Judge Admits Heckling Attorney General as "Tyrant"

Here's another example that Bush derangement has gone mainstream.

Richard Sanders, a justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, has admitted to heckling U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasy at a Federalist Society dinner last week. Mukasy collapsed, in what doctors identified as a fainting spell, while making his comments. During Mukasy's talk, Sanders stood and yelled "Tyrant! You are a tyrant!"

Sanders had previously denied inquiries seeking to confirm that he was the heckler.

Michelle Malkin made repeated requests to Sanders. Here's the letter Sanders sent Malkin upon finally admitting that he indeed called Mukasy a "tyrant":

I want to set the record straight about a dinner I attended on November 20, in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Federalist Society — a conservative and libertarian legal group of which I am a member. Attorney General Michael Mukasey was the keynote speaker.

In his speech, Attorney General Mukasey justified the Bush administration’s policies in the War on Terror, which included denying meaningful hearings for prisoners in Guantanamo, and other questionable tactics, all in the name of national security. Mr. Mukasey said those who criticize the Administration for abandoning provisions of the Geneva Conventions fail to recognize that “… Al Qaeda [is] an international terrorist group, and not, the last time I checked, a signatory to the Conventions.” Although the United States is a signatory, and these Conventions prohibit torture, the audience laughed. Attorney General Mukasey received a standing ovation. I passionately disagree with these views: the government must never set aside the Constitution; domestic and international law forbids torture; and access to the writ of habeas corpus should not be denied.

The program provided no opportunity for questions or response, and I felt compelled to speak out. I stood up, and said, “tyrant,” and then left the meeting. No one else said anything. I believe we must speak our conscience in moments that demand it, even if we are but one voice.

I hope those who know my jurisprudence will agree that to truly love the Constitution is to uphold it, to speak out for it, not just in times of peace and prosperity, but also in times of chaos and crisis.

I did not “heckle” Attorney General Mukasey, and I did not disrupt the meeting, as those who watch the video of his speech on the Federalist Society’s website will discover. I left before Mr. Mukasey had his frightening collapse. I learned of his collapse later, from news reports. It should go without saying that, despite our vastly different views on what constitutes upholding the rule of law, I hope he continues to recover and remain in good health.

Actually, I don't think it "goes without saying" that Sanders should want Mukasy to remain in good health.

Historically, "tyrants" were those whose heads the mob wanted on pikes.

Sanders, in my opinion, as an official member of the Washington state judiciary, whose courts represent one of the routes to federal ajudication in our constitutional system of federal law, has at the least committed judicial misconduct, and his actions more likely reflect the literal repudiation of the legal authority of United States government - in other words, treason.

Of course, leftists are defending Sanders for his wonderfully "impassioned dissent."

Gay Abandonment of the Traditional American Family

Jeanne Carstensen claims she's got the universal answer for the conservative pushback on gay marriage:

While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.

Read the whole thing.

Carstensen is drawing on her interview with Richard Rodriquez, a thoughtful commentator on diversity issues who is gay and Catholic.

I think Rodriquez raises crucial issues about the role of the family.

But the theme seems to be that strengthening traditional families is a social vice. For Rodriguez, to strengthen families is to marginalize lifestyles that work to destroy conservative traditions, those that promote the emerging dominance of postmodern social organization and spiritual decay. And this must be opposed.

To me, that's the bigger project on the left: Tradition is the abomination, because it places moral strictures and limitations on what societies can do. Tradition emphasizes inherent goodness, like monogamous heterosexuality to the preservation of the lives of the unborn.

This part about fear of women in the workforce is a canard, and is simply one more way that the left can demonize those who refuse to go along with a moral relativism that privileges new-age anything-goes licentiousness and demeans the rigors of a moral life based in tradition and historical meaning.

Rodriguez, of course, can't explain why someone like Sarah Palin lives a life of conservative values, faith and family, with no apologies.

Food for thought, dear readers.

More at Memeorandum, including Andrew Sullivan, of course.

Picture of the Day, 11-25-08

Via the New York Times:

Sgt. Joseph Crandell, saw his 7-month-old daughter, Lena, for the first time as he was welcomed back to Germany by his wife, Layla. Lena was not yet born when Sergeant Crandell left for duty in Iraq. Part of his regiment was withdrawn from Iraq for Christmas leave.

My blessings and thanks go out the Crandall family during this holiday season.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Obama's Tidal Wave of Death

Jill Stanek sounds the warning on Barack Obama's administrative appointments, "The Tidal Wave of Death":

I haven't written on Barack Obama's cabinet appointments because frankly I found it too depressing. This is like watching a Culture of Death tsunami. Nothing we can do to stop it.

There's Tom Daschle, Obama's new Secretary of Health and Human Services, a rabid pro-abort who also hates abstinence education and supports nationalized healthcare (taxpayer funded abortions).

I've previously written on Alta Charo, Obama's new ethics advisor. Charo has ties to the human embryo experimentation industry and - surprise - supports federally funded embryonic research. She also opposes conscience rights of health care professionals to refuse to participate in abortion.

Then there's former NARAL legal director Dawn Johnsen, who will serve on Obama's Department of Justice review team.

I had supposed the topper was Obama's appointment of Ellen Moran ... as his communications director. She'll be leaving her job as executive director of EMILY's List, a group that raises $$ to elect pro-abort Democrat women.

But no, yesterday Obama named Melody Barnes to head his Domestic Policy Council. She previously served on the boards of both Planned Parenthood and EMILY's List.

There are more, but I'm drained.

Related: There's also news today on Obama's support for the Freedom of Choice Act, passage of which may force the closure of one-third of the hospitals in the country.

Repudiation of the Dark Side?

Here's this, from the letter on behalf of 200 psychologists requesting that President-Elect Obama renounce rumors of John Brennan's nomination to the CIA (via Memeorandum):

In order to restore American credibility and the rule of law, our country needs a clear and decisive repudiation of the “dark side” at this crucial turning point in our history.

God, that's sounds so horribly beyond the pale.

But I mean, c'mon, even Nancy Pelosi supported waterboarding in 2002, when briefed by the CIA on enhanced interrogation techniques (with three other top congressional Democrats).

You do what you have to do to fight and win. Democrats even know that - when the electoral winds are blowing that way, at least.

Colombian Guerillas Enjoy Safe Haven Inside Venezuela

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez regime is providing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia safe refuge in the southwest terrority of the country, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

The rebel group, which has fought a civil war with the government of Colombia for over four decades, is a classic Marxist insurgency and in recent years has turned to drug smuggling and arms trafficking to expand its operations.

Chavez, who heads Venezuela's United Socialist Party, backs the rebels:

Mr. Chávez, who has governed Venezuela since 1999, has made no secret of his admiration for the guerrillas across the border. The populist former army officer calls Fidel Castro "father" and once tried to topple Venezuela's government in a failed 1992 coup. Mr. Chávez considers the FARC ideological brothers and possible allies against a U.S. invasion he believes might come from Colombia.

Chavez suffered a blow this week when the country's political opposition won power in local elections across the country. With the price of oil coming down worldwide, many Venezuelans have turned against the regime, rebelling against the government's support of anti-American regimes internationally.

Nevertheless, no doubt Libby Spencer and the Newshoggers gang still love Hugo (once a communist...).

Progressives and the Defense Budget

Yesterday I noted that Chris Bowers was acting rational. Today I'm not so sure. He's got a post up today that endorses an extremist view of fiscal policy and budgetary authority:

The most important appointment decision Obama will make during the transition, bar none, is who becomes, or remains, Secretary of Defense. As I have noted in the past, the Department of Defense oversees the expenditure of 52% of all discretionary spending, rendering it literally impossible for any other cabinet Secretary to oversee as much federal money. Further, keeping Gates on would only worsen Democratic image problems on national security, as he would be the second consecutive non-Democratic Secretary of Defense nominated by a Democratic President. The message would be clear: even Democrats agree that Democrats can't run the military ....

Secretary of Defense is the big enchilada. Arguably, due to the vast percentage of federal spending it receives, it is more important than all other cabinet secretaries combined. The President may be Commander in Chief, but it is the Secretary of Defense who is decides how most federal revenue is spent. We need change in the Department of Defense, and keeping Gates along with his entire team of advisors and assistants doesn't fit the bill.

Reading this, perhaps we can understand why Obama's strongly resisting the pressures from the netroots.

The Secretary of Defense decides how MOST federal revenue is spent? That's a new one.

The truth is that defense expenditures account for roughly 20 percent of federal expentitures. The biggest proportion of spending is consumed by PAYMENTS TO INDIVIDUALS, and particularly income security expenditures. These outlays include programs for the elderly, the poor, the disabled, and funding healthcare beneficiaries - that is, social programs.

Naturally, as a progressive, Bowers wouldn't think about including social programs in the types of programs where money is "spent." Those are are essentially untouchable from a far left-wing perspective. Bowers, frankly, is advocating the fiscal logic of the anti-imperialist left, seen for example in this page from the socialist War Resisters League, "Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes." The pie chart above suggests what federal expenditures look like without including entitlements and automatic social outlays.

If we really want to think about who controls fiscal power in the federal government, think Thomas Daschle, the recently named nominee-designate as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle, as "health czar," is expected to have tremendous power in reforming the deliverery and access to healthcare in this country. Perhaps more importantly, Dashcle will oversee Social Security and Medicare, the most expensive entitlement programs in the nation. If these two granddaddies of the welfare state aren't reformed, they will consume the entire federal budget within a few decades.

If we're going to start talking about real budgetary choices, think social policy and entitlement reforms. Right now though, the incoming Obama administration is ramping up spending plans, and not on defense. The direction of federal budget expenditures will be one of the most important policy legacies the Obama administration will leave. Unfortunately, the left's antiwar crowd isn't talking about that.

Inside the Minds of Islamic Militants

Farhad Khosrokhavar, a preeminent research scholar in France, and a Shiite Muslim who speaks Arabic, is interviewed at today's Los Angeles Times.

Khosrokhavar conducted interviews with Islamic militants held in French prisons. He was able to connect with his subjects to a surprising degree. This passage is particularly interesting:

I was struck by the Bosnia veteran I interviewed. He studied in Malaysia. He was able to seduce a Bosnian woman and a Japanese woman, which was like apples and oranges according to him, and get the Japanese woman to convert. He had two wives at the same time. He was very intelligent, very human. But he was a cold monster. He could kill without any hint of an afterthought. A Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde, but he saw it as coherent. He saw no crisis. Usually one side hates the other in a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde personality. But he was not schizophrenic in the least.

We'd have to read Khosrokhavar's research to see what kind of generalizations we might gather from such views.

However, John Rosenthal has published an essay summarizing the implications of Khosrokhavar work, "The French Path to Jihad."

Here's more from Khosrokhavar's interview, comparing counterterror efforts in the U.S. to Europe:

In the United States, in spite of 9/11, it is a society which understands religion much better than in Europe. Muslims can be practicing and devout without being treated as if they were fundamentalists. Europe is clearly different from the U.S. Islam is the religion of the oppressed in Europe. Most Muslims are working class. There is an underclass that is comparable to the black or Latino underclass in U.S. cities.

The major threat in Europe is small groups that are difficult to spot. Like the two Lebanese who planted suitcase bombs on a German train in 2006. Jihadists are fascinated by 9/11. They want to do something cosmic, apocalyptic, but the intelligence services are all over them. They cannot succeed. The small groups, of less than five, are the most dangerous.

Kindergarten Thanksgiving Costumes Banned as "Dehumanizing"

Multicultural activists have succeeded in getting a Thanksgiving costume tradition banned from kindergarten classes in Claremont, California, the Los Angeles Times reports:

For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.

Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?

"It's demeaning," Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter's teacher. "I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."

Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca, wrote the letter upon hearing of a four-decade district tradition, where kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools take annual turns dressing up and visiting the other school for a Thanksgiving feast. This year, the Mountain View children would have dressed as Native Americans and walked to Condit, whose students would have dressed as Pilgrims.

Raheja, an English professor at UC Riverside who specializes in Native American literature, said she met with teachers and administrators in hopes that the district could hold a public forum to discuss alternatives that celebrate thankfulness without "dehumanizing" her daughter's ancestry.

"There is nothing to be served by dressing up as a racist stereotype," she said.

Angry parents crowed into a school trustees meeting last Thursday to listen to the board announce the cancellation of the events. Many parents knew the decision had been made prior to the meeting, suspecting school officials caved to political correctness.

Some parents are going to send their children to school this week in costumes anyway.

What's interesting about the Pilgrim experience is that those early colonists might not have survived without the help of Native Americans. I don't think children are "dehumanizing" the Indians by dressing up in outfits that commemorate that history:

Kathleen Lucas, a Condit parent who is of Choctaw heritage, said her son - now a first-grader - still wears the vest and feathered headband he made last year to celebrate the holiday."My son was so proud," she said. "In his eyes, he thinks that's what it looks like to be Indian."

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

A Passive-Aggressive Socialist State

Here's Abe Greenwald on creeping socialism in the United States:

A passive-aggressive socialist state — that’s the change we’ve been waiting for? That’s worse than a purely aggressive one. You’ll fight like hell if some goons barge into your home and make you put half your wages into fund X. But if you’re just “nudged” into it bit-by-bit, you’ll surrender your free will over the long haul without a fight.

Kind of like "Boiling Frog Socialism."

Obama Honeymoon Off to Early Start

Gallup reports that the "honeymoon" in public opinion afforded a new president has already begun for Barack Obama, with a new poll finding two-thirds of Americans confident in the president-elect's abilities:

Between 63% and 67% of Americans have said they are confident in Barack Obama's ability to be a good president in the weeks since his election on Nov. 4, a sentiment that doesn't yet appear to be have been affected, positively or negatively, by news coverage of the president-elect's staff and Cabinet appointments, or by reports of his economic and other policy plans ....

Obama has apparently been given a honeymoon of sorts after his election, with a substantial majority of Americans (significantly higher than the percentage who voted for him) saying they are confident in his ability to be a good president. This positive sentiment has persisted to date even as reports of possible and actual Obama appointments have dominated news coverage of the nascent Obama administration.

Obama's challenge will be to continue this good will for the roughly two months left before his inauguration, and then to translate it into public support as he begins his duties as chief executive next Jan. 20. Gallup will continue to track and report Americans' views of their newly elected president between now and then.

A honeymoon is just that: An emotional outpouring that tends to dissipate over time. The election showed politics to be deeply polarized across the parties, so we'll see a return to the patterns of the last few years by the end of 2009.

Yet, I expect Obama to have a longer honeymoon than is the norm (the first "100 days" is a benchmark).

While the economy continues its long shakeout, Americans will be looking to Washington to restore pride and confidence in the nation and its institutions. The office of the presidency is the natural beneficiary of such sentiment. The challenge for Obama will be not to stoke unreasonable expectations while simultaneously achieving some significant policy successes.

The Secret Theory of Progressivism?

The most interesting, and frankly heartening, political development lately is Barack Obama's tilt to "pragmatism" following the election, which is actually secret code (entirely for political consumption) for "I'm abandoning all the ideologically left-wing policies I championed during the Democratic primaries for immediate political expedience."

This turn, of course, has sent the radical netroots hordes into fits of apoplexy. From Jane Hamsher to Markos Moulitsas to Andrew Sullivan, the smear merchants of the left are pledging "accountability," no matter which party controls the White House.

Famous last words.

If you parse the discourse emerging this week, there's a tremendous effort on the left to smack down any conservative rationalism in discussing effective policy options going forward, especially on the economy. This whole pushback over the Roosevelt administration's response to the Great Depression is a quick eye-opener, for example. This morning, Steve Benen declared, after praising Paul Krugman's statements that FDR bungled the New Deal economic recovery program, AND that America's massive WWII industrial mobilization effort was an "enormous public works project," that the New Deal "was too conservative."

Keep in mind that with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, the Roosevelt administration saw the most substantial expansion of the interventionist state in American history. From erecting a massive regulatory structure in banking and finance, to creating the largest public corporations in U.S. history, to establishing enormous public works projects as the economic employer of last resort, to creating the Social Security/public assistance welfare state that is today bankrupting the country, it takes a lot of chutzpah to argue that Roosevelt was TOO CONSERVATIVE!

I mean, really ... the left today is classically postmodern, if not Orwellian in its ideological contortions: Up is down, right is left, and extreme liberal is conservative. It practically takes a Ph.D. from Stanford to figure it all out (like Victor Davis Hanson).

But just take a look at this new leftist conspiracy meme of the "secret theory of progressivism" that's driving folks crazy:

Clearly, theories about Obama's secret progressivism are alive and well. These theories strikes [sic] a serious blow to the notion that progressives occupy the "reality based community." Many progressives are seriously arguing that Obama's centrist campaign rhetoric and centrist advisors are part of a larger, secret, and fundamentally deceitful plan to institute a progressive agenda and provide it political cover.

One wonders what will become of the "Obmaa [sic] is a secret progressive" theories if and when Obama begins to implement center-right policy. Some of these conspiracy theorists will probably switch camps and start agitating for Obama to become more progressive. However, given the surprising staying power of these theories over the last year, it is also a safe bet that some progressives will argue that center-right administration and legislation are also part of a larger, secret plan to promote progressivism.

That's Chris Bowers at Open Left. He appears rational here, but he's one of the biggest theorists of netroots progressivism on the web, so I take his essay as something of a plausibility probe, in the hopes that "The One" hasn't fully sold the nihilist netroots down the river of winner-take-all electoral viability and post-election triangulation.

Addendum: To be fair, I too think Obama's assembling a centrist administration to provide cover for the inevitable left-wing surge of policy proposals that we'll see next year. As I argued previously, the Democrats have been frustrated with divided party government since the Lyndon Johnson administration. With few restraints in Congress come January, all Obama has do is yell "jump!" and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be yammering "how high"?

Bowers can just relax: It's not a conspiracy in the works. It's called a transition to power, and once all the building blocks are in place, we'll get our new "New Deal," especially if markets continue the once-in-a-lifetime shakeout we've witnessed this last couple of months.

It Started With a Kiss, Now We're Up to Bat...

I was blown away when I first saw this video of Michelle Branch with Carlos Santana on guitar. I was just getting ready for work one morning and VH1 was playing on the TV. I was immediately struck by the authority of Branch's towering vocals, so youthful (and comely), which were accompanied by the familiar sounding riffs of the Latin guitar master.

Please enjoy, "The Game of Love":



I'll have more blogging tonight, dear readers.

Is Hillary Obama's Colin Powell?

The likely nomination of Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's secretary of state is baffling to many.

How could two supremely ambitious rivals bury competing agendas and political differences for the common good of a new era of Democratic power? Or, more frankly, why would Hillary want to subordinate herself to a President Obama, who she clearly bested during the primaries on questions of readiness to lead in foreign policy?

I still haven't figured it out myself, but I have the feeling that a Secretary Clinton may end up being the Obama administration's Colin Powell. At times, Powell was more popular the President Bush, and as a foreign policy realist outside of the neocononservative cocoon driving the administration's war on terror and Iraq policy, his stature protected a foreign policy independence that might have gotten a lesser contemporary fired.

We may see a similar dynamic under the new administration.

For some perspective, check out today's Los Angeles Times, "Clinton's Potential Pitfalls Seen in FDR's Secretary of State." The article examines Franklin Roosevelt's relationship to Cordell Hull, who was a marginalized as something as an administration outsider who fell out influence in the president's inner circle:

Cordell Hull was a veteran lawmaker with a worldwide reputation when Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him secretary of State in 1933, in part to win needed support from Hull's army of Democratic admirers.

But the dignified Tennessean was never close to FDR. As time passed, he was "muscled out by others in the administration," said Michael Hunt, a diplomatic historian at the University of North Carolina.

Barack Obama's election as president has drawn other comparisons with Roosevelt's, especially for the economic crisis he inherits. But the example of Hull, a marginal figure despite the fact that he served into the 1940s and later won the Nobel Peace Prize, may point to potential pitfalls for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she takes the top diplomatic post, as seems increasingly likely.

Clinton would come to the role with global star power, a first-name relationship with world leaders, and a long familiarity with foreign policy.

But her relationship with the president and the new administration -- so key to success in the job -- is coarsely mixed. And her future ambitions could affect her pursuit of the administration's goals.

"I can imagine lots of room for friction," Hunt said, adding that strains between presidents and their top diplomats have been "a leitmotif of U.S. history."

The presence of her husband, former President Clinton, raises a range of additional questions.

From all outward appearances, Sen. Clinton and Obama have made peace. Yet they were rivals in the most protracted presidential primary in history, and that battle is certain to tint her arrival in the administration and on the world scene.

Throughout a long career, Clinton has been known for her diligence and grasp of details. Like the president-elect, she is thorough and methodical.

She met world leaders on a ceremonial level as first lady, but also knows many from her last five years as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who dealt with Iraq and Afghanistan. International leaders are aware that she is one of the most influential politicians in the United States.

"She'll bring stature and seriousness to a job that needs a real heavyweight," said former Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, who held a series of top-ranking foreign policy positions in the Clinton administration.

Top foreign policy experts of both parties, including former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, have praised her skills. In her campaign, Clinton was supported by a large team of experienced foreign policy experts, many of whom she could bring to the State Department.

But world leaders who are impressed by her high profile also may wonder whether she speaks for Obama, said one former Clinton foreign policy official who spoke on condition of anonymity when assessing her aptitude for the diplomatic post.

The article notes that successful secretaries have been close to their bosses, like James A. Baker III was to the first President Bush, and how Condoleeza Rice is to Bush 43.

Colin Powell stepped down after one term in office, largely from the deep strain he endured in the diplomatic run-up to the war. Michael Hirsch, in "Hillary Rodham Powell?", says a future Obama-Clinton relationsip may indeed end up like that of Bush-Powell:

Foggy Bottom is simply too far away from the White House to be an independent power base. As secretary of state, Hillary would take over a huge, prestigious organization. But it would, for the most part, be a gilded cage. And to the extent that she might fail to do Obama's bidding, she would be ignored, neutralized and ultimately rendered irrelevant. Perhaps she ought to give Powell a call before she accepts the job.

For some additional perspective, from the policy side, see Ross Douthat, "Getting Out of Iraq."

The War Against Men?

Via Protein Wisdom, the Dallas Area Regional Transit Authority is running advertisements like the one below, from The Family Place, a local domestic violence resource center:

Here's Pablo from Protein Wisdom's Pub:

These ads appear on Dallas Area Regional Transit buses. They were placed there by The Family Place, a Dallas area domestic violence group. Their logic:

We designed the campaign to reach women. Our counselors tell us over and again that when mothers realize violence in the home is hurting their children, they are motivated to seek help. Dallas Police Department statistics show that more than 90% of family violence reports involve women reporting abuse from men. Year-to-date, we have provided emergency shelter to three men, 269 women and 332 children. Thus, the campaign is focused toward women—the majority of our client base.

Read the rest...

The post notes that women were more frequently the perpertrators of domestic violence than men, and a large proportion of reported cases were instances of reciprocal violence (source).

Something to think about, anyway.

See also, Glenn Sacks, "Protest Anti-Father DART Ads."

Related: Christina Hoff Summers, "The War Against Boys."

What Will Obama Do With Guantanamo Detainees?

Readers may remember the story of Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi, a one-time detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was released from American custody in 2005. Al-Ajmi returned to Iraq to commit a suicide bombing in Mosul in March 2008.

That's a bit of history Barack Obama must not forget as he prepares to close the American military detention center at Guantanamo.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, many of the prisoners remaining at the facility are too dangerous to be released, and their legal status leaves questions as to whether judicical convictions are possible in the current legal environment:

President-elect Barack Obama's vow to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cheered human rights organizations and civil libertarians, but could force the new administration to consider a step those groups would abhor.

Some Obama advisors predict that his administration may have to decide whether to ask Congress to pass legislation allowing a number of detainees to be held indefinitely without trial. But civil libertarians think that even a limited version of such a proposal would be as much at odds with U.S. judicial custom as the offshore prison.

The debate suggests that the decision to close Guantanamo may be the easy part for Obama. Much harder will be sorting out the legal complexities of holding, prosecuting, transferring or releasing the roughly 250 prisoners.

Obama has never embraced an indefinite detention law, and his supporters think he will take steps to avoid that outcome. However, sharp divisions have emerged among Obama allies on how to proceed. The civil libertarians, legal scholars and lawyers who were united in condemning the Bush administration's policies differ on what to do with the prisoners at Guantanamo.

All agree that a crucial first step is to thoroughly review each detainee's case to see how many could be put on trial in U.S. courts and how many could be released to their home countries.

People close to Obama's transition team say officials have been busy filling key administration posts and have not decided how to deal with the aftermath of Guantanamo. Obama has said repeatedly that he plans to close the prison.

But some experts on detention policy, including close Obama allies, are convinced that problems posed by many of the detainees are insoluble: They may be too dangerous to release but will never be able to stand trial in U.S. courts because of tainted evidence or allegations of mistreatment.

For those prisoners, closing Guantanamo could require congressional approval of a law allowing long-term detention.

The bitter irony here is exquisite.

One of the most vociferous challenges to the Bush administration has been the allegations by the hard left of violations civil liberties of non-uniformed enemy terrorists. Now we'll have an administration led by a Harvard-trained civil rights attorney, and it's already clear he's doesn't know what to do with some of the world's most violent fanatics.

Think about it: The very terrorists who for years civil libertarians have championed as deserving human rights protections may in be imprisoned for life without possibility of a trial because allegations of abuse or tained evidence - legal claims that would be afforded to any petty burgler in domestic criminal cases - would in effect set them free to again kill the innnocents.

President Bush made the right decision in the first place: Hold the terrorists indefinitely as unprivileged enemy combatants for the duration of the conflict. We have now won the Iraq war, and in a few more years we may see victory in Afghanistan, where most of the original terrorists were captured.

Perhaps by that time the U.S. and the international community wiil have devised a new legal regime to decide the fate of those who might seek to return to the battle of global terror and renew the fight against the Western democracies.

Obama Administration to Be Among Most Far-Left Ever

Well, at least one blogger's willing to come right out and say it: Barack Obama really is at the extreme left of the political spectrum, even farther left than was Franklin Delano Roosvelt, and on par with Lyndon Johnson:

Obama's agenda is farther to the left than anything we've seen since at least Lyndon Johnson, and Congress has never in its history seen a Democratic Party so united in its leftward tilt. It doesn't matter whether Obama has centrists and moderate Republicans as part of his coalition. What matters is if he can unite (enough of) this country behind a common purpose to get things done.

Geez, I thought I'd never see the day!

Now if these folks will just come out and admit that "progressive" is just a euphemism for a neo-socialist agenda, then my job will be done.

Al Qaeda Thanks Iran for Attack on U.S. Embassy in Yemen

Check out this eye-opener: "Iran Receives al Qaeda Praise for Role in Terrorist Attacks":

Delivery of the letter exposed the rising role of Saad bin Laden, son of the al-Qaeda leader, Osama as an intermediary between the organisation and Iran. Saad bin Laden has been living in Iran since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, apparently under house arrest.

The letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was written after the American embassy in Yemen was attacked by simultaneous suicide car bombs in