charges are refiled, he said, they must be approved by a senior Marine officer who has had no association with the case.

Lt. Col. Chessani’s trials aren’t yet over.

But, as one of his lawyers says,

"We're cautiously optimistic the government won't refile the charges," said one of Chessani's attorneys, Brian Rooney. "We hope that it's over. It should be over. We believe it never should have got this far."

Yesterday’s post, “Who says Right and Left can’t agree?” regarding the newly expansive D.C. federal appeals court ruling on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law elicited critical comments from leading legal experts from Right and Left.

Today I received the following email from the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, Brad Smith. Smith is characterized as of the Right, and Bob Bauer identifies himself as of the Left (aside from being Barack Obama’s campaign law counsel). Note Smith’s opening paragraph.

Email Received 6/17/08

Hi Bruce,

I just got back from vacation late last night, so I haven't read the opinion. Bauer's probably got it right, and I haven't even read his post.

Here's the long, legal dilemma - what the reformers want, and apparently the Court agrees, is a standard that has no limits other than the act of coordination and a communication "relative to" a federal election. The FEC now will probably give them a ruling based on something perhaps, like the PASO standard (does the ad "promote, attack, support or oppose" a candidate) plus the fact of coordination. The problem is, that standard is possibly unconstitutionally vague except as applied to political parties, and probably overbroad as well. Alleging "coordination" is very easy. Consider virtually every group that might make independent expenditures in this presidential campaign - NRA, Sierra Club, RTL, Planned Parenthood, NAACP, etc. - virtually all will have had contact with Senator Obama or Senator McCain. So it is then easy to allege that their ads were "coordinated." You'll know the line: "We know they met, and now we know the groups are running ads praising the candidate or criticizing his opponent. We need an investigation!" And these investigations are very intrusive, necessarily demanding to know who met with whom, what they discussed, access to policy and strategy memos, etc.

But it goes further. With no "content" limit (other than the vague "PASO"), it will apply even to groups that don't do independent expenditures. Say the group I formed, the Center for Competitive Politics (are you familiar with CCP? You should be - www.campaignfreedom.org) meets with Senator McConnell to discuss deregulatory reform of campaign finance. We then write an article and issue a press release praising McConnell for taking the lead in defending free speech; we've not got a communication that "promotes" or "supports" him, and we've got at least some coordination of our activity, and possibly direct discussions about a press release.

Anyway, that's the legal. Here's my comment: "The FEC now will probably pass a rule that the reformers have been asking for. After they do, that rule will almost certainly be challenged as unconstitutional. So this should drag on a few more years." By the way, the reformers may have indirectly helped the forces of freedom - I think they will lose the constitutional suit on the provision, and since the court of appeals has determined that's what the statute requires, it may get the entire provision of the statute struck.

Brad

The prediction that the Haditha charges against the Marines there would come a cropper has repeatedly come true. Now, I’ll predict that today’s ruling by military judge Marine Col. Steven Folsom in the matter of undue command influence in the charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani will be a punt, rather than an outright dismissal.

The punt will be for the current commanding general at Camp Pendleton, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, to reconsider the charges for whether a court martial is warranted. The previous recommendation by revered then-Lt. Gen. James Mattis is tainted by the presence in his counsels of the officer, Col. John Ewers, who led parts of the investigations into the incident that the prosecution has depended upon. Mattis, on the stand in the prosecution’s defense against undue command influence, denies any influence by Ewers.

Judge Folsom has shown himself not particularly friendly toward Chessani’s defense team. All but one of the defense’s allegations of undue command influence were not upheld, for example. And, it’s difficult to believe that Folsom would, in effect, declare Mattis unbelievable, by dismissing the charges against Chessani.

Therefore, I expect a punt by the judge, and Chessani's judicial torture to be prolonged.

Stay tuned today.

UPDATE: Almost a punt. See ruling. Time for JAG persecution, er prosecution, to knock it off.

The Huffington Post carries a piece by a Jeffrey Klein that purports to knock down John McCain’s military record, in service of Barack Obama’s campaign that his own clueless military-less experience is somehow adequate.

The Klein charge is that McCain’s record is embellished by a claim that McCain was recommended for an admiral’s star. However, it is not McCain who ever made this claim, but a former Secretary of the Navy. The former Secretary may or may not have faulty memory, and can quickly clear this up. But, for HuffPo to feature this as somehow delegitimizing McCain is absurd gutter journalism.

It’s what we’re becoming accustomed to in service of self-haloed Obama.

In direct interference in US foreign policy and the execution of the war in Iraq, Barack Obama today told the Iraqi foreign minister, according to the New York Times’ Caucus blog report,

While the Bush administration would like to see an agreement reached before the summer’s political conventions, Mr. Obama said today that he opposed such a timetable.

“My concern is that the Bush administration, in a weakened state politically, ends up trying to rush an agreement that in some ways might be binding to the next administration, whether it’s my administration or Senator McCain’s administration,” Mr. Obama said.

According to Obama, “The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that’s currently made.”
What else could he say when confronted with such effrontery by someone not the president who might be.

The CBS report on the phone conversation doesn’t think it’s significant enough to mention this part of their conversation, nor that regardless of the progress that’s been made Obama says he’s firm on withdrawing US troops quickly. Jenifer Rubin at Commentary’s Contentions blog, however, correctly sums it up: “Great Surge, Let’s Quit.”

The Washington Post’s editorial today says of the agreement,

It means that Iraq, a country with the world's second largest oil reserves and a strategic linchpin of the Middle East, just might emerge from the last five years of war and turmoil as an American ally, even if its relations with Iran remain warm. So it’s hard to fathom why Democrats in Congress have joined Ayatollah Khamenei in denouncing the U.S.-Iraqi agreements even before they are written….

Ed Morrissey comments,

So why haven’t the Democrats shown more enthusiasm? They would have to admit that they were wrong about the surge, wrong about Maliki, and wrong to declare defeat fourteen months ago. Democrats from Barack Obama down have insisted that the US should abandon Iraq as a failed mission rather than adjust to better strategies. Had the Bush administration listened to them, Iran would already be in charge of Iraq through Moqtada al-Sadr.

Another example to add to the many that Barack Obama is a dangerous poseur.

Did the D.C. federal appeals court overstep in its judgment last week that Federal Elections Commission rules should be rewritten as stricter? That was my opinion on the rising of the McCain-Feingold Ghoul.

Who says Right and Left can’t agree? Below, with permission, is cross-posted the entire blog entry by Barack Obama’s campaign law advisor, Bob Bauer. Bauer also served as campaign law counsel to the Democrats in the House and Senate. Bauer exposes “the superficiality of the Court’s reasoning.”

Bauer is not an outright opponent of McCain-Feingold, but he is both a learned and practical critic. We occasionally correspond, I commenting he often sounds like a conservative, he replying he’s a staunch progressive. Perhaps it’s just that Bauer applies – pardon the term, since he takes it to task below – common-sense. As Bauer says, “the Court’s performance was exceptionally unpersuasive.”

This case is ripe for appeal to the Supreme Court. How it may decide is an interesting question, as it has restricted other campaign law impositions on free speech but also been respectful of literal language in laws.

Aside from public disclosure of contributors, McCain-Feingold has contributed little to better or cleaner politics. Instead, it has added layers of convoluted avoidance, and even concentrated more power over elections in those who can afford to maneuver the maze. Bauer believes there’s more to be saved, or new approaches to consider. I read his blog column daily, and thus far have found it “exceptionally unpersuasive” – to borrow Bauer’s term again – on this score. But, reading his posts are important to understand a strong strand in the ongoing debate.

Allison Hayward, former FEC attorney, whose blog has been inactive of late, replied to my email for comment:

I'm not blogging much these days - have pressing deadlines.

It's a coherent, incomplete opinion. It is based entirely on administrative law doctrine, with no respect at all for the constitutional issues the FEC also must face. It is written as though the Court's latest word on campaign finance regulation, in Wisconsin Right to Life, hadn't even happened. It pretends like the FEC could regulate activity based on a "purpose or intent" standard, when the Court in Buckley clearly stated it (or Congress) couldn't, and there's no reason after WRTL to think the Court is getting any softer on that point!

Where's Judge Griffith [Republican appointee] in all this? I'm not that surprised that Tatel and Garland [Democrat appointees] would sympathize with Shays. But Tom Griffith was the Senate Counsel. He should know better.

I also emailed former FEC Chair Brad Smith for comment, and will add it if received.

Now, on to Bob Bauer’s every-word a gem post:

The Courts and the FEC: Sad Lessons To Be Drawn from the Shays Case Posted: 6/16/08

The Court of Appeals is just very hard on the Federal Election Commission. It agrees with the habitually critical District Court, one more time, that the FEC mangled the development of rules implementing McCain-Feingold. Unless the agency appeals to the US Supreme Court, it must, 6 years after the enactment of the statute, commence another round of revisions. And the Court of Appeals does not stop there: it also scolds the FEC for tardily raising a standing issue about Congressman Shays: "we are disappointed in the FEC for raising this issue so late that Shays had no adequate opportunity to respond." Opinion at 14.

The FEC must have the feeling, the very strong feeling, that the Court does not think the agency up to the task, and that for this reason, it will be supervised all the way to the end, to a degree of detail and policy judgment that courts ordinarily and properly avoid. The FEC should be forgiven for thinking so: it is right.

On the one hand, the Court affirms that, in principle, "the Commission certainly has discretion in choosing exactly where to draw a bright line" (id. at 27) in crafting a rule; discretion to "leave a large grey area and fill it later through adjudication and advisory opinions" (id. at 32); discretion and indeed the duty to exercise "expert judgment to which we owe deference" (id. at 29). It even encourages the Commission to build First Amendment judgments into the line-drawing it performs. Id. at 21.

Just at the point where these high principles are applied to the construction of rules, the Court decides that the FEC misses the mark. In the coordination rules, the Court concedes that the FEC assembled data and made its judgment on those facts, concluding that outside 120 days prior to an election, for Presidential elections, and 90 days in the case of Congressional elections, it would not attempt to restrict "coordination" between candidates and others that fund public advertising of various kinds. The FEC did not believe that the data warranted an extension beyond these time periods: it did not find enough of this activity to make it worthwhile. Some such coordination might take place in this unregulated zone, but what did occur was too slight in significance and quantity to make a difference. The Commission, in short, drew a "bright line," and hoped in vain for deference.

The Court disagreed, and the weight of its contrary judgment must depend in part, it would seem, on the superiority of its reasoning. It is not easy to see this superiority. Twice, the Court appeals to "common sense" (id. at 23, 24), which is the way arguments are avoided and not made.

The rebuke "don’t be silly!", which is all the Court can mean in this reference to "common sense," means little else than that the Court wishes to stamp its own judgment with the appearance of absolute obviousness. It is clear to the Court that the Commission is creating an "enormous loophole"—though for this, over a period of six years, there has been no evidence. And then the Court affirms, with a flourish, that it has both history and a better understanding of "human nature" on its side. Id. at 24.

Take your pick, then: the administrative agency, amassing data and making a judgment on a complex question fraught with constitutional implications, and a Court secure in its beliefs about what "common sense," "history" and "human nature" requires. The FEC wins this one going away, largely but not only because the Court’s performance was exceptionally unpersuasive.

What is going on here? Over the years that McCain-Feingold has been debated, the courts have displayed increased confidence that they "get" the sneaky games with money that the law, focused on circumvention, was meant to stop. Along with this conviction has come the certainty, derived from the daily and editorial press, that the FEC is in cahoots with parties and candidates to undermine the law. The Court’s opinion is teeming with signs that this is very much at work in this case.

And yet in the end, the superficiality of the Court’s reasoning—and the absence of any indication that there is a definable sphere of discretion left to the agency to do its work, safe from the intrusions of judicial "common sense"—demonstrates that this cannot take the law or the process by which it is developed to a good place. This is, after all, an Opinion in which the Court sets out a dictionary definition of soft money, taken from the fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (3), ("Political donations made in such a way as to avoid federal regulations or limits, as by donating to a party organization rather than to a particular candidate or campaign")—a definition suffering from incompleteness and technical problems, from sheer uselessness, that would be graded harshly if appearing in an answer to a law school exam question.

And it is further an Opinion where the Court writes that BCRA "authorize(s) candidates to solicit up to $20,000 per individual to fund state party GOTV and voter registration activities" (citing 2 U.S.C. § 441i(e)(4)(B). Id. at 36). BCRA does no such thing; the provision it cites does not apply to State parties at all. The Court is in a poor position to direct the FEC in a proper understanding of the law when its own grasp of the statute is inadequate and cannot be strengthened by resort on crucial terms to the American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition.

Bob Bauer

This presidential spokesman deserves wider attention from our media than does Scott McClellan.

Michael Rubin at the Corner provides this translation from the Iranian press.

The former spokesman of the President Mohammed Khatami’s government (1997-2005) acknowledges in a debate that a goal of the reformism was to lull the West into a false confidence so that Iran could pursue illicit nuclear activities:…

We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities...

And, Strategy Page reminds us of Barack Obama’s unilateral disarmament plans.

Preeminent California legislative reporter Daniel Weintraub, of the Sacramento Bee, reveals the state’s legislative analyst’s report that a proposal for Canadian-style government-run single-payer healthcare would cost $210 billion a year. Even with a new payroll tax burden on workers and employers of 12%, there’d be a $40 billion annual deficit. Weintraub says it “would be a financial train wreck.”

The entire California budget is about $100 billion a year. That is near $20 billion in the red, with little realistic prospect of closing the gap without much more taxes, very reduced services, and more debt.

The magnitude of the “train wreck” is, indeed, larger:

To close that gap [for a government-run plan], the plan's managers would have to sharply curtail the health care services most Californians receive today or else collect far more in taxes, or some combination of the two.

The new payroll tax would have to be on the order of 16% to start, instead of 12%, and would grow as medical costs and usage grows.

The top income tax rate in high-tax California is 9.3%, over income in the $40k’s range, barely working class in California. Imagine what another 16% on top of that would do to struggling workers, not to mention the entire economy of California, or the US if it spread.

Those of us who are fathers, those of us who grew up without fathers, have had to learn what makes a father’s worth in making us a man.

John McCain’s lessons about honor, fortitude, forthrightness, forgiveness, country came from his father, but also from the crucible of his captivity. The New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick reviews a 1974 writing by John McCain on the military’s Code of Honor among POWs.

As expected from the NYTs, anonymous “historians” are trotted out to belittle McCain’s own firsthand observations. McCain emailed Kirkpatrick, and is quoted, but one is curious what is left out by Kirkpatrick.

I’m sure this wasn’t in McCain’s email, but I’m also sure it well could have been. It’s what makes us fathers of worth, what McCain learned, and what we strive to bring to our sons and nation. And, one can search throughout Barack Obama’s autobiography “Dreams From My Father” and find none of it. There’s the difference that merits much thought on Fathers Day.

If

Rudyard Kipling (1910)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

A few months ago, I prepared the US Flag lesson for my son’s Cub Scout den. We raised and lowered the flag, and learned to properly fold it. I showed the boys pictures of previous versions and photos of the flag at various historic moments. We sang George Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Then, we discussed what the flag meant: that the boys’ parents and grandparents came from different countries and faiths and became out of many, one.

The Boy Scouts who displayed heroism and dedication to their fellows in the tragedy of the tornado at the Scout Camp in Iowa a few days ago displayed another aspect of the flag. Because we are one, we stick together through adversity. Traditional values, as taught by the Scouts, are a vital part of maintaining more than tradition but our nation.

What George Will called in his May 8, 2003 column “1,600 pages of confusion”, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) otherwise known as McCain-Feingold, has grown enormously upon its quandries into how we can have free speech without money. Scroll about the Federal Elections Commission’s website to set your eyes and mind reeling.

Today, the D.C. Court of Appeals decided that the rules drafted by the FEC are too weak and, as the Washington Post reports, “urged the FEC to write new rules that help prevent corporations, unions and special interest groups from influencing federal elections.”

The opinion will not have practical implications for the 2008 elections, as it will take months for the FEC to draft new rules implementing the McCain-Feingold law. And the FEC could still appeal this ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. For now, the FEC's current rules will apply.

But the opinion suggests that, down the road, the FEC will have to crack down on efforts by federal candidates to coordinate their campaign activities with corporations, unions and special interest groups, said Donald J. Simon, an election lawyer who helped argue the case.

As CQ’s Politics reports, however,

After nearly six months of paralysis, the Federal Election Commission could be back in business this month, thanks to a compromise ending a drawn out standoff in the Senate over nominations to the agency that oversees campaign finance law….

WaPo says the former FEC Commission chairman Michael Toner:

is appalled by the court ruling. He said the FEC took pains in formulating its rules. And, he said, the commissioners were "on solid ground" by creating different standards for ads that aired six months or a year before an election.

"The FEC compiled an exhaustive record, went through thousands of broadcast commercials and carefully crafted these regulations based on the empirical record," Toner said. "The court is essentially substituting its own view."

The BCRA hijinks will continue. Campaign law attorneys will get richer. Free discourse weaker and more burdened. I hope George Will will now count the added pages of confusion.

BTW:
Rasmussen’s poll in April has only 31% favoring public financing of presidential campaigns. The FEC reports that tax-return $3 check-off contributions to presidential campaigns have dropped 25%, unadjusted for inflation, between 1995 and 2007, to $51-million. There’s no empirical public support for the suggestion that there be more public financing, bound up in thousands of pages of more rules undecipherable to citizens, compared to free speech.

Tax-exempt organizations have rapidly multiplied in number, revenues and assets over the past few decades. From data gathered by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics, between 1996 and 2006, the number of tax-exempt “non-profit” organizations grew from about 1-million to 1 ½ million; the IRS counts revenue and asset growth between 1985 and 2004 growing in constant dollars by 171% and 222%, respectively. The Government Accountability Office(GAO) reports:

[R]esearchers estimate that the sector’s spending in recent years was roughly 11 to 12 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and, in 2002, the sector had over 9.6 million employees, about 9 percent of the civilian workforce. Further, the sector has grown; the number of charitable organizations reporting almost tripled over the last two decades….

These organizations receive significant funds from government sources to provide services. Researchers have attempted to quantify these funds. For example, one estimate is that the federal government spent about $317 billion on nonprofit organizations in fiscal year 2004. However, the lack of data makes measuring federal funds to nonprofit organizations difficult. Many funds come through indirect routes, such as through state and local government, adding to the difficulty of determining funding and measuring performance. Although IRS is generally responsible for overseeing the tax-exempt status of these organizations, there is less focus at the federal level on the comprehensive role of nonprofits in providing services using federal funds.

That’s about to change, some, thanks to the efforts of Senator Grassley and the Bush administration. The new, more informative, IRS Form 990 filing is about to take effect. Although succeeding in watering down some aspects, the tax-exempt sector is still none too pleased to have its workings further exposed.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports:

A committee of nonprofit experts that advises the Internal Revenue Service is urging the tax agency to be cautious in its stepped-up efforts to promote good governance by charities….

The IRS’s new version of its Form 990 informational tax return, the primary document charities file each year, includes a series of questions about nonprofit organizations’ governance policies and practices, even though the federal tax code does not explicitly set out specific governance standards for the revenue service to enforce….

“Moreover, while we may all agree that governance matters, it is not at all clear that requiring specific governance practices results in greater compliance with the tax laws,” the committee continued. “In fact, superior board governance may have much more to do with the values, active engagement, and accountability of those in charge than with the adoption of procedures and policies.”…

In a speech in April to charity tax lawyers, Steven T. Miller, commissioner of the IRS’s tax-exempt and government-entities division, said the revenue service had good reason to place new questions on governance on the revised Form 990.

“We are not interlopers trying to regulate an area that is beyond our sphere,” Mr. Miller said.

The effects of good or bad nonprofit governance cut across virtually everything we see and do in our work,” Mr. Miller said. “It impacts whether the organization is operated to further exempt purposes and public, rather than private, interests. It dictates whether the organization’s executives are compensated fairly or excessively. It influences whether the organization makes informed and fair decisions regarding its investments or its fund raising practices, or allows others to take unfair advantage.”

Many of these organizations admire the reporting burdens placed upon business, campaigns or government agencies. Seems, however, they don’t feel that sauce is good for their gander.

[HT: Theo]

One of the same attorneys who has filed motions for his detainee, Osama bin Laden's former driver Salim Hamdan, now will claim that his client has been denied his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.

Hamdan is the one that went to the Supreme Court resulting in a decision that led to the president and Congress drafting the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to comply, which decision of its own today’s Supreme Court contradicted.

The sad irony is that speedy trials have not occurred for the detainees because of the motion wrangling by detainee lawyers and their allies.

The Sixth Amendment offense, by prior Supreme Court ruling, is mitigated by time consumed in motions. However, with the Supremes’ 5-4 majority two-faced decision today, one is properly cautious of they holding to their own precedents.

Meanwhile, there are about 10,000 JAG lawyers in to our military, many liberal products of liberal law schools, now attached down to the company level, second-guessing or preventing military decisions. Their influence on the effectiveness of our forces may further increase, now that enemy combatants are deemed to have US citizens’ constitutional rights.

I don’t believe that our men and women will simply dispatch to Allah those now captured. They aren’t the murderers painted by our internal critics. I do believe, however, that a fragging incident may happen at some point, and a JAG lawyer may get to count virgins not of the battlefield or law book.

Hugh Hewitt adds (as fish stink from the head):

What is more alarming than the prospect of ignorance on the part of the majority is their collective seduction by hard left elites, particularly those in the Academy. Supreme Court justices don’t get out much. When they do it is typically to the nation’s law schools and to judicial and ABA conferences, where they are no doubt surrounded by thousands of elites who have as much experience with the war as the justices, but are perhaps even less well read on the nature of the jihadists’ ideology and tactics.

Apropos to today’s Supreme Court 5-4 decision that foreign combatants held at Guantanamo are entitled to US civilians’ habeas corpus rights, Commentary’s senior editor and national security writer Gabriel Schoenfeld pens a consideration of “In the Matter of George W. Bush v. the Constitution” for the current issue (also carried by the Wall Street Journal).

Schoenfeld addresses the matter through the cases presented by two books, that of the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and that of former head of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, both critics of administration excesses.

But, there the similarity ceases.

[Lichtblau’s] palette holds only two colors: black and white. On one side of his ledger is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. On the other side is the Bush administration, and never the twain shall meet. Although he is fully aware of the unprecedented challenge posed to national security by the 9/11 attacks, and of the belief within the government that a follow-on attack was a near-certainty, Mr. Lichtblau declines to suggest what measures might have been appropriate in place of the ones he labors at every step to condemn as "over the top."

By contrast, re: Jack Goldsmith

Answers far more cogent and complex than anything on offer in "Bush's Law" come from a source within the administration itself, in the person of Jack Goldsmith. In 2002, Mr. Goldsmith, a law professor of conservative bent, joined the office of the Pentagon's top lawyer, where he worked on legal issues ranging from Guantanamo to missile defense to military commissions. In fall 2003, he was tapped to join the Department of Justice, there to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the critical subunit within the federal government that determines whether the government's own actions are legal. As Mr. Goldsmith has explained in "The Terror Presidency," a memoir of his stormy nine months' tenure, the OLC, by virtue of its obligation to rule on the legality of particular actions before they are taken, possesses "one of the most momentous and dangerous powers in the government: the power to dispense get-out-of-jail-free cards."...

Fear--rational fear, not the "panic" derisively conjured up by Mr. Lichtblau--was a proper response to such a threat. In acting to avert it, officials might have wanted, in Mr. Goldsmith's words, to "push the law as far as it would allow." But not one of them, he believes, including Mr. Yoo, "thought he was violating the law." In fact Mr. Goldsmith pens a qualified tribute to Mr. Yoo, noting that he has defended every element of the [interrogation] opinion to this day, and I believe he has done so in good faith. Yoo was indispensable after 9/11; few people had the knowledge, intelligence, and energy to craft the dozens of terrorism-related opinions he wrote. The poor quality of a handful of very important opinions is probably attributable to some combination of the fear that pervaded the executive branch, pressure from the White House, and Yoo's unusually expansive and self-confident conception of presidential power.

Here we get to one of the real bottom lines:

Agree or disagree with Mr. Goldsmith at every point, one does not come away from his book believing that Mr. Bush's men acted recklessly. To the contrary: compared with what some of their predecessors did, most notably Roosevelt in his handling of Japanese-Americans, they have acted with astonishing restraint in the face of a danger that, by its hidden nature, has exerted a far darker pressure on the responsibilities of statesmen than did the one facing Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor.

Not only that, but their approach has succeeded. Although we still do not know what might yet come at us tomorrow out of the blue sky, the United States, against all expectations, has not been attacked again since Sept. 11. For that reason alone, Mr. Goldsmith is surely right in speculating that future historians may yet "come to view President Bush as we now view Lincoln and Roosevelt," his constitutional lapses, like theirs, "regrettable but relatively unimportant episodes in the larger arc of liberty." At the same time, Mr. Bush's accomplishments "will likely always be dimmed by our knowledge of the administration's strange and unattractive views of presidential power."

The other bottom line:

That seems a subtle and judicious appraisal. How refreshing it is to read such words next to the countless tracts painting Mr. Bush and his associates as torturers and aspiring tyrants. Particularly despicable has been the attempt to turn John Yoo into a pariah. In an additional irony, some of those leading the charge--notably, journalists like Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and their editors at the Times--have declared themselves willing to take the law into their own hands whenever it suits them. Brushing aside statutes that apply to all Americans, they have pledged not to honor grand-jury demands for their testimony in investigations of national-security leaks, even gravely serious ones involving the disclosure of operational counterterrorism programs. In an even more egregious assault on our law and on our security, they have elicited classified counterterrorism information from disaffected government officials and published it for everyone, including our mortal adversaries, to devour.

The exact degree of damage wrought by these efforts to undermine government policy is difficult to specify given the secrecy in which intelligence programs, including the NSA program, remain wrapped. But Mr. Goldsmith is only the latest in a long line of officials privy to the workings of the NSA program who have testified to the severity of the injury. "I was not opposed to . . . vigorous surveillance of terrorists," he writes of the NSA program. "I agreed with President Bush that the revelations by Risen and Lichtblau had alerted our enemies, put our citizens at risk, and done 'great harm' to the nation."

The degree of hypocrisy in Mr. Lichtblau's book and similar journalistic efforts is staggering. It is exceeded only by the intellectual slovenliness with which he and his colleagues have advanced their case and the quantity of self-inflating gush in which they tend to wrap themselves.

I just read the entire Supreme Court 5-4 majority and minority opinions in the Boumediene case, whether detainees in Guatanamo are entitled to, in effect, ordinary civilian habeas corpus rights to challenge the justification for being held in custody or charged. This decision may be studied for a generation for its apparent conterpoise of principle vs. practicality. That’s so, but superficial. Deeper, the majority decision writes a new expansion into the Constitution, both of habeas corpus and of the supremacy of the judicial over the congressional and executive branches. If there’s a principle involved, it is the victory of lawfare as widely believed in the legal community over the traditional and proven rules of warfare and national survival.

The decision, all 134 pages, is available here, via the SCOTUS blog which offers a brief recap. The AP and NYTs offer their reports. National Review’s Corner offers its dissent, and raises an important question regarding McCain.

The arguments persuasive to the majority are that a strict interpretation of the Constitution only permits the suspension of habeas corpus in the event of domestic rebellion or invasion, and that Guantanamo is effectively under US jurisdiction. The dissents point out that the executive and Congress followed the Supreme Court’s prior ruling to provide a practical equivalent for the detainees at Guantanamo, and now the majority disregards its own ruling. Although the majority equivocates that a civilian court may give some deference to the practicalities of evidence and witness from the battlefield, the dissenters point out that places control over military exigencies and realities in the hands of militarily inexperienced and inexpert civilian judges. Justice Scalia is particularly scathing in describing the effect on our ability to wage war, especially against irregular foes. He, also, points out that the result may be to place more detainees in less hospitable holding countries than at Guantanamo, at least until a possible additional Supreme Court expansion of US habeas corpus rights worldwide.

That result would be most welcome by the international lawfare fraternity, ever anxious to increase its own power and reduce that of the US.

UPDATE: Follow-up posts:
In the Matter of George W. Bush v. the Constitution
Guantanamo Detainees Next Supreme Court Case

Al Qaeda’s Kurtzlike heart is further exposed in a trove of documents and videos captured from its command in Anbar province, Iraq. AQ’s former allies in the Sunni Awakening turned them over to CNN’s Michael Ware, as well as to the US military.

In all, these Anbar files form the largest collection of al Qaeda in Iraq materials to ever fall into civilian hands, giving an insight into the organization that few but its members or Western intelligence agents have ever seen.

Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, the American military's spokesman in Baghdad, says the document trove is unique, "a kind of comprehensive snapshot" of al-Qaeda during its peak.

"It reveals," Driscoll said, "first of all, a pretty robust command and control system, if you will. I was kind of surprised when I saw the degree of documentation for everything -- pay records, those kind of things -- and that [al Qaeda in Iraq] was obviously a well-established network."

That network is now under enormous stress, primarily from the more than 100,000 nationalist insurgents who formed the Awakening Council militias and initiated an extremely effective assassination program against al Qaeda, but also from recent U.S. and Iraqi government strikes into their strongholds.

As a result, says Lt. Col. Tim Albers, the coalition's director of military intelligence for Baghdad, "al Qaeda in Iraq is fighting to stay relevant."

For those in the West more concerned to expose US intelligence techniques than to protect US and allied lives or the mission, the close attention paid by AQ and others should be a reason for new restraint and conscience:

And there are telling papers with a window into al Qaeda's ability to spy on its pursuers. One is a document leaked from the Ministry of Interior naming all the foreign fighters held in government prisons. Other documents discuss lessons al Qaeda learned from its members captured by American forces and either released or still in U.S.-run prisons. The leadership studied and discussed the nature of the American interrogations, the questioning techniques used and the methods that had been employed to ensnare its men.

And, for those who blithely ignore the consequences of precipitous withdrawal or counsel taking enemy assurances at face value:

In a vein similar to the Khmer Rouge's grisly accounting of its torture victims, within the files of one al Qaeda headquarters in Anbar alone was a library of 80 execution videos, mostly beheadings, none of which had been distributed or released on the Internet. And all were filmed after al Qaeda in Iraq ended its policy of broadcasting such horrors.

[HT: Steve Schippert http://ThreatsWatch.org/
http://tank.nationalreview.com/ ]

According to a White House press release (Update II, below), President Bush has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a woman who did her best to stamp out freedom of speech while chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Donna Shalala (NYT account, which incorrectly claims she's president of Hunter College, although she left in 1987)). And she's still at it today at the University of Miami, where she serves as president.

Of all the educators in the country to choose from, including those who have suffered under the type of politically correct regimes that Shalala has built up and overseen, the choice of Donna Shalala to receive our nation's highest civilian award is beyond puzzling; it is obscene.

Shalala was architect of the infamous speech code at Wisconsin which, before it was declared unconstitutional in 1991, was among the most draconian in the nation. She also crafted the "Madison Plan" at UW, through which she mandated quotas for hiring minority professors, doubling the number of minority undergraduates, passed an ethnic studies requirement, and opened a multicultural center.

So radical was her tenure at UW, so opposed to liberty were her mandates, that in January, 1993 Evans & Novak used her appointment as Bill Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services to question where Clinton, ostensibly a "New Democrat," planned on taking the country:

Shalala is the farthest to the left and most controversial of all President-elect Clinton's Cabinet appointments. The university's famed Madison campus, where she is chancellor, 'has become the epicenter of political correctness,' according to education expert Checker Finn. Critics in the academic community label her the 'queen of PC' – giving first priority to what is politically correct by liberal standards. She is a pillar in the administration's Hillary wing, succeeding her good friend Mrs. Clinton as head of the Children's Defense Fund.

Shalala's record provides no grounds for challenging her fitness to run HHS. It does challenge the authenticity of Bill Clinton's self-portrait as a centrist Democrat turning his party's course back to the middle of the road.

The columnists went on to outline Shalala's outrageously PC record at Madison:

The complaint against Shalala is that she embodies two of the worst transgressions by today's liberals flying in the face of American tradition: quotas and speech control.

'We can't provide a first-class education without women and minorities in the classrooms,' Shalala has decreed. That world view was behind the Madison Plan, her strategy for 'ethnic and cultural diversity.' It created an undergraduate ethnic studies requirement and revised the curriculum for the sake of 'understanding other cultures.'

Her off-campus record reveals the standard far-left contempt for American institutions. Note her comments on Ronald Reagan, again from Evans & Novak:

Shalala herself is the epitome of today's wholly politicized educator. In the 1988 presidential campaign, she signed a full-page New York Times advertisement assailing Ronald Reagan's record and affirming 'America's liberal tradition.' In 1991 she opposed the university regents' efforts to consider reinvestment in South Africa in view of racial progress there. In 1991 she personally lobbied the Pentagon to end the military ban on homosexuals, and joined a lawsuit for that purpose. In 1992 she commended gay and lesbian students for requesting their own university housing, while ruling it out as unconstitutional. In 1992 she helped found a new national abortion rights committee after the last Supreme Court decision.

In the 2001 edition of Choosing the Right College, which I edited, we noted that things had improved a bit by then, the infamous speech code having been overturned a decade before:

The freedom enjoyed by professors and students has been hard-fought, for UW-Madison has a history of speech codes and excursions into multicultural experimentation that is perhaps unrivaled in academia. What might be considered a cult of tolerance was set in place by Clinton cabinet member Donna Shalala in the late 1980s during her term as chancellor. Its legacy is still felt on campus.

At the University of Miami, where Shalala took the helm on June 1, 2001, her administration worked to clamp down on dissent--defined as conservative student groups. In April, 2003, FIRE wrote (PDF) to Shalala objecting to her administration's refusal to recognize a newly formed conservative group, the Advocates for Conservative Thought (ACT). The U's Committee on Student Organizations told the four students who sought to launch ACT that, given that Miami already hosted the College Republicans, a conservative group, and the Council for Democracy, which was politically oriented, that no other conservative or political groups were needed.

In the end, the group was approved, but only after repeated barrages by FIRE and the press. Shalala blamed underlings for not apprising her of the situation.

The Queen of PC honored by a GOP White House. The Mandarins who run higher education in America can sleep easily if those who should press for reform and accountability instead strengthen the status quo and trample the reformers, as this counterproductive move does.

Update: Michelle Malkin has linked to this post, and her readers are outraged.

Update II: Here is the text of the press release; text on Shalala is in bold (emphasis added).

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

(Rome, Italy)

_________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release June 11, 2008

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY

President George W. Bush today announced recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civil award. Established by Executive Order 11085 in 1963, the Medal may be awarded by the President “to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” President Bush will honor these recipients at a White House ceremony on Thursday, June 19, 2008.

Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., has worked throughout his career to improve the lives of those suffering from neurological disorders. His groundbreaking contributions to medicine and his inspiring efforts to help America’s youth fulfill their potential have strengthened our Nation.

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., has dedicated his life to expanding the horizons of human knowledge. His efforts to advance our understanding and treatment of HIV/AIDS have brought hope and healing to millions around the world.

Tom Lantos was a champion of human rights. The only Holocaust survivor to serve in the Congress, he devoted himself to securing liberty for oppressed people around the world and became a powerful witness for the importance of freedom.

General Peter Pace, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), is one of our Nation’s most accomplished and respected military officers. His selfless service and visionary leadership have helped keep our Nation safe.

Donna Edna Shalala is one of our Nation’s most distinguished educators and public officials. She has worked tirelessly to ensure that all Americans can enjoy lives of hope, promise, and dignity.

Laurence H. Silberman has devoted his life to promoting, enforcing, and defending the rule of law. He has been a stalwart guardian of the Constitution, and his work to strengthen our national security institutions has made Americans safer.

The US advantage in technologies is one of our most potent weapons and force multipliers. However, the knife has two edges, as advanced technologies are also applied by our foes, in often relatively simple ways, to counter our advantages.

We’ve seen the application of cellular phones by those setting off lethal IEDs. Now, we may see the application of unmanned aircraft, drones, to counter our freedom of maneuver and even potentially to rain death on our troops and allies from the air.

The US and Israel have been quite effective in the use of drones to find and target enemies. The US and Israeli versions have developed from simpler surveillance models to highly-complex and lethal firing stations, capable of being maneuvered from thousands of miles away.

But, the simpler basic drone platform is now available on the Internet to anyone who wants to make their own. Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune reports on how, “'Do-it-yourself drones' create buzz at S.D. convention.”

Yet the technology underlying the sophisticated unmanned aircraft is now so easily available and inexpensive that one of Silicon Valley's most influential figures is encouraging hobbyists to build and fly their own.

Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, stepped forward as an evangelist for such “do-it-yourself drones” yesterday at a conference for the unmanned systems industry at the San Diego Convention Center.

“This kind of technology, which used to cost millions of dollars, then hundreds of thousands and then thousands, now costs hundreds of dollars,” Anderson said.

As the founder of DIY Drones, or Do It Yourself Drones, a Web site for hobbyists and others, Anderson is showing just how easy it is to use off-the-shelf components to build unmanned aircraft for the masses….

Anderson launched the DIY Drones Web site nine months ago to create an online “open-source community” where anyone can share information about low-cost drones. That includes schematic diagrams, printed circuit board designs, software code, parts lists and instructions….

A more nettlesome problem, Anderson said, may be State Department regulations that restrict companies and individuals from exporting weapons and related defense technologies. He contended that some U.S. export controls have failed to keep pace with advances in technology and the reality of worldwide access to the Internet.

By making autopilot specifications and software code available on the DIY Drone Web site, Anderson said, “We're really not sure whether we're violating export control rules.”

A call yesterday to the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance was not immediately returned.

The last, expecting instant public response to a complicated problem, may not be fair journalism. But, it also may be largely irrelevant. There are no “export controls” on Internet sites, and once exported via the web to the world, the information is widely available to all.

The DIY drones potentially created by our foes don’t have to be as advanced as our own to complicate our technological war fighting advantage, to even the battlefield, and to be costly in lives and budgets.

When one hears debates about the high costs of our defense establishment, underlying much of those costs are those necessary to stay a step ahead of the democratization of technologies to ostensibly weaker foes who are able to use them effectively to neutralize or weaken our superiority. The technological genie cannot be put back in bottles, nor avoided by slashing defense budgets. That only hands shifting of advantages to our enemies.

READ about Obama's Defense policy.

I continue to deal with the contentious themes of “guilt by association” and the imaginary new sacred cow, “the New McCarthyism” in response to a comment on FrontPage Magazine's reader forum.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article on my experience at a CUNY Forum titled, "Academic Freedom and the Attack on Diversity at CUNY” which was published on FrontPage Magazine, posted here on Democracy Project, Campus Watch, and also picked up on Daniel Pipes’ blog, demonstrating the urgency of these issues. The CUNY forum featured the panelists, Deborah Almontaser, founder and former principle of the Arabic language public school, Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), and CUNY faculty union official Susan O’Malley who filed a $2 million defamation lawsuit against Professor Emeritus Sharad Karkhanis.

There were a few interesting comments on FrontPage Magazine's reader forum one of which I chose to respond to online. The writer challenged my “obsession” with “guilt by association” which is basically similar to the accusations at the CUNY forum leveled at such awesome figures as Daniel Pipes, Dr. Karkhanis and CUNY Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. They charged that a vast rightwing campaign of Islamophobia which they call “the New McCarthyism” is spreading throughout the nation “attacking” Arabs, Muslims, college professors and Senator Barack Obama as well, based upon the false premise of “guilt by association.”

In my article I argued that such allegations are pure fantasy that has risen to a new level of hysteria, with wild accusations of “racism” and “Islamophobia,” which has precluded any rational discussion about national security threats and sober concerns about stealth Islamic infiltration into government, education and academia. The title of my article initially was to be “Guilt by Association and Recruitment” but was changed by the editors of FrontPage Magazine. My original intent was to report on one of the panelists, Susan O’Malley who has endorsed and made efforts to recruit convicted terrorists for teaching jobs at CUNY. My interest was primarily in the lawsuit against Dr. Karkhanis, the real victim in all this furor, for having the courage to blow the whistle on O’Malley’s dubious activities within the CUNY system. The intent of her lawsuit was to bully and silence her critic, and trample his constitutional free speech rights in order to protect herself from scrutiny.

Slandering a good man from the auspices of a CUNY forum, and arguing on the merits of her case against Dr. Karkhanis is a disgrace and embarrassment to the entire CUNY system. O’Malley, a long-standing academic public figure had the gall to sit piously on the panel and use the forum for her personal agenda to paint a far-fetched portrait of lies as the victim of 13 years of “attacks” by a “crazy man” who has plagued her with false accusations of guilt by association similar to those directed at Muslims, Arabs, Ms. Almontaser, and Senator Obama. Susan O’Malley and company, who hold respectable positions of authority in academia as tenured professors and public officials, unsurprisingly want to deny the significance of their associations and support for criminals and terrorists, in order to avoid scrutiny and accountability for their actions. Regrettably, due to their status and authority, such paranoid fantasies as “the New McCarthyism” and frantic denials of “guilt by association” have trickled down into the body politic to become some of our latest sacred cows.

Into this debate enters blogger and anti-bigotry activist, Diane Vera whom I quoted in my article and was present at the CUNY forum. She wrote the following in response to my article and I offered a reply (with a few present modifications) a day or two later on the FrontPage reader forum:

To Phil Orenstein: Quote out of context, etc. - DianeVera 5/26/2008 12:13 AM I'm quoted above as saying that Debbie Almontaser is “a traditionalist-leaning Muslim and as such, has ties to the more fundamentalist Muslim groups.” You left out a crucial first part of that statement of mine: "It does appear that ...." I don't know her personally, and I'm certainly no expert on her actual religious orientation, or on what groups she has ties to or how close any given tie is. The blog entry you quoted was merely my preliminary attempt to piece the story together from what people on both sides of the controversy had to say. I'm surprised that you deemed me worthy of quoting on this particular matter at all; don't you have any better sources?

By the way, if you were wondering what the campaign against Debbie Almontaser has in common with McCarthyism, it is precisely your obsession with guilt-by-association, even to the point of quoting not-very-knowledgeable sources (such as, in this case, me) about someone's associations.

There are other schools, elsewhere in the U.S.A., about which I think the anti-"Madressa" movement probably does have valid concerns. But it does not appear to me that the KGIA is one of them, as I explain in the blog post you quoted.

About your dismissal of the existence of hate crimes against Muslims: While the statistics you referred to do appear to show that hate crimes against Jews are a much more common occurrence, those statistics certainly do NOT show that "American citizens are showing more tolerance and respect toward Muslims than any other religious group." Rather, according to those statistics (on the FBI site here) Muslims are the second most frequent target of religiously motivated hate crimes. Furthermore, according to the graphic in the article you cited on this topic, there were many more hate crimes against Muslims in 2001 than in the year of the FBI report in question, 2006. Fortunately such crimes have decreased, but not to the point of total insignificance.

I'm concerned about bigotry against Jews too, especially the revival of classic libels against Jews. I've been focussing more on Muslims lately because of the need to strike a balance between legitimate concerns about the spread of Islamism (the theocratic imperialist political ideology) and avoiding undue paranoia about individual Muslims.

Here’s my reply on FrontPage reader forum:

RE: To Phil Orenstein: Quote out of context, etc. - porenstein 5/28/2008 12:56 AM I thank you for reading my article, but regrettably you missed the main point. Associations provide much of the critical evidence to scrutinize public figures and to determine who your friends are. I assume you read my reference to Stormfronters (white nationalist group). Anecdotally, I had a couple of good friends who were part of an organization that was actually infiltrated by Stormfronters. When they determined to continue their associations with these loathsome people despite my entreaties, I disassociated myself from them. Likewise if we are not vigilant in challenging Obama’s associations, if (God forbid) he becomes president, he might bring such unsavory figures as William Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Robert Malley and others into advisory or staff roles in the White House, just as the Clintons brought in their friends and associates from Arkansas to take the place of the fine staffers in the travel office after destroying their lives and reputations. Likewise if there was no public scrutiny of her associations, Almontaser might have populated the KGIA staff with her radical religious advisors and associates. On the other hand I take pride in my associations with such awesome figures as Dr. Karkhanis and Trustee Wiesenfeld and I am honored that such associations have influenced and contributed to my thinking. The hysterical lies directed at these fine individuals at the CUNY forum for performing their civic duty to try to close the ill-advised KGIA was beyond sanity. Also, just because I quoted one “not-very-knowledgeable” source (you), doesn't invalidate the others I mentioned, as a cause for public concern and vigilance.

Rather than trotting out hate crime statistics comparing anti-Muslim vs. anti-Jewish bigotry, you’ll have to admit that with our constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, the bottom line is that all religious groups enjoy unexcelled security and protection here in America. It’s a minority of psychopaths who are perpetrating the hate crimes against Jews and Muslims, not Jeff Wiesenfeld and company. However if you are truly concerned about bigotry, why don’t you try to help the one group that has fallen under the radar and suffers real persecution and death threats for their choices: the unbelievers. Muslim apostates are the targets of real “attacks” and threats of physical abuse. I sense you are a seeking person and this is where you can help desperate people who are crying out for caring people like yourself to intercede. Don’t waste your time with dubious figures like Almontaser who are celebrated in the New York liberal media. Celebrities don’t need your help. Please read “Now They Call Me Infidel” by Nonie Darwish, and “Why We Left Islam” by Susan Crimp and Joel Richardson. These books may open your eyes. You may not accept Daniel Pipes' or Robert Spencer’s outlook, but actual testimony is hard to deny.

Apparently Ms. Vera hasn’t checked the FrontPage forum and read my reply because she recently offered an extensive rebuttal to my article on one of her blogs without making any reference to my reply. If she had, it might have saved her a lot of time researching hate crime statistics and correcting irrelevant mathematical errors. In her 12 page painstakingly researched rebuttal she parses words, phrases and statements and goes on to spend the lion's share of her blog examining my linked sources, haggling with Daniel Pipes and Investor’s Business Daily over words and numbers. I am impressed with her investigative prowess and editing skills, but frankly it seems that she gets lost in the minutia and fails to see the forest for the trees.

For the most part, she lectures Islamic scholar Daniel Pipes on his methodology and scholarship on Arabic language instruction and the spread of Islamism in America, his life-long fields of study. She criticizes his ignorance of “basic logic,” “flimsy accusations based on guilt by association,” and “conspiracy theorizing” and even splits hairs over incidental words. Dr. Pipes is a graduate of Harvard with a PhD in history, who studied abroad including 3 years in Egypt, reads Arabic and German and speaks French, authored 12 books on Militant Islam, held two presidential positions in the U.S. government, and has been recognized as one of Harvard’s 100 most influential living graduates.

She quibbles over Pipes’ use of the word “implies” calling it a logical fallacy to make the assertion, “the instruction of Arabic implies either a political or a religious agenda,” regarding his opposition to using taxpayer monies for creating a public institution for teaching Arabic. But I wouldn’t equivocate with a distinguished scholar of Arabic instruction who uses “implies” to mean exactly what he says, as indicated in his statements, "in the instruction of Arabic, there is also implicit, often implicit, the notion that one should become a Muslim, that there is an Islamic agenda.” and "learning Arabic in and of itself promotes an Islamic outlook" and many others. She summarily discards the rest of Pipes' arguments for vetting and judging KGIA and Ms. Almontaser accordingly, on the sole basis of her rejection of the notion of guilt by association. It seems odd that someone who claims to be a “not-very-knowledgeable” source is suddenly dictating to Daniel Pipes on Arabic language instruction and Islamic issues. Instead of attempting to go toe to toe with Pipes herself, shouldn’t she at least utilize “knowledgeable” sources in order to dispute Pipes? What am I missing?

Moreover, she persists in trotting out a plethora of hate crime statistics comparing anti-Jewish, Muslim and Christian bigotry and then throws the baby out with the bath water over an unrelated numerical error on the part of one of my sources, Investor’s Business Daily. The point I was making is that while there are six times as many hate crimes against Jews as there are against Muslims, according to my above source, which she fact-checked as correct per FBI statistics, isn’t all the “Islamophobia” hysteria disproportionate? Besides being disproportionate, I argue, it appears to be well scripted and deliberate. As I said, “Eldahry, Almontaser and other self-proclaimed champions of diversity are crying "Islamophobia" in response to reasonable questions and concerns about the spread and infiltration of radical Islam in our public schools and colleges.” They apparently project excessive paranoia while hiding behind a veneer of multiculturalism in order to intentionally silence and demonize anyone who voices concerns about the “stealth jihad” which aims to sabotage American schools and cultural institutions.

By virtue of her blogs which disproportionately advocate against anti-Muslim bigotry, I fear that Ms. Vera has been sucked in by this duplicity. If she is truly concerned about all forms of religious intolerance she should at least devote proportionately more blog real estate to the bigotry that is six times more prevalent against Jews. If she were a fair minded activist, she should also investigate the double standard with respect to the widespread anti-Semitism on campus and on the other hand, the protected status of Muslims. I’ve documented some of the numerous unreported hate crimes against Jews on New York campuses, such as the desecration of a campus Menorah, swastikas painted on walls and Holocaust memorial posters, and others that are casually dismissed by administrators, while these same politically correct hypocrites consider Muslims a protected group and stifle any serious examination of the threat of radical Islam. A case in point involved the students of Hillel at Pace University, who planned to show the film "Obsession" a film on the threat of radical Islam, who stood up to loud cries of “Islamophobia,” but were hauled into the dean’s office and threatened with police action when Pace administrators caved in to the protests of Muslim students.

Jews and Muslims alike are more secure in America than almost anywhere else in the world. Everywhere you go, you will encounter psychopaths who hate you for who you are whether a Muslim, Christian or Jew. This is a fact of life. But beyond isolated anti-Semitic incidents, and the anti-Muslim hyperbole, there is a virulent campaign on campus of threats of genocide and death to the Jews, echoing the homicidal maniacs of the Middle East who do not conceal their blood-thirsty intentions, pledging to obliterate Israel, naming soccer stadiums after martyrs and indoctrinating school children in the glory of becoming suicide bombers to die killing Jews. Analogously, on American campuses, radical Islamic front groups “have sponsored such events as (annual) "Anti-Zionist Week" and anti-Semitic rallies and held conferences where speakers praised Hamas as they chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to the Jews." At University of California, Irvine the Muslim Student Union (MSU), an anti-Semitic and anti-American campus group, recently held programs openly supporting terrorist groups and calling for the destruction of Israel with such titles as “Hamas: the People’s Choice” and “Israel: The 4th Reich.” While campus speech codes protect Muslims from offensive speech, the administrators closed their eyes to campus speech promoting terrorism and genocide of Jews, and remained silent when students who support Israel were threatened and harassed.

At hundreds of campuses throughout the country in recent years, Muslim Student Association (MSA) chapters flourish sponsoring anti-Israel rallies, conferences, and student publications condemning Zionism, glorifying martyrs, praising Hamas and Hezbollah and raising money for their terrorist operations at campus events, and reasserting their goal for “the reestablishment of the Islamic form of government.” The deceptively moderate MSA organization was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood who described their mission in America as “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands ... so that ... God's religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions." In such a climate, it smacks of gross hypocrisy for someone who claims to be an anti-bigotry or human rights activist to unduly favor defending Muslims. Rather it appears to be blind or willful obfuscation of the truth.

But supporters of KGIA seem to dismiss these facts as more bias "attacks" on Islam and delusionally claim Muslims are the victims of “guilt by association” or “the New McCarthyism” or “Islamophobia.” Ms. Vera calls it “the witch-hunt mentality” - bigoted attacks against Muslims, KGIA and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) based on flimsy evidence hinging on guilt by association. She dismisses the considerable evidence Daniel Pipes presents on KGIA, CAIR and Ms. Almontaser’s problematic associations and claims to know that his evidence and “his reasoning about that evidence, are glaringly flawed. I also know that a civilized society needs to uphold the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’”

But organizations are best judged by the people in its ranks and its leadership. Call it “guilt by association” but Nihad Awad one of the founding members and the current Executive Director of CAIR, is a an ex-member of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a front group for the terrorist organization Hamas, who told a college audience in 1994: "I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." In fact CAIR has recently co-sponsored and provided speakers, including Awad for annual MSA anti-Israel conferences on campus. In interviews he has justified terrorist operations of Hamas as legitimate defense against an illegal Israeli occupation. The fact that he was appointed to a Civil Rights Advisory Panel during the Clinton administration and helped organize a Muslim voting bloc that endorsed President Bush are not reasons to exonerate him in the court of public opinion. Rather they are more reasons to be wary of stealth infiltration into our government by people and organizations with dubious motives. Currently CAIR, which purports to be an innocuous civil rights group, is under federal investigation for terrorist financing, several of its senior leaders have been convicted, imprisoned and deported for terrorist ties, and was the subject of Senate hearings in 2003 on the connections between the Saudi government and CAIR, which as Senator Kyl stated, “is well advanced in its four-decade effort to control Islam in America.” Senators Schumer and Durban excoriated CAIR as part of an international terrorist network, whose founders have "intimate links with Hamas." Hysterical cries of “witch-hunt” and “Islamophobia” are hardly appropriate here. Rather they are attempts to deceive the gullible and naïve, as they are to obfuscate Ms. Almontaser’s intimate associations with CAIR.

Since Ms. Vera is dreadfully confused about the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” let me attempt to enlighten her about the legal system of the United States and basic civic duties of citizens, of which she seems to be sorely misinformed. The "presumption of innocence" is a basic doctrine of criminal law in which the government is required to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. For public service responsibilities, however, the process is the other way around. The people, not a government court of law must make critical judgments and informed choices in selecting the people who will serve them, and there is no presumption of innocence in this public domain. The burden of proof is on the individuals or institutions that aspire to public service, whether they’re public school principles, CUNY union officials or president of the United States. It is the civic duty of the citizens in a democracy, to judge their fitness to serve, and to continue to hold them accountable while in office. The “guilt” we’re talking about here, is their fitness for the job, not whether they’re good or evil people. Ms. Almontaser was the principle of a public school and O’Malley is a CUNY public figure, in both cases municipal positions paid for by taxpayer monies. The best way to judge public figures is by the company they keep, not just sugar-coated promises. They are working for you and me and their resumes must include good personal references, in order to be hired with our tax dollars. If they have numerous shady associations and dealings in their past, I wouldn’t hire them. I certainly wouldn’t hire someone with radical Islamic connections, or who endorses convicted terrorists.

In his spot-on blog, The Obama Cabinet and the Teapot Dome Scandal Professor Mitchell Langbert brings up the historical example of the famous Teapot Dome scandal during the Warren G. Harding administration where his “cabinet appointees had illegally sold medical supplies and leased oil wells to Sinclair Oil interests.” Barack Obama's supporters claim that he should not be accountable for the negative views and past criminality of his long time friends and associates. But since presidents appoint their friends and associates to staff and cabinet positions, his critics claim otherwise. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine an Obama cabinet with William Ayers as Secretary of Education, Reverend Louis Farakhan as Attorney General, Rev. Michael Pfleger as Secretary of the Interior, George Soros as Secretary of the Treasury, Bob Avakian as Secretary of Defense, and so forth as Prof Langbert proposes. He then gravely asks: “given Mr. Obama's poor judgment in his choice of associates, how many Teapot Dome scandals will ensue from an Obama cabinet?”

I hope this pounds the final nail in the coffin of the entire hullabaloo over “guilt by association.” I don’t want to hear anymore hysteria about it. I certainly don’t care to carry on this discussion with Ms. Vera if she continues to make uninformed potshots at distinguished scholars or continues to whine about “guilt by association.” But if she has the nerve to ask Ms. Almontaser the tough questions she posed at the end of her blog about suicide bombers and the Hamas charter and take her to task as a public figure, I would be interested in hearing her answers although predictably they will be unimpeachable polished responses. I would also be interested if she reads the books I suggested above containing real testimonies of the anguish and repercussions against those unfortunate ex-Muslims, even here in America, who denounce Islam and leave their religion, and are wanted for the crime of apostasy which is punishable by death.

Instead of challenging Barack Obama to a series of joint Town Hall meetings, John McCain should have invited Obama to hike with him across the Grand Canyon.

This summer, he's planning to hike the Grand Canyon with his two sons, Jack and Jimmy. In 2006, McCain hiked from the North Rim to the South Rim. "Thirty miles, two days in 115-degree heat … and carrying a backpack as well," Jack McCain, a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, recently said in a Web interview.

Barack Obama, 25 years younger than McCain, has repeatedly insisted he won't make age an issue.

But, of course, Obama is and will. Not only would Obama wheezing along after McCain on the hike make the difference plain between a callow fellow’s appearance belied by his reality, it might even provide an opportunity for Obama to learn something about what it really means to be fit, including fit to be commander-in-chief and president.

To now, Obama’s campaign is more like the Billy Crystal line on Saturday Night Live, “better to look good than feel good.” The Anchoress writes an insightful peek into the emotional dynamics of Obama’s appeal, as “young, pretty, and had a pleasing voice” compared to the time-worn faithful wife Hillary. The New Republic’s Michael Crowley discusses the more tangible side of this equation, that Hillary Clinton worked hard to become a Washington insider, and that old qualification was not enough “just when Democratic voters were yearning for the ultimate Washington outsider.”

No one doubts McCain's far more extensive experience and knowledge. But, as with Hillary Clinton, that may not be enough.

John McCain can learn something from Hillary’s experience with Obama. McCain could more quickly and effectively dispatch Barack Obama by showing the difference between them by a hike across the Grand Canyon than by Town Hall exchanges of cliches.

As I predicted yesterday, due to a weak and crumbling case, Lt. Andrew Grayson has been found by the jury in his court martial as not guilty on all counts.

The Haditha prosecution has so far shot maggies drawers on all those Marines targeted. These JAG prosecuters are not Marine marksmen, and some should question their other qualifications.

As AP reports:

Grayson's attorney, Joseph Casas, said he believed the verdict could influence pending prosecutions.

"I think it sets the tone for the overall whirlwind Haditha has been. It's been a botched investigation from the get-go," he said. "I believe in the end all of the so-called Haditha Marines who still have to face trial will be exonerated."…

Four enlisted Marines initially were charged with murder and four officers were charged with failing to investigate the deaths. Charges were dropped against five of the Marines.

Still to face court-martial are Wuterich, of Meriden, Conn., whose charges include voluntary manslaughter, and Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, of Rangely, Colo., who has been charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order on allegations he mishandled the aftermath of the killings.

Grayson and Wuterich pleaded not guilty. Chessani has said he didn't order a formal investigation because he believed the deaths resulted from lawful combat. He has not entered a plea because in the military system that is not usually done until motions hearings are completed and a court-martial is about to start.

Wuterich and Chessani face different charges, but the prosecution’s point is the same: Marines in combat are supposed to act like lawyers at ease to opine from afar. Politicos who shoot their mouths off at our brave Marines tonight have another reason to hang their heads in shame, to add to their long list.

Let’s hope Wuterich and Chessani’s jurors have the same sense as Grayson’s.

NOTE that the Washington Post has the AP story front-paged at its website, but as of now (8:41PM Pacific) the New York Times doesn't. Probably waiting for a way to spin it negatively, or to bury the news contradicting its rush to judgments.

Lt. Andrew Grayson’s comments on the verdict, and being a Marine:

“Yeah,” Grayson said outside the courtroom. “The Haditha Marines stood resolute to the cause and they knew in the end that their resolve would result in their innocence. Thank God.”

Grayson said there were times when he could have taken the “easy way out” by accepting a plea deal that would have spared him jail time in exchange for his testimony against other Haditha suspects. But in the end, he said, “one must do what is right.”…

Wednesday evening, Grayson said court-martialing Wuterich “was questionable at best” because the squad leader was simply following what he was trained to do – observe the military's rules of engagement.

As for Chessani, Grayson described him as “one of the most steadfast men. . . . He led by example and he knew the difference between right and wrong.”

For latest on Chessani court-martial, see here, and note we're awaiting the military judge's ruling on whether there actaully was or the appearance of command influence, and whether it affects the proceeding.

For more background, just go to the left margin Search and type in Haditha.

Some important LINKS:
Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit blog has done his usual marvelous job of finding the videos of Murtha’s and of Obama’s role in spreading the Haditha calumny. See here and here.

Also, Clay Waters at TimesWatch.org has done his usual marvelous job of exposing the hypocrisy and shoddiness at the New York Times, as predicted above. The NYT's news editor is currently answering questions, and in response to one he says: " I'd like to think that the subject of any story, if newsworthy, will not be ignored." I guess it's not as newsworthy when the paper's meme is contradicted by reality.

The talk in South Florida is whether Fidel's brother Raul is true to his word in reforming Cuba. If this article in the Miami Herald is any indication, the Castro brothers are up to their old ways:

As shoppers in Havana mobbed electronic stores looking for DVD players, writer and independent journalist Normando Hernandez Gonzalez was quietly returned to Kilo 7 prison in Camaguey, Cuba.

. . .

Hernandez was arrested in the Black Spring of 2003 in Camaguey and sentenced to 25 years in prison. His crime: criticizing the government's management of tourism, agriculture and cultural affairs. For his cheekiness, Hernandez and some 75 other writers and dissidents were charged with ``endangering the state's independence.''

It appears that Raul may be taking the Chinese approach -- bring materialism to Cuba without freedom. Let's see if it works as well in Cuba as in China.

In 1993, I had a chart of the mind-boggling permutations of Hillary Clinton’s healthcare power-grab over 15% of the economy. As Al Jolson would say, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The Warner-Lieberman bill, and its update in the Boxer plan, would devastate the entire US economy. Moreover, if energy efficiency were a goal, it’s missing any relaxation of prohibitions on drilling, coal conversion, tar sands, or nuclear power.

The US Chamber of Commerce prepared this chart of the Barbara Boxer version of the so-called cap-and-trade bill before the Senate. PowerLine has a reduced version. The US Chamber of Commerce notes:

In total there are over 300 mandates and regulations in the bill…. Moreover, each of the regulations when finalized is subject to being litigated under the Administrative Procedure Act. The actual size of the chart is 4 feet by 5 feet with 12 and 8 point font, to get the full effect take your PDF viewer up to 100% and get ready to scroll like crazy.

This overwhelming regulatory structure would cost the average American household $1,000 to $6,700 annually, according to various economic studies. One study estimated that the bill would result in two to four million lost jobs.

It’s not expected that the bill would clear the House, but the degree of support for it in the Senate reveals the extent of avarice after more tax revenues regardless of the impacts. Congress would gain tremendous new power, and campaign contributions, through regulating and, in effect, selling itself off for each economic sector’s allocations.

Mark Tapscott posts about the cost and living-standard impacts:

The evidence comes from widely divergent sources, including the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, MIT and the Center for Data Analysis (CDA) at The Heritage Foundation. The bill would raise energy taxes more than $1.13 trillion in a decade, according to CBO.

That would translate into gas prices being 42 percent higher by 2020 and the price of electricity being 55 percent higher in 2015, according to MIT. The EPA projects that enactment of Warner-Lieberman would reduce the growth in GDP by as much as 6.9 percent by 2050.

But those numbers barely begin to tell the whole story of what adoption of Warner-Lieberman would mean for working Americans. The econometric model study recently completed by CDA provides a much more detailed look at the economic catastrophe that adoption of Warner-Lieberman. would be.

The CDA study used the Global Insight (GI) econometric model of the national economy and applied assumptions that were highly favorable to the proposal, most notably that an as-yet unproven technology known as "carbon capture and sequestration" would be fully commercialized and available from the outset. The GI model also assumes no major economic dislocations during the period following enactment.

Despite these highly favorable base assumptions, the CDA study notes at the outset of describing the results of its simulations that "since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from these fossil fuels, S. 2191 represents an extraordinary level of economic interference by the federal gov¬ernment."

In addition, according to the CDA study, Warner-Lieberman "promises extraordinary perils for the American economy. Arbitrary restrictions predicated on multiple, untested, and undeveloped technologies will lead to severe restrictions on energy use and large increases in energy costs. In addition to the direct impact on consumers' budgets, these higher energy costs will spread through the economy and inject unnecessary inefficiencies at virtually every stage of production and consumption--all of which will add yet more financial burdens that must be borne by American taxpayers."

The burdens break out like this, according to the CDA study:

"* Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are at least $1.7 trillion and could reach $4.8 tril¬lion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
* Single-year GDP losses hit at least $155 billion and realistically could exceed $500 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
* Annual job losses exceed 500,000 before 2030 and could approach 1,000,000.
* The annual cost of emission permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2020 and could exceed $300 billion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).
* The average household will pay $467 more each year for its natural gas and electricity (in infla¬tion-adjusted 2006 dollars). That means that the average household will spend an additional $8,870 to purchase household energy over the period 2012 through 2030."

If these results from an econometric simulation based upon extremely favorable assumptions produce an outlook that includes a lower standard of living for most Americans, millions of lost jobs and the forced acceptance of countless daily inconveniences, the odds are overwhelming that a more realistic simulation would produce results that are truly nightmarish.

Food will become more costly, people who moved to the suburbs to escape crime and over-crowding will have to move back to the city, commuter congestion will worsen as mass transit is unable to handle significantly increased traffic volumes, productivity will suffer, technological progress will slow or reverse as a result of lost economic opportunities and leverage, the advancement of minorities into the middle class will cease, and social and political conflict and decay will accelerate.

The growing resistance of the generally more sequaious Europeans after only a few years of experiencing an anti-global warming regimen not unlike Warner-Lieberman is a likely harbinger of a far more dramatic response from independent-minded Americans.

It's not a pretty picture of America's future to be sure, but the great irony is that the liberals responsible for creating such an unhappy time then are the same people telling us now that we must turn off the air conditioning, give up our cars and stop eating so much.

In other words, they'll be telling us how happy we ought to be that we've become as miserable, cramped and chained as the rest of the world.

Ed Morrissey calls it a “pork barbecue…[and] dinner is served.” You’re on the spit.

Carter Wood at the National Association of Manufacturer’s blog ShopFloor provides us with the comparative ratings of business and union related organizations for Obama and McCain’s votes during the 2005-6 Congress. A simple way to approach these ratings is whether you want to be enriched by productive jobs or penurized by more taxes and regulations that restrict your freedoms.

National Association of Manufacturers: Obama 16%; McCain 63%
National Federation of Independent Business: Obama 12%; McCain 100%
US Chamber of Commerce: Obama 39%; McCain 72%
BIPAC (Business Industry Political Action Committee): Obama 10%; McCain 80%
Associated General Contractors: Obama 62%; McCain 62%
National Small Business Association: Obama 28%; McCain 85%
AFL-CIO: Obama 100%; McCain 17%
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers: Obama 100%; McCain 0%
League of Conservation Voters: Obama 96%; McCain 41%
Public Citizens Congress Watch: Obama 69%; McCain 15%
Service Employees International Union: Obama 94%; McCain 33%
United Auto Workers: Obama 93%; McCain 14%

As in other cases heard so far against the Haditha Marines charged with a panoply of whatever the prosecution feels might stick to the wall, the court martial charges against Lt. Andrew Grayson seem to be slipping.

In brief, Lt. Grayson is alleged to have wrongfully ordered the destruction of photos of the Iraqi casualties at Haditha, lied to an investigating officer and obstructed the investigation, and improperly been separated from the service.

The charges were raised at his Article 32 hearing, and from the evidence presented most were surprised that Lt. Grayson was recommended to court martial at all. During the conclusion of the public Article 32 hearing last November, the inspecting officer said:

he has serious doubts over the validity of criminal charges filed against a Marine lieutenant in the aftermath of the slaying of 24 Iraqi civilians two years ago.

The hearing officer, Col. Robert Stahlman, said that if 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson was guilty of dereliction of duty for not ordering an investigation into the slayings, numerous other members of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment command staff should have been similarly charged.

"I would have expected everyone in that battalion would have been charged and obviously that didn't happen," Stahlman said….

The colonel's comments came at the close of a hearing at Camp Pendleton over the last week to help determine if Grayson, a 26-year-old intelligence specialist, should be ordered to face trial by military court-martial.

Stahlman presided over Grayson's Article 32 hearing, which concluded after four days of testimony and an unusual Saturday session. Article 32 hearings are akin to probable cause hearings in civilian courts.

The colonel also said he was anxious to see the prosecution's written arguments on the charge that Grayson lied to investigators.

"I think it is a stretch to charge that," Stahlman said.

At this point, the public doesn’t know what happened in the prosecution’s brief, but Lt. Grayson was referred to court martial.

Lt. Grayson’s court martial charges were:
Charge I: Violation of the UCMJ, Article 92 (Dereliction) (Maximum punishment: Dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 6 months)
Specification 1: willfully failed to ensure that this possible, suspected, or alleged violation of the law of war was accurately reported to higher headquarters.
Specification 2: willfully failed to ensure that a thorough investigation was initiated into this possible, suspected, or alleged violation of the law of war.
Charge II: Violation of the UCMJ, Article 107 (False Official Statement) (Maximum punishment: Dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for 5 years)
Specification: did with intent to deceive, make a false official statement.
Charge III: Violation of the UCMJ, Article 134 (Obstructing Justice) (Maximum punishment: Dismissal, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, confinement for 5 years)
Specification: did wrongfully endeavor to impede an investigation.
Charge IV, improperly separated from service.

Charge III, the most serious, obstruction, was dismissed by the court martial judge.

While Kasprzyk [the military judge] did not tell the jury why the charge was gone, it appears a technicality led to the dropping one of the four charges facing Grayson, who is fending off accusations related to the aftermath of the killings that occurred Nov. 19, 2005.

Grayson's civilian defense attorney, Joseph Casas, said outside of the courtroom that Kasprzyk dropped the charge because prosecutors failed to allege that Grayson knew the Haditha case was the subject of a criminal investigation when he allegedly tried to obstruct justice.

Prosecutors accused Grayson of telling a junior officer to delete photos of the aftermath of the killings ---- and that the order came after Grayson learned the Haditha killings were under investigation.

Casas said the investigation Grayson is accused of trying to thwart was not a criminal probe at that time, but rather an administrative look at whether there had been a failure in leadership by officers.

The charge of improperly obtaining separation from the USMC now appears on shaky ground:

The key witness was Lt Grayson's first military-appointed lawyer, Major (now lieutenant colonel) Kevin Woodard. He advised Grayson throughout his separation process.

On the witness stand, Woodard was asked, "What did you do when you found out that Lt Grayson was not on legal hold?"

The reply was "nothing". Woodard checked with his superiors and was told that neither he nor Lt Grayson were under any ethical or legal obligation to inform the government that it had made an error by not placing the lieutenant on legal hold, which would have halted the separation process.

In Woodard's view, the government had screwed up and he couldn't believe the government had made that kind of mistake. He told Lt Grayson to be honest in the separation process, to never use his rank to influence the process, and that he had no obligation to tell anyone that there were charges hanging over him.

Lt Grayson checked with Woodard a final time before picking up his DD214 and was told to proceed.

Another key witness, Grayson’s commanding officer, testified there was nothing wrong with the separation:

Lt Grayson’s former commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Gillan of the 2nd Intel Battalion, was asked why he signed Lt Grayson’s discharge. LtCol Gillan responded that Lt Grayson was not on legal hold.

A senior member of the panel submitted a question: Senior “Did anyone direct Lt Grayson not to check out until all legal matters were settled?”

LtCol Gillan said no.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 84 says that:

“Any person subject to this chapter who effects an enlistment or appointment in or a separation from the armed forces of any person who is known to him to be ineligible for that enlistment, appointment, or separation because it is prohibited by law, regulation, or order shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
Elements.
(1) That the accused effected the enlistment, appointment, or separation of the person named;
(2) That this person was ineligible for this enlistment, appointment, or separation because it was prohibited by law, regulation, or order; and
(3) That the accused knew of the ineligibility at the time of the enlistment, appointment, or separation.

It may be a slim point of law, but Grayson seems to have operated just this side of breaking it, as advised by Marine counsel. Whether the judge and jury feel that a more overriding matter of an officer’s honor is at stake remains to be seen.

The testimony to the other charges repeats what was covered in the Article 32 hearing: Lt. Grayson operated per USMC regs in ordering the destruction of photos not germane to his intelligence task of identifying hostiles.

Most importantly, SA Marshall testified that Lt Grayson told him that he had seen photos taken by his subordinate, SSgt Laughner, and told him to delete them. Lt Grayson said he did so because photos because it was policy. The photos had no intelligence value. Marshall testified that he did not suspect criminal behavior on the part of Lt Grayson.

SA Marshall’s statements were in stark contrast to testimony from an Army investigator, Colonel Gregory Watt. It is Lt Grayson's alleged prevarications with Col Watt that brought the lieutenant to this court martial….

During the [later] interview, Lt Grayson told Col Watt there were no intelligence photos of the incident in Haditha without specifying that the photos, ruled as having no intelligence value, had been deleted. Later during the one-hour interview, however, Lt Grayson did tell Col Watt that some photographs taken at the scene had been deleted. Based on this, Col Watt reported back to prosecutors that he believed Lt Grayson had not been cooperative or truthful. That led to the lieutenant being charged on December 21, 2006.

The prosecution faces a difficult task in proving that Lt Grayson deliberately withheld information. At one point during the day on Friday, Col Watt was asked, "Did you ever specifically ask Lt Grayson to provide photographs?" Col Watt's answer was no.

Up the ranks, Lt. Grayson's performance in Iraq was highly commended, as many witnesses have testified. The remaining charge, dereliction, seems more appropriately charged against the prosecution.

I think this is the first time I’ve used a vulgarity in my blog posting, but that’s what former President Clinton called Todd Purdum for his lengthy examination of Bill Clinton in Vanity Fair.

I haven’t read the loooonng article by Purdum, and some of those who have feel it relies too much on anonymous sources and allegations, and Bill Clinton feels it should have been an encomium to his foundation. Frankly, I’ve had enough of Bill Clinton and his self-serving attitudes to last quite long enough without reading more about them.

However, as those who know Todd Purdum closely have attested (here and here), he is not any of the nasty words used by Bill Clinton.

I have a personal experience with Todd Purdum. Purdum is certainly not a Republican or a conservative; quite the contrary. During the height of the passions over the charges brought against John Kerry’s Vietnam and anti-war antics, theatrics, exaggerations and lies, Purdham interviewed me for well over an hour. His questions were professional, encompassing, and without bias. That weekend, August 29, 2004, in the New York Times Week In Review, Purdum’s feature article was “What They’re Really Fighting About.” I'm heavily quoted.

Purdum’s almost entire theme was that the revolt of Vietnam veterans and our supporters against Kerry’s deceptive hagiography was due to an ongoing culture war dating to the ‘60’s. I’d emphasized in our interview that the point is that Kerry’s current refusal to face his harms to veterans and to the Vietnamese, and his twisted self-glorification of that, is what made him unfit to be president. Purdum did mention that it was Kerry who put his Vietnam service and antiwar disservice front and center as qualification to be president, but added comments that somehow Kerry was trying to be a healer of the old cultural rift.

In short, Purdum had a theme and he was sticking to it. He didn’t invent quotes or examples. He selected, to buttress his theme.

I expressed my disappointment to Purdum, and through the campaign we had a friendly correspondence. The day after the election, without recrimination, Purdum did admit that we’d succeeded in defeating Kerry.

This article in Vanity Fair is part of the internecine war within the Democratic Party. But, there’s two more important points that emerge: First, Purdum is not any of those nasty words that Bill Clinton calls him. Purdum is a gentleman, of decided views, professionally expressed. Second: Bill Clinton is still the popular face of the Democratic Party, his wife is an influential Senator and still may become more powerful. Publicly examining Bill Clinton’s dirty laundry may make Purdum willing to touch filth, to discuss the dangerous implications to the country of this pair, but it doesn’t make him filth. Bill Clinton, for that matter, just confirmed his own place.

The Miami Herald reports that strongman Hugo Chavez instituted a law today that would impose a four year prison sentence on any citizen that "refuse to act as informants for intelligence agencies."

According to Chavez this law will "help Venezuela detect and neutralize national security threats, including any assassination attempts or attempted coups." Now why would a man so beloved by the people of Venezuela be concerned about a coup? Hasn't he legitimately won all of his elections? Jimmy Carter said so.

Michael Yon believes the “Iraq war seems to be winding-down. At this rate it is entirely conceivable that at the end of 2008 we will be able to say, in good conscience, that the Iraq war has ended.” At least the direct grunt-force elements, leaving the crucial fire-support and logistical elements to continue.

Yon invites Senators (and Congressmen?) to accompany him to Iraq. Yon doesn’t intend in-and-out photo ops, or two-faced/forked-tongue Pelosi drop-ins:

The only way to learn what is really going on in Iraq is to go there and listen to our ground commanders, who know what they are doing. Generals Petraeus and Odierno have years of experience in Iraq, and vast knowledge of our efforts there. But the young soldiers who have done multiple tours in Iraq also have unique and invaluable perspectives as well. These young soldiers have personally witnessed the trajectory of the war shift dramatically, and can articulate those changes in concrete and specific terms…. The best way to understand what is really going on is to listen closely to a wide range of service members who have done multiple tours in Iraq. Some will be negative, some will be positive, but overall I am certain that the vast majority of multi-tour Iraq veterans will testify that there has been great progress, and now there is hope. Combat veterans don’t tolerate happy talk or wishful thinking. They’ll tell you the raw truth as they see it.

That should be refreshing, especially in a Washington more concerned with electoral prospects and fudging rather than our security interests and those of the Iraqis.

Is Vietnam engaged in ethnic cleansing or genocide? Is the answer a matter of point of view, or a matter of who profits? Is the answer, regardless, any less horrible?

I’ve written many times about various elements of the large-scale, purposeful persecution of the native Montagnards by the Vietnamese government, and of their “cousins” the Hmong in Laos. Today, the Montagnard Foundation has pulled together these various elements into a report, “Vietnam’s Blueprint For Ethnic Cleansing.”

The report is being sent

“to relevant bodies of the international community including”:
 US State Department
 US Commission on International Religious Freedom
 Members of US Senate and House of Representatives
 Amnesty International
 Human Rights Watch
 UN High Commissioner on Human Rights
 UN Special Rapporteurs (Indigenous Peoples, Torture, Racism, Religious, etc)
 European Commission
 ASEAN

In hopes that the blogosphere will also send the message that anyone cares, I’m sending key excerpts to you. First, a brief definitional discussion may be needed to clarify the dimensions of the case.

Genocide is a term reserved for wholesale, purposeful, government-organized, technological extermination of an identified group, and is even reserved for specific types as laid out in Geneva Conventions. There’s justifiable discouragement of excessive use of the term as cheapening the scale and suffering of those subjected to it.

Ethnic cleansing is a term for grayer areas of such horrendous efforts, when the effort is not as whole-encompassing, or there’s lack of global opinion agreement that it rises to genocide.

The UN’s General Assembly may have clarified when ethnic cleansing becomes genocide (Resolution 47/121, regarding Bosnia/Herzegovina):

... It [i.e. ethnic cleansing] can only be a form of genocide within the meaning of the [Genocide] Convention, if it corresponds to or falls within one of the categories of acts prohibited by Article II of the Convention. Neither the intent, as a matter of policy, to render an area “ethnically homogeneous”, nor the operations that may be carried out to implement such policy, can as such be designated as genocide: the intent that characterizes genocide is “to destroy, in whole or in part” a particular group, and deportation or displacement of the members of a group, even if effected by force, is not necessarily equivalent to destruction of that group, nor is such destruction an automatic consequence of the displacement. This is not to say that acts described as 'ethnic cleansing' may never constitute genocide, if they are such as to be characterized as, for example, 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part', contrary to Article II, paragraph (c), of the Convention, provided such action is carried out with the necessary specific intent (dolus specialis), that is to say with a view to the destruction of the group, as distinct from its removal from the region. As the ICTY has observed, while 'there are obvious similarities between a genocidal policy and the policy commonly known as 'ethnic cleansing' ' (Krstić, IT-98-33-T, Trial Chamber Judgment, 2 August 2001, para. 562), yet '[a] clear distinction must be drawn between physical destruction and mere dissolution of a group. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide....[European Court of Human Rights, quoting the International Court of Justice, via WikiPedia]

I think the Montagnard Foundation is hesitant to use the term genocide, to avoid being caught up in definitional arguments, but what you’ll read below certainly seems to be more than “mere” ethnic cleansing relocation of a group. There’s many specifics, footnoted, and photos.

… Examining the evidence collectively, a blueprint of ethnic cleansing emerges as these human rights violations, including official and spontaneous transmigration policies, large scale deforestation, abuse of family planning methods, religious persecution, land confiscation, torture and extrajudicial killing, have been directed against a specific race of indigenous peoples….

The evidence of this persecution comes from various authorities namely the US State Department, the United Nations, US International Commission of Religious Freedom and internationally recognized NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International….

KILLINGS, IMPRISONMENT AND TORTURE
Since the year 2000, thousands of Degar Montagnards have been arrested, in what can be described as a policy of “arrest, torture, threaten and release” by Vietnamese security forces of whose intent is to repress the Degar population. Many Degars however are not released, being sentenced to prison terms and others die from torture and abuse for non violent peaceful activities. In recent years the Vietnamese government has intensified surveillance and paramilitary operations in the Central Highlands with the intent to crush both the spread of house Church Christianity and the Degar population from seeking legitimate redress for human rights abuses. Such arrests involved threats and torture, including beatings designed to deliberately cause death from internal injuries, electric shock torture and outright killings of indigenous Degar people for religious and non-violent political human rights activities….

TRANSMIGRATION, FORCED RELOCATIONS & CONFISCATION OF ANCESTRAL LAND
The Hanoi government had long ago commenced the forced confiscation of Degar ancestral land - the lifeblood of its indigenous peoples and over the preceding decades, forcibly relocated Degar villages to areas of poor farmland and limited health services. Reminiscent of Stalin’s purges, these began as 5-year plans (large-scale internal migration policies) which brought thousands of ethnic Vietnamese from the coast and North Vietnam onto traditional Degar lands. This occurred throughout the 80s and 90s and while no longer called 5-year plans, this spontaneous and government sponsored internal migration continues today in 2008 throughout the Central Highlands. Various authorities including the US State Department acknowledged such(see above). This displacement program is sometimes called “Fixed Field, Fixed Residence” (which also makes the Degar Montagnard’s traditional agricultural practices illegal) has effectively condemned the Degar people to a life of poverty. Vietnam through discrimination and corruption has also been unable to provide any reasonable alternatives to its’ indigenous minorities. The US State Department has also reported that, “longstanding societal discrimination against ethnic minorities remained a problem” while UNICEF had reported that ethnic minority children in Vietnam suffer the worst rates of malnutrition and poverty….

DEFORESTATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION OF ANCESTRAL LAND
The Vietnamese government has long confiscated lands throughout the Central Highlands and developed the region for private and state run coffee plantations, mining and extensive logging operations. Large scale logging operations owned by the military have illegally cut thousands of cubic meters from forest reserves and today in 2008 Vietnam has stretched these activities to neighboring Laos and Cambodia, where in co-operation with these governments (and military)the region has now become a hub of illegal clear fell logging. Indigenous villages throughout the region have for many years been subject to forced relocations to provide access to such logging companies and government run coffee and rubber plantations. The logging operations inside Vietnam resulted in extensive clear fell deforestation that has destroyed the once great forests of the Central Highlands. In 2001 the former director of Vietnam’s Department of Forestry Development, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Lung, stated, “Due to unchecked timber exploitation, most of our forests have been depleted, with depletion rates reaching well over 60 percent….

The governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have also jointly embarked on a massive economic development project in the vast region (triangle area) of their countries and have been reportedly called the “Triangle Project”. The plan was officially adopted in agreements reached between the Prime Ministers of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia at their 3rd summit in 2004 and ratified by the three countries on 28 November 2004. The triangle area encompasses over a hundred thousand square miles in the region bordering these three countries and has already resulted in deforestation and the forced removal of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. Reports of land confiscations in Vietnam and Cambodia are common. Endemic levels of corruption exist at every level of government in these three countries and environmental exploitation has negatively affected the indigenous peoples throughout the region. Deforestation is continuing at unprecedented levels in Cambodia and Laos as these countries engage in illegal logging, permitting officials at the highest levels of government to reap massive profits from deforestation. It is reported that the governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia all co-operate at various levels in these activities and the NGO Global Witness has directly implicated the Cambodian government in these abuses in a detailed 95 page report titled “Cambodia’s Family
Trees”....

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS
Religious repression of Christianity, particular repression against independent house church Protestantism practiced by many Degar people has long been part of Vietnamese government policy. Officially the policy is called “Plan 184" and was initially exposed by Freedom House in the late 1990s. This policy included repressing Christianity including forcing Degar people to renounce their Christian faith in official ceremonies, under threat of imprisonment and torture and included actual renunciation ceremonies conducted by authorities who using threats of torture and arrest would force Degar Christians to drink rice wine mixed with animal blood. These barbaric procedures were actually documented by the US State Department and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Human Rights Watch also confirmed such…

While the US State Department withdrew the “Countries of Particular Concern” designation (“CPC”) on Vietnam in 2006, good faith on Vietnam’s part was short lived. (CPC designation is an official category reserved for the worst violators of religious freedom). Upon gaining accession to the WTO and winning Permanent Normal Trade Relations with the US, Vietnam however, re-commenced its repressive ways. The resulting crackdown on house church Christians, dissidents and democracy advocates was described as the worst crackdown in decades by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Subsequently the decision to remove Vietnam from the CPC designation has been seen as premature by the US International Commission of Religious Freedom and Human Rights Watch. Religious persecution continues
throughout the Central Highlands of Vietnam today and the Vietnamese authorities are using the pretext of justifying such repression by claiming they are only responding to political or terrorist activities. In reality the Vietnamese authorities are seeking to control religion and very much opposed to independent house churches or any notion of independent religious denominations.

Protestantism however, is not alone in facing repression as such persecution is also perpetrated against ethnic Vietnamese Buddhists and Degar Catholics in Vietnam. This ongoing religious persecution forms one of the major grievances the Degar Montagnards have against the communist government….

STERILIZATIONS, FINES, COERCION & ABUSE OF FAMILY PLANNING
Abuse of family planning programs in Vietnam have long been reported, however, the extent of the abuse or investigations has not been presented to the public. The Vietnamese government has most certainly embarked on a policy of denial and likely cover up of any such abuses. The endemic corruption in Vietnam however, which permeates throughout the entire Vietnamese government suggests that abuse of family planning, namely coercion, fines, monetary incentives and forcible sterilizations are indeed possible if not likely…. later in 2001 the Montagnard Foundation documented over 1000 cases of Degar Montagnard women who were surgically sterilized by the Vietnamese authorities through force, coercion, bribery, threats of fines or imprisonment….

[O]ver the year 2001 – 2002 the Vietnamese army had assisted medical teams to force entire Montagnard villagers at gunpoint to attend propaganda meetings where they were threatened to get surgically sterilized. Young Degar girls also reported they were forced to receive injections that they were told prevents them from getting pregnant….

In the early 1990s the communist authorities conducted sterilizations using an acid chemical “quinicrine,” in pellet form which when inserted into the uterus, the pellet would dissolve and burns the uterus shut. The British Medical journal 'Lancet' reported over 31,000 women being sterilized in Vietnam by this method (see: Lancet, 1993, 342, 24 July at page 213-217). It is unknown whether Vietnam still uses this “acid” today….

CONCLUSION: ETHNIC CLEANSING
The Degar people are experiencing persecution today much as the North and South American Indigenous peoples or Australian Aboriginals suffered under European colonialism. Religious persecution, human rights violations and lands rights abuses continue today in the Central Highlands much as they did over the past decades. For the Degar people, they face a troubled future as Vietnam fiercely resists human rights reforms and fights desperately to retain authoritarian control. The international community further appears unable to stem this tide of persecution and seems more interested in economic relations with Vietnam than demanding they undertake human rights reforms. The Degar people are basically being forced to watch their race, their people, their culture and their future being eliminated and the preceding decades of persecution is nothing less than – ethnic cleansing.

Today’s editorial in the Washington Post, “The Iraqi Upturn,” in effect declares war on the editorial board of the New York Times, whose last editorial on the subject “Spinning Iraq” takes an opposite view.

It’s been a month since the NYTs editorial board weighed in on Iraq. It emphasized, “The only mission that needs to be accomplished is an orderly exit from Iraq” and that “He [Bush] has made clear that he will keep troops in Iraq until he leaves office — and then abandon the mess to his successor. The three senators who want his job should insist that he address these problems now.”

Today’s WaPo editorial, on the other hand, chooses not to languish in either the past or in perfectionism but, rather, to emphasize current realities and what that requires of a serious Party and its candidate for the highest office controlling our and the world’s security.

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. …

If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq's 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

Some expect Obama, and even the NYTs, to glibly declare victory – the very “victory” they opposed and derided – and continue to call for a premature exit, even abandoning the measures necessary to continue to maintain and improve the effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces (hear an echo of the congressional Democrats abandonment of pledges to South Vietnam).

We eagerly await the NYTs editorial board’s reply to the take by the Washington Post, whose view reflects most informed observers, here and abroad, with the most exceptions coming from our congressional Democrats and Barack Obama. We also eagerly await whether anyone in the major media can highlight what happened last time the NYT’s and its congressional Democrat comrades took the reins and consigned 30-million people to oppression and the world to a generation of increased insecurity.