Understanding the Debate on Domestic Surveillance

There's a significant development on the left of the spectrum on the FISA legisation that's pending in Congress.

Firedoglake and Glenn Greenwald have posts up trumpeting the big netroots push to demonize Members of Congress for the passage of domestic surveillance legislation that allegedly violates America's tradition of the rule of law. The leftists have taken out a full-page ad in today's Washington Post, which states:

The radicalism and lawlessness of the last seven years began with extremist theories of power adopted in secret by the Bush administration. It will culminate this week when the 2008 Congress formally embraces those theories and makes clear that the rule of law is only for common Americans, not for the Washington elite.

However, if there's truly any radicalism on this issue, it resides in the administration's opponents on the left. Notice how, really, the bulk of the federal government - both the executive and the legislative branches - is under indictment by the hardline FISA opponents.

Interestingly, just last Saturday, Nancy Soderberg, a former deputy national security advisor in the Clinton administration, argued that the FISA bill was good law, not perfect, but a decent compromise considering the stakes involved and the political volatility of the issues:

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the White House directed telecommunications carriers to cooperate with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance -- the administration's effort to do a better job of "connecting the dots" to prevent terrorist attacks. In its review of the effort, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the administration's written requests and directives indicated that such assistance "had been authorized by the president" and that the "activities had been determined to be lawful."

We now know that they were not lawful. But the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power.

The bill passed by the House will prevent any repeat of that wrong, but it also lets those companies off the hook for past actions. While that's tough for many of us to swallow, the compromise still strikes the right balance between protecting our rights and our national security.

It would force an administration to use FISA courts (FISA refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up these courts in the 1970s) to obtain a court-approved, individual warrant for spying activity directed at an American citizen. The government would have to show "probable cause" that that person was engaged in terrorist activities or espionage against the United States.

These are strong measures to protect American civil liberties. More controversial is the bill's provision to allow in an emergency -- such as the aftermath of a terrorist attack -- the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to begin a surveillance project without a FISA warrant as long as they seek FISA approval within seven days....

Clearly, the intelligence community cannot succeed in the war on terrorism -- cannot really connect the dots -- without help from the private sector. Congress must protect those companies so they can and will help, when it's necessary.

Without such protection, phone and Internet companies, if they cooperated at all, would do so on a case-by-case basis, with their own lawyers exercising lawyer-like caution. In the words of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the "possible reduction in intelligence that might result from this delay is simply unacceptable for the safety of our nation." That was a conclusion that reached across party lines, as does the compromise bill.

As Soderberg notes, the legislation represents "a rare bit of common sense" that furthers the goal of securing our nation while restoring the appropriate balance on surveillance and law enforcment between the president and Congress.

Indeed, public opinion bears this out, for example in 2006, after the surveillance program was first revealed, the public supported the administration's position:

"As you may know, starting in 2001 the FBI was given additional authority in areas like surveillance, wiretaps and obtaining records in terrorism investigations. Supporters said this was necessary to fight terrorism. Opponents said it went too far in compromising privacy rights. Do you think this additional FBI authority should or should not be continued?"
						.
		Should	Should Not	Unsure
		%	%	%
	3/2-5/06	62	37	1
	6/2-5/05	59	39	2

The public also considered the surveillance program a legitimate exercise of governmental power:

"As you may know, the National Security Agency has been investigating people suspected of involvement with terrorism by secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so. Would you consider this wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval as an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?"
						.
		Acceptable	Unaccep- table	Unsure
		%	%	%
	3/2-5/06	54	46	-
	1/23-26/06	56	43	1

Folks like Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald, and others, routinely present themselves as representing the true mainstream of public opinion, but as these data show, the public found the administration's surveillance to be non-controversial.

Indeed, recent polls find the country "fairly evenly divided" on the appropriate balance between national security individual rights.

The fact is that it's the netroots hordes who are out of the mainstream. In reality, the antiwar left has very little interest in "peace" and "domestic liberties," and instead is determined to mount a radical struggle against "oppression" and imperialism" by distorting the issues at hand and by painting legitimate governmental participants of the executive and legislative processes as "above the law."
The folks speaking out against telecom immunity today are the same radicals who cheer the growing military successes of enemy terrorist organization such as Hezbollah.

So, yes, the American public should have real concerns about the scope of governmental power, but when the main opponents to domestic surveillance legislation are the same ones praising our enemies, it's good to keep the motives of these self-appointed "patriots" in mind.

**********

RELATED: "Online Movement Aims to Punish Democrats Who Support Bush Wiretap Bill."

**********

UPDATE: Morton Halperin, whose "home phone was tapped by the Nixon administration — without a warrant — beginning in 1969," indicates his support of the new FISA bill.

Obama on Spending: Iraq Funding "Wasteful and Low-Priority"

Barack Obama has over-promised on various campaign spending proposals, and as president he'll either break his pledges or break the budget, the Los Angeles Times reports:

In more than a year of campaigning, Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy.

But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact. A variety of budget analysts are skeptical that the Democrat's agenda could survive in the face of large federal budget deficits and the difficulty of making good on his plan to raise new revenue by closing tax loopholes, ending the Iraq war and cutting spending that is deemed low-priority.

Like predecessors who also had to square far-reaching promises with inescapable budget realities, they say, a President Obama might need to jettison pieces of Obama-ism.

"I don't think it all adds up," Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama's spending plans....

"In remarks he had intended to deliver in North Carolina, Obama said his plan would "not only ensure the economic security of middle-class families in the long term, but also the need to give them a chance for some relief in the short term, to make sure that Americans aren't just getting by but getting ahead."

Among other proposals during the course of the campaign, Obama has said he would strengthen the nation's bridges and dams ($6 billion a year), help make men better fathers ($50 million a year) and aid Iraqis displaced by the war ($2 billion in one-time spending). Last week, he pledged to give religious and community groups $500 million a year to provide summer education to low-income children.

Other proposals are more costly. Obama wants to extend health insurance to more people (part of a $65-billion-a-year health plan), develop cleaner energy sources ($15 billion a year), curb home foreclosures ($10 billion in one-time spending) and add $18 billion a year to education spending.

It is a far different blueprint than McCain is offering. The senator from Arizona has proposed relatively little new spending, arguing that tax cuts and private business are more effective means of solving problems.

The total price tag of Obama's plans, according to his campaign, is $130 billion a year. On top of that, Obama is proposing a middle-class tax cut of about $80 billion a year.

Obama's campaign says the new spending would be more than offset by cuts to existing federal programs and other savings.

I've highlighted that last sentence in bold.

One of those "federal programs" is the war in Iraq. Obama's economic policy director, Jason Furman, lumps in Iraq funding with other "wasteful and low-priority government programs."

Here's the quote, in bold:

"His plan reallocates what we're spending today on the war in Iraq and wasteful and low-priority government programs into higher-priority investments in our future," said Jason Furman, Obama's economic policy director.

For all the talk of Obama moving to the center, the truth is that within the campaign oganization - in planning and top-level talking points - the Obama camp clearly demonstrates no real committment to funding our troops in the field, or to the long-term security of the Iraqi people: Iraq funding is not a"high-priority" item.

The bottom line: Don't believe the hype. Barack Obama is nothing special. He's got no "hope and change," just more of the same campaign bluster, policy legerdemain, and left-wing interest group favoritism.

Americans will get a traditional tax-and-spend liberal taking the office next January in the event of a Democratic victory. The added bonus will be the White House's open-door policy to the most radical elements on the poltical spectrum, groups that will continue to pull Obama's administration toward out-of-control policy largesse and unprincipled diplomatic appeasement internationally.

Obama's budget may not add up, but the potential shape of Washington politics in 2009 is clear as a bell.

Graphic Credit: Los Angeles Times

Iraq Medic Dies After Homecoming Struggle

I cannot know what it's like to be in combat. I cannot know the stresses endured from having survived the fighting, and for some, having returned home a hero from battle.

Perhaps all of this was too much for Army Spc. Joseph Patrick Dwyer, famous for his heroism at Al Faysaliyah, Iraq, on March 25, 2003, pictured here:

Sadly, Dwyer died of an accidental overdose on June 28, as reported by the Army Times.

Never likely to miss a chance to demonize the war, and victimize the troops, Firedoglake had this to say upon the news of Dwyer's death:

With all the negative news coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan lately -- including deadly bombings on Friday and Sunday in which the Americans claims "insurgents" were killed, while the Afghan authorities claim the victims were civilians -- the McCain surrogates are trying hard to keep the media and voters focused on Iraq and not the consequences of their Iraq policies everywhere else.

It's the same misdirection McCain advocated when he and the Bush regime misled the country into the disastrous Iraq war in the first place. To obscure that strategic blunder, he's doubling down in Iraq, hoping US and NATO forces in Afghanistan can hold on just long enough for McCain and Bush to avoid taking responsibility for both mistakes.

And he's hoping the public will not notice our invasion essentially destroyed much of Iraq and continues its tragic toll on American troops.

My hopes, prayers, and deepest thanks go out to Dwyer's family.

For information on PTSD, see the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

See also, Robert Kaplan, "Modern Heroes: Our Soldiers Like What They Do. They Want Our Respect, Not Pity," and Jeffrey Schmidt, "For Liberals, Soldiers Are Victims."

The Competitive Demonization of Jesse Helms

My initial post on Jesse Helms death (where I cite the left's tremendous disrespect of the North Carolina Senator), generated this from Whisky Fire:

The numbnut at the American Power blog says this post is "among the most disrespectful" posts about Helms' death in the Left Blogosphere. The devil you say! This is at least one of the top two most disrespectful posts in the Left Blogosphere on the subject of this particular expired bigot, as it features the word "motherf**ker." Martini Revolution says "good f**king riddance," and Comments from Left Field remarks that he was a "racist, homophobic assbag," which are both accurate and morally unexceptionable, but do not rise to the level of "motherf**ker." I'm not sure we've surpassed TBogg's observation that Senator Helms is currently getting ass-f**ked by Roy Cohn in Hell, however.

These are crucial distinctions and it is important to get them right.

What can I say? Maybe the lefties find competitive demonization funny?

I can note that a number of other commentators noticed the depths of Whiskey Fire's depravity, for example, in Noel Sheppard's, "Netroots Celebrate Helms's Death With Vulgar Attacks:"

Apparently devoid of ... human decency, the folks in the Netroots, within minutes of Friday's announcement concerning the death of Jesse Helms, began publishing virulent and vulgar epithets directed at the former senator, with some actually voicing a desire to dance on his grave.

Devoid of human decency pretty much sums things up. Indeed, not to be outdone, Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, sought this morning to have the last word on Helms' alleged evil, starting with an obligatory moral qualifier:

I haven't written anything about Jesse Helms' death, since I don't like speaking ill of the dead. However: every so often, conservatives wonder: why oh why do people think that the Republican party, and/or the conservative movement, is bigoted? I think that the conservative response to Helms' death ought to settle that debate once and for all.

Hilzoy's post is one long chronicle of Helms' statements on the controversial issues of the day, with not a shred of countervailing information to provide some balance.

It's clear that left and right are not going to agree on how to treat the legacy of someone as polarizing as Jesse Helms.

But for the record, here are some additional thought for consideration, first, from Marc Thiessen:

With the passing of Sen. Jesse Helms, the media have demonstrated one final time that they never fully understood the power or impact of this great man. Consider, for example, The Post's obituary of Helms; here are some things you would not learn about his life and legacy by reading it:

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms led the successful effort to bring Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into the NATO alliance. He secured passage of bipartisan legislation to protect our men and women in uniform from the International Criminal Court. He won overwhelming approval for his legislation to support the Cuban people in their struggle against a tyrant. He won majority support in the Senate for his opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He helped secure passage of the National Missile Defense Act and stopped the Clinton administration from concluding a new anti-ballistic missile agreement in its final months in office -- paving the way for today's deployment of America's first defenses against ballistic missile attack. He helped secure passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, which expressed strong bipartisan support for regime change in Baghdad. He secured broad, bipartisan support to reorganize the State Department and bring much-needed reform to the United Nations, and he became the first legislator from any nation to address the U.N. Security Council -- a speech few in that chamber will forget.

Watching this record of achievement unfold, columnist William Safire wrote in 1997: "Jesse Helms, bete noire of knee-jerk liberals . . . is turning out to be the most effectively bipartisan chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since Arthur Vandenberg. . . . Let us see if he gets the credit for statesmanship that he deserves from a striped-pants establishment." This weekend, we got our answer.

What his critics could not appreciate is that, by the time he left office, Jesse Helms had become a mainstream conservative. And it was not because Helms had moved toward the mainstream -- it was because the mainstream moved toward him.

But note the discussion of Helm's in William Link's preface to, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism:

Although Jesse had earned a fearsome reputation for his slash-and-burn political tactics, there was also a softer side. Within his political circle, Helms was compassionate and caring; his Senate staffers uniformly remembered him warmly. By the late 1980s, Helms was well known for his personal style and his conscious rejection of the imperiousness of some of his colleagues. In 1998, when the Washingtonian surveyed 1,200 staffers and Capitol Hill employees, Jesse was rated among the nicest senators. Garrett Epps, a columnist for the liberal Independent Weekly, published in Durham, interviewed Helms in 1989. He was surprised at what he found. “The Helms I expected,” he recalled, “was a sizzling-hot, angry, defensive ideologue.” The person he found instead was “relaxed, friendly, funny and genuinely curious about ideas and people.” Don Nickles, one of Helms’s closest allies in the Senate, later reflected that the common caricatures of Helms as mean and vindictive were “misplaced.” Nickles described him as “probably the nicest person serving in the Senate,” certainly “the most gentlemanly of any of the senators,” and a person who “epitomized the Southern gentleman.” In his dealings with other senators he was “always very pleasant, never disagreeable.” He was also unpretentious, according to Nickles. During Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981, Nickles recalled, Helms objected when police stopped traffic so that a bus with senators could pass through.

Helms’ personal warmth extended beyond senators. The third floor of the Dirksen Office Building, where Jesse’s Senate offices were located, contained two public elevators, which were old and slow, and three private elevators reserved only for senators. Staffers and visitors that snuck on the senators’ elevator were routinely evicted. The public elevator, located just outside of Helms’s office, was often crowded with tourists. If he noticed them waiting, Helms delighted in gathering tourists and taking them on the senators’ elevator, or for a ride on the Senate subway shuttle that ran between Dirksen and the Capitol, even when votes were about to occur and the shuttle was reserved for senators. Sometimes, on the spur of the moment, Helms ushered tourists to the family gallery, on the third floor of the Senate, and provided seats for them to watch the proceedings. The Senate guards were so used to Jesse’s routine with visitors that they often chuckled when they saw him coming with an entourage in tow. He considered himself a sort of unofficial host of Capitol Hill, and he personally felt that it was his duty to ensure that tourists enjoyed their visit.

There's more at the link.

Helms was also apparently unsurpassed at constituency service, a quality even Pam Spaulding noted in her otherwise critical obituary (which she updates here).

Other leftists were also respectful (here and here, for example), but overall I think the whole episode largely confirms the secular demonology of contemporary far left-wing ideologues on matters of life and death.

See also, Little Green Footballs, "RIP, Jesse Helms," and Ross Douthat, "The Case of Jesse Helms."

Douthat says Helms should not be a model:

If Ronald Reagan and Helms had similar positions on countless issues, that doesn't prove that Helms was good for conservatism; it only suggests that conservatives should look for more Reagans, and fewer Jesse Helms. I'm happy to defend Helms' views on a variety of issues, but the man himself has no business in the right-wing pantheon, and the conservatives who have used his death as an occasion to argue that he does are doing their movement a grave disservice.

That's not the key issue from my perspective (and Douthat might underestimate Helms' impact), but see the whole thing.

There's an interesting reaction at Village Voice as well, "Post Racial: Rightbloggers Shade Helms' Civil Rights History."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Highway 33: A Good Road for Seeking California

In "A Workaday Road That Cuts Through California's Back Story," Peter King re-inaugurates his "On California" column today at the Los Angeles Times:

California is laced with fabled roadways: Highway 1, the Golden State, El Camino Real, Route 66 and many others. Some follow the footpaths of padres, the trails of wagon trains. And some are monuments to the Freeway Age and California's bearhug embrace of Car Culture. ¶ State Highway 33 will not be confused with any of these asphalt icons. Nobody's likely to write a song about Highway 33, although in one stretch it does cut through Buck Owens country. Nor will a literary anthology be built around it, as was done not long ago with the Central Valley's Highway 99. ¶ Still, to travel this two-lane from top to bottom -- a 300-mile drive that begins just below the San Francisco Bay delta, passes through the San Joaquin Valley's west side, crosses steep coastal mountains and ends at Ventura, where Highway 33 disappears into the 101 -- is to tour what might be called the real California.

If you've got a few minutes be sure to read the whole thing.

King wrote the "On California" column in the 1990s, and I always enjoyed the articles, especially for their wistful stories of the San Joaquin Valley, a place at the heart of traditional California that is quintessentially American.

Obama Opens Up Convention as Protesters Prepare Direct Action

There's an almost incredible incongruity to the politics of the Democratic National Convention today.

On the one hand, Democrats plan to "throw open the doors of the convention" by holding Barack Obama's acceptance speech at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver; while on the other hand, hardline activists in the party base intend to hold protest rallies outside of the convention, apparently in the hope of holding Obama's feet to the radical fire:

Every four years, liberal activists follow political power brokers and the world media to the Democratic and Republican party conventions, filling the streets with spirited protest against war, corporate domination and environmental destruction.

This year there's a twist: Many protesters will demonstrate outside a convention that will nominate the first black major-party presidential candidate in history, who is opposed to the Iraq war and was once a community organizer and activist in Chicago.

But Barack Obama will not get a pass from demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. Activists say they are wary of his shift to the center since he secured the nomination last month.

"We're hoping he can remember his roots and, through these mass rallies and protests, we can move him," said Glenn Spagnuolo, a spokesman for an umbrella group coordinating the Denver protests, provocatively named Re-create '68.

For more on Recreate 68, check here and here.

These folks are hardine leftists of the first order.

So far Obama's pretty much thrown them under the bus - they most likely won't be in attendance at Mile High - but the public spectacle of radical protests throughout the convention will be a reminder of Obama's very real ties to prominent nihilist cohorts of an identical stripe.

See also, "Obama Picks 75,000-Seat Stadium for Convention Speech."

Left-Wing NGOs: Terrorist Propagandists for FARC

Via Prairie Pundit, don't miss Mary Anastasia O'Grady's analysis of left-wing NGO support for FARC:

As we learn more about the Colombian military's daring hostage rescue last week, one detail stands out: In tricking FARC rebels into putting the hostages aboard a helicopter, undercover special forces simply told the comandantes that the aircraft was being loaned to them by a fictitious nongovernmental organization sympathetic to their cause called the International Humanitarian Mission.

It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.

I am reminded of President Álvaro Uribe's 2003 statement that some "human rights" organizations in his country were fronts for terrorists. Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd got his back up over Mr. Uribe's statement, and piously lectured the Colombian president about "the importance of democratic values."

But as the helicopter story suggests, Mr. Uribe seems to have been right. How else to explain the fact that the FARC swallowed the line without batting an eye?

This warrants attention because it adds to the already robust evidence that left-wing NGOs and other so-called human rights defenders, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba, are nothing more than propagandists for terrorists.

O'Grady's the best journalist writing on Latin America.

See also, "The Ingrid Betancourt Rescue."

Related: Gateway Pundit, "DEM SHOCKER!!... Speaker Pelosi Was Sending Messages to FARC Terrorists While Undermining Colombian Government!"

True Patriots? How to Celebrate America

I'm still blown away by how intensely partisan were the events surrounding this year's Fourth of July. I wrote about this earlier in my entry, "Protesters Disrupt Independence Day Ceremony for New Citizens."

But the debate continued yesterday, for example, at Winds of Change, which took issue with Matthew Yglesias' post-patriotic relativism (he argued for, essentially, the internationalization of national pride, strangely enough).

Less abstract were the comments in the thread from this news story on Code Pink's anti-Bush Fourth of July protests:

Those of you on the “so-called” right (otherwise known as “fascists” in other parts of the world) should open your eyes and take a look around you. You don’t seem to realize that we (used to) live in a country where free speech was valued. Those Americans who expressed themselves have a right to be angry with Bush and his administration. He has lied to us and the world, and his lies have cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives (or maybe you live on a different planet than the rest of us?)! Maybe you should stop watching so much Fox tv news and read a real book — may I suggest Wallerstein’s “European Universalism” for a start?!?!?

You are the people that embarrass this country — you make me want to vomit!

So, conservatives should go read a "real book"?

Sure, but Emmanuel Wallerstein? Let's just say our commenter's reading recommendations place him firmly in the postmodernist camp.

See also, Protein Wisdom, "Yglesias Breaks the Rule of Holes on Patriotism."

Image Credit: The People's Cube (notice the "patriotism node").

Campus "Post-Racial" Politics

Folks throw around the word fascist quite a bit in describing the left, and in this case on campus racial politics, from Dorothy Rabinowitz, I can see the applicability:

Keith Sampson, a student employee on the janitorial staff earning his way toward a degree, was in the habit of reading during work breaks. Last October he was immersed in "Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan."

Mr. Sampson was in short order visited by his union representative, who informed him he must not bring this book to the break room, and that he could be fired. Taking the book to the campus, Mr. Sampson says he was told, was "like bringing pornography to work." That it was a history of the battle students waged against the Klan in the 1920s in no way impressed the union rep.

The assistant affirmative action officer who next summoned the student was similarly unimpressed. Indeed she was, Mr. Sampson says, irate at his explanation that he was, after all, reading a scholarly book. "The Klan still rules Indiana," Marguerite Watkins told him – didn't he know that? Mr. Sampson, by now dazed, pointed out that this book was carried in the university library. Yes, she retorted, you can get Klan propaganda in the library.

The university has allowed no interviews with Ms. Watkins or any other university official involved in the case. Still, there can be no disputing the contents of the official letter that set forth the university's case.

Mr. Sampson stood accused of "openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black co-workers." The statement, signed by chief affirmative action officer Lillian Charleston, asserted that her office had completed its investigation of the charges brought by Ms. Nakea William, his co-worker – that Mr. Sampson had continued, despite complaints, to read a book on this "inflammatory topic." "We conclude," the letter informed him, "that your conduct constitutes racial harassment. . . ." A very serious matter, with serious consequences, it went on to point out.

That was in November. Months later, in February of this year, Mr. Sampson received – from the same source – a letter with an astonishingly transformed version of his offense. And there could be no mystery as to the cause of this change.

After the official judgment against him, Mr. Sampson turned to the Indiana state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose office contacted university attorneys. Worse, the case got some sharp local press coverage that threatened to get wider.

Ludicrous harassment cases are not rare at our institutions of higher learning. But there was undeniably something special – something pure, and glorious – in the clarity of this picture. A university had brought a case against a student on grounds of a book he had been reading.

And so the new letter to Mr. Sampson by affirmative action officer Charleston brought word that she wished to clarify her previous letter, and to say it was "permissible for him to read scholarly books or other materials on break time." About the essential and only theme of the first letter – the "racially abhorrent" subject of the book – or the warnings that any "future substantiated conduct of a similar nature could mean serious disciplinary action" – there was not a word. She had meant in that first letter, she said, only to address "conduct" that caused concern among his co-workers.

What that conduct was, the affirmative action officer did not reveal – but she had delivered the message rewriting the history of the case. Absolutely and for certain there had been no problem about any book he had been reading.

This, indeed, was now the official story – as any journalist asking about the case would learn instantly from the university's media relations representatives. It would take a heart of stone not to be moved – if not much – by the extraordinary efforts of these tormented agents trying to explain that the first letter was all wrong: No reading of any book had anything to do with the charges against Mr. Sampson. This means, I asked one, that Mr. Sampson could have been reading about the adventures of Jack and Jill and he still would have been charged? Yes. What, then, was the offense? "Harassing behavior." While reading the book? The question led to careful explanations hopeless in tone – for good reason – and well removed from all semblance of reason. What the behavior was, one learned, could never be revealed.

There was, of course, no other offensive behavior; had there been any it would surely have appeared in the first letter's gusher of accusation. Like those prosecutors who invent new charges when the first ones fail in court, the administrators threw in the mysterious harassment count. Such were the operations of the university's guardians of equity and justice.

In April – having been pressed by the potent national watchdog group FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) as well as the ACLU – University Chancellor Charles R. Bantz finally sent them a letter expressing regret over this affair, and testifying to his profound commitment to freedom of expression. So far as can be ascertained, the university has extended no such expressions of regret to Keith Sampson.

Rabinowitz ties up the analysis with a discussion of Barack Obama's "post-racial" politics. Everything in Democratic politics is perceived as racist, as the primary campaign demonstrated. "There will be much more ahead, directed to the Republicans and their candidate."

I noticed this last night, when Michael Stickings argued that John McCain's only hope in November is to appeal to inherent Republican bigotry.

The twists and turns on the question of race and politics are endless, but next time lefties throw out these allegations, remind them of Keith Sampson.

Gatorade Girl's Incredible Catch

Apparently, Gatorade decided against running this advertisement in full television distribution, but they should think again:

Hat Tip: Charles Martin

Al Qaeda in Iraq, Nearly Crushed, Recruits Women Bombers

Captain Ed reports on "the most spectacular victory" over al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, where he draws on the Times of London's report, "Iraqis Lead Final Purge of Al-Qaeda."

The Captain makes an interesting observation:

Did you know that the US and Iraq will shortly conclude “one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror”? You wouldn’t if you read American newspapers or watched American television.

No, you wouldn't, as Abe Greenwald points out in his post, "The Times’s Debilitating OCD," where "OCD" stands for "obsessive compulsive disorder," with reference to the newspaper's effort to:

...prove that the American invasion of Iraq ... created violent enemies among the native population of Iraq, and that American aggression, not regional Islamism, is to blame for the majority of the resultant carnage.

Perhaps there's a little OCD in the Times' report this morning, "Despair Drives Suicide Attacks by Iraqi Women."

The article suggests that the increase in female bombings:

...seems to have arisen at least in part because of successes in detaining and killing local members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence officials say is led by foreigners.

The real cause of the trend is not American and Iraqi successes, however, but al Qaeda's own fanatical theocratic nihilism, which is clearly illustrated further down in the report:

Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon in Iraq or elsewhere, but they have been relatively rare. Since 2003, 43 women have carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, a tiny percentage of the total, according to the United States military. Though the first two cases came in the first year of the war, suicide attacks by women did not really become a trend until 2007, when there were eight such bombings in Iraq. All but one of the female bombers have been Iraqis and most are young, between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the police and American military analysts. Almost all the attacks have been attributed to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is also known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Diyala has been a stronghold for the group since it was chased from Anbar Province in the west in 2004. The province’s attraction was clear: it offers easy hiding places in its palm groves and orchards, and a Sunni-majority population that includes many people who supported Saddam Hussein and are sympathetic to the insurgency.

But in the past year, American and Iraqi forces have had much greater success in killing and detaining the group’s members in the province, as well as thwarting many of its bigger attack plots. The rise in female suicide bombings has directly coincided with the timing, and the locations, of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s biggest loss of manpower in Diyala, Baghdad and Anbar.

“Al Qaeda is always innovating: finding new ways to work,” said Ghanem al-Khoreishi, the police chief of Diyala. “When we destroyed them in fighting, they started to use new methods. And because they knew that women are treated more gently than men, they began to use them.

“The people don’t search them so well even at checkpoints.”

So, al Qaeda's finding "innovative" ways to spread the death and disaster. I'm sure Newshoggers will be cheering at that (Juan Cole certainly is).

See also, Protein Wisdom.

A Democratic Senate? GOP Prospects Look Unfavorable

The Democrats are already favored to win the House in November, but Janet Hook makes the case for Democratic gains in the Senate as well:

Mississippi, one of the nation's most conservative states, has not elected a Democratic senator in a quarter-century. It has voted for Republican presidential candidates in the last seven elections.

But this year, there is a real chance that the state will send a Democrat to the Senate.
That prospect is a window onto a remarkable political trend that has been eclipsed by the fireworks surrounding the 2008 presidential contest: Democrats are running strong Senate campaigns in states such as Mississippi, Alaska and North Carolina that Republicans have long taken for granted.

The outlook for the GOP is so grim that party leaders have readily conceded there is no chance they can regain control of the Senate in 2008, even though Democrats' current majority is slim, 51-49.

"If you have an R in front of your name, you better run scared," said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who says the party will do well if it holds its losses to three or four seats.

The Mississippi race between Democratic former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and Republican Sen. Roger Wicker distills the wide range of factors that have put congressional Republicans in their weakest position since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.

The overall political climate, shaped by the sluggish economy and President Bush's low approval ratings, is souring many voters on Republicans. The party has been hobbled by a stampede of retirements by senior Republicans, including Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott. After Lott quit in 2007, Wicker was appointed to replace him.

Barack Obama's presidential campaign has generated a big boost in Democratic voter registration, especially among African Americans, who make up more than a third of Mississippi's population. Other quirks, such as ethics scandals, are putting more Republican Senate seats at risk than seemed likely a year ago.

In June 2007, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report identified only one race for a Republican Senate seat as a real tossup. Now it identifies seven Republican seats as at risk.

The stakes for Obama in the Senate races are high. If he is elected president, the biggest obstacle to his goals could be in the Senate, where parliamentary rules mean that it can take 60 votes to approve legislation. The Senate currently includes 49 Democrats and two independents who are aligned with the Democratic caucus.

"Big changes don't happen without big Senate majorities," Obama wrote in a recent letter urging Democrats to contribute to Senate campaign coffers.

For now, most political analysts are predicting a Democratic gain of four to eight seats, which would leave the party short of the 60-vote threshold. But Republicans are worried, because bigger gains are not out of the question: Democratic fundraising is strong and the battlefield is heavily tilted against the GOP.

I think this last section's key: If Democrats pick up nine seats, they'll have a filibuster proof majority. See also, "The Power of 41: GOP Senate Minority Frustrates Democrats."

Obama's Liabilities on Iraq

Barack Obama's shifted so quickly to the ideological center that his need to appear moderate is looking more like a distraction, even a liablility.

This is especially true on the issue of Iraq, where Obama's long record of being the most prominent antiwar Democrat is being jettisoned by the candidate's pure expediency:

Here's this, from the National Post:

For months now, Senator Obama has been insisting he would have all U. S. troops home within 16 months of being sworn in as president. Even if this were a realistic timetable for bringing Iraq to the point where it can police itself -- which it isn't -- it is foolish to announce it to the world. If al-Qaeda in Iraq and other terror groups know for sure when U. S. troops will be gone, they will simply lay low and preserve their resources until then. Iran, which has been equipping terror groups and sectarian militias, can also bide its time.

Mr. Obama seemed to recognize the rashness of his earlier promise -- for about four hours on Thursday.

Speaking at a press conference in Fargo, N. D., the Illinois senator said he would "refine" his policy on Iraq after visiting there later this summer and speaking with commanders. But so immediate -- and outraged -- was the reaction in the Democratic blogosphere that Mr. Obama felt the need to go back before reporters later the same afternoon and insist his Iraq pledge had not changed. "I intend to end this war," he said. "I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades per month…I continue to believe that it is a strategic error for us to maintain a long-term occupation in Iraq at a time when conditions in Afghanistan are worsening."

See also, Hot Air, "Obama: Rest Assured, I’m Still Fully Committed to Abandoning Iraq," and "Obama: I’m Willing to “Refine My Policies” on Iraq."

Obama's Audio Book Could Damage Candidacy

The Politico reports that the audio-book version of Barack Obama's, Dreams from My Father, could prove highly damaging to the liberal Illinois Senator's campaign this fall:

Barack Obama has proved to be a difficult target to hit — just ask Hillary Rodham Clinton. Opposition researchers, though, hope that they’ve found a weapon to wound Obama in his own voice as recorded for the Grammy Award-winning audio version of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

While candidates often have their own words turned against them in attack ads, it’s one thing to see past statements in block text and something else entirely to hear the same words in the office-seeker’s own voice....

”Dreams from My Father” has been widely acclaimed as an introspective and insightful read far from the anodyne campaign-oriented books politicians often produce, traits that Obama’s critics believe make it ideal for use against the candidate.

In a passage describing his high school experience in Hawaii, for example, Obama explains the allure of drugs: “I kept playing basketball, attended classes sparingly, drank beer heavily, and tried drugs enthusiastically. … If the high didn’t solve whatever it was that was getting you down,” Obama intones, “it could at least help you laugh at the world’s ongoing folly.”

While many voters know that Obama used drugs as a young man, they haven’t heard the senator describe his drug use in those terms, or in his own voice. Nor have they heard him extensively quoting from the first sermon he heard from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., his longtime clergyman whom he renounced during the primary, saying, “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago."

Read the whole thing.

Apparently, Hugh Hewitt's been using Obama audio replays in his radio broadcasts (see Hewitt's own post, "Senator Obama, Unplugged").

This could be a veritable goldmine for right-wing smearmasters (Obama's audio-book lauds Revererend Jeremiah Wright, including passages trumpeting, "where white folks' greed runs a world in need."

Hewitt sees the potential:

It has to be the most unusual book ever by a presidential aspirant, and much of what he writes cannot be classified as mainstream...

I'll say.

Protesters Disrupt Independence Day Ceremony for New Citizens

One commenter, at my post, Progressives and Patriotism, asked, "Partisanship, even on the 4th of July?"

Well, yes, unfortunately:

As is the tradition each Fourth of July, a naturalization ceremony was held at Monticello in Charlottesville, Va. This year, 76 immigrants from 30 different countries came to take the oath of citizenship.

But Bush repeatedly was interrupted as he welcomed the guests.

"That man is a fascist!" one protester yelled. Another swore at him.

The protesters later were removed from the ceremony by law enforcement officials.

"To my fellow citizens to be — we believe in free speech in the United States of America," Bush said when the protesters started shouting.

To the din of more yelling, Bush discussed Jefferson’s legacy as he introduced the citizens.

"We honor Jefferson’s legacy by aiding the rise of liberty in lands that do not know the blessings of freedom, and on this Fourth of July we pay tribute to the brave men and women who wear the uniform of the United States of America," he said.

I'm sure our new fellow Americans will never forget the moment, when they strained to hear their president welcoming them to our union.

Photo Credit: Atlas Shrugs, "AP photo of Desiree Fairooz" (remember her?).

Truly, Madly, Deeply in Love With America

In case you missed it, here's Villainous Company's paean to America:

I have a confession to make. I am truly, madly, deeply in love with America.

I love my country not because she is perfect, but because she wants so badly to be. I even love her faults, even the kind of obsessive navel gazing angst that mistakes fallible humans and imperfect realization of our ideals for evidence of pervasive moral rot and in so doing, makes conscience the scourge that would make moral cowards of us all...

Also recommended, Sundries Shack:

When I look back at our 232 years, when I see where we started and how far we’ve come and what we’ve accomplished as a people, do I really need to tell you why I’m proud?

Yes, unfortunately, as it seems like the greatness of America's getting lost in an alternative history.

Here's to wishing all of my readers a wonderful summer.

Photo Credit: Ridgecrest Blog

The Ingrid Betancourt Rescue

The New York Times reports that the Columbian government has released videotape of Ingrid Betancourt's dramatic rescue from FARC captivity. An upload is available on YouTube.

This is a story that should be getting more play around the blogosphere. One would be hard pressed to find a more powerful example of international intelligence, military, and law enforcement cooperation than that found in the years-long, high-level planning to secure Betancourt's release.

The Los Angeles Times offered a penetrating analysis on Thurdsay, "15 Hostages Freed as FARC is Fooled in Cunning Operation," which includes this passage on joint American-Columbian planning:

Colombian armed forces using U.S. intelligence technology are thought to have cracked the rebels' communications system and tracked their movements by monitoring cellphone and satellite phone usage.

Those compromised communications may have enabled the Colombian forces to spin the ruse that led to the rescue. Details were not disclosed Wednesday on how FARC commander "Cesar" was fooled into bringing together the 15 hostages from three locations.

U.S. military spokespersons, wanting to emphasize the independence of the Colombian military in planning the operation, declined to comment on the rescue. One said U.S. involvement in the hostage rescue was limited to providing a medical team to care for the freed captives and a transport plane.

"This was a Colombian-planned and -executed operation," said the military official. "It was based largely on intelligence they had developed."

But another military official acknowledged that the United States had been told of the rescue plan in advance, which allowed U.S. officials to provide a transport plane and a team of medical personnel.

"They had given us enough heads-up so we could have the aircraft standing by in the event they went ahead with the mission and it was successful," said the officer. "We were aware enough of the planning to be ready to respond with the aircraft and the medical team."

For more on this, see Powerline, "Reflections on the Rescue," and, especially, Fausta, "The Colombian Hostage Rescue: Aftermath."

Related: Atlas Shrugs, "Israel Helped in FARC Hostage Rescue Operation."

*********

UPDATE: Don't miss Saber Point's essay on the left's propaganda campaign to delegitimize Betancourt's rescue, "FARC Communists Lying About Colombian Rescue Operation

Obama Now Wears His Patriotism

Barack Obama's apparently newly sensitive to public opinion, as it turns out that he won't leave home without his trusty flag pin:

Barack Obama, who once considered flag pins a shallow symbol, can't surround himself with enough patriotic trappings these days.

At the Fourth of July parade here, Obama sat in the reviewing stand with his wife and two young daughters, admiring the simple floats dedicated to rescue workers and local high schools.

He seldom goes out in public now without a flag pin stuck in his lapel. He devoted an entire speech to patriotism this week in Independence, Mo. Visually reinforcing the message, he stood in front of a quartet of large American flags.

None of this is an accident. Polling shows that on the threshold test any serious presidential candidate must pass, Obama has ground to cover.

A CNN poll released one day after the Illinois senator gave his patriotism speech showed that a quarter of registered voters surveyed questioned Obama's love of country. Nearly 30% of the respondents who described themselves as independents -- a coveted slice of the electorate -- believed he lacks patriotism, according to the survey.

So Obama wants to convince voters that he is every bit as patriotic as his Republican opponent. That's not an easy sell: Arizona Sen. John McCain, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

There's more at the link.

See also, "The Two Sides of America Observe July 4th."

Republicans as "Racist Zombies"?

It's something of a cottage industry on the left to smear Republicans as racist.

Bigotry knows no ideological boundaries, of course, but prominent lefties have an obssessive propensity to attack the entire GOP electorate as hooded night riders.

A prominent example is Dave Neiwart's post yesterday, "The Race Zombies: Caught Between Hate For Obama, Contempt For McCain:

AlterNet's Gabriel Thompson was in Alabama last weekend for the annual conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and his report is well worth the eye-opening read, just to get a sense for what a pack of jabbering cross-burners these folks really are. And as you can imagine, the prospect of an Obama presidency is driving them into a cannibalistic rage.

Check the link, where Neiwart reviews the comments therein, and concludes with this:

The far right ... acts as a kind of echo chamber for the mainstream right where talking points, ideas, and agendas are tested out and gradually shaped. We've already been hearing the "Muslim Obama" crap from a large number of ostensibly mainstream right-wingers, so it's just about a dead certainty the volume and intensity of it will rise as Election Day nears.

What these guys are really scared of is being treated by black people in exactly the same way they have treated them ("Yessuh, Mr. Obama") if/when economic and social positions shift. (This is, incidentally, an old motif that dates back to the lynching-era hysteria about blacks raping white women when, in reality, white men raping black women was a commonplace, both before and after slavery.) And that is the chief anxiety of these men -- that their own mistreatment of their fellow humans will come back to haunt them. As it happens, this is in fact a powerful appeal across many sectors of white society. So expect to hear strands of it woven into the GOP's attacks on Obama

Sure, this is red meat for the hard lefties, but let's take a close look at Neiwart's thesis anyway.

How about the Council of Conservative Citizens? Who are they?

Here's this from the Anti-Defamation League:

Ideology: White supremacy, white separatism.
Outreach: Mass mailings, prison newsletter.
Approach: Advances its ideology by inflaming fears and resentments, among Southern whites particularly, with regard to black-on-white crime, non-white immigration, attacks on the public display of the Confederate flag, and other issues related to "traditional" Southern culture.

Now, that's from the ADL, so let's get a little more from a journalist, Thomas Edsall, known to be sympathetic to the Democratic Party agenda, "Controversial Group Has Ties to Both Parties in South":

The Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization built by supporters of the segregationist White Citizens Councils, the John Birch Society and activists in the presidential campaigns of then-Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, has developed strong political ties to the Republican Party in the South as well as to the fading conservative wing of the southern Democratic Party.

The group's strong ties to the remnants of the now-defunct White Citizens Councils, a powerful force in Mississippi and other Deep South states in the 1950s and 1960s, gave it an organizational base as well as connections to small-town establishments, such as Rotary clubs. The group soon became part of the political culture – and both parties.

Its ties to the Democratic Party are strongest in Mississippi. William D. Lord, the group's senior field coordinator, said 34 Mississippi legislators, most of them Democrats, are members of the Council of Conservative Citizens. But most of the southern politicians associated with it are Republicans, including members in state legislatures and in prominent state party positions.

Edsall goes on to discuss how prominent Republicans, like Trent Lott and Bob Barr, maintained long-term links with the organization.

Today, however, Lott has denounced his previous open support for segregation (see, "Trent Lott's Segregationist College Days"), and he has apologized multiple times for his ties to Southern racist organizations. President George W. Bush went so far as to formally repudiate Lott's comments on the late Senator Strom Thurmond, saying that Lott's views "do not reflect the spirit of our country."

As for Bob Barr, he has emerged this year as the Libertarian candidate for the presidency, and he firmly repudiated any support from extreme right-wing groups, especially the Stormfront-types who had rallied behind Ron Paul's wayward presidential bid.

As I've noted previously, claims of racial bigotry marked the Democratic primaries this year, not the GOP's. Further, while racial animus remains at the fringe of both left and right factions, prominent Democratic activist bloggers - who claim the "mainstream" of the party - continually sponsor racial hatred as part of their political ideology (see also, "Quotes From Democrats on Race & Anti-Semitism").

Today's GOP is more open and inclusive than ever before, and John McCain himself has denounced the politics of race-baiting (see also," Who’s Playing the Race Card?").

Dave Neiwart and his extreme left-wing partisans have the most favorable electoral environment in decades, but they still can't resist falsely smearing mainstream conservatives as "jabbering cross-burners."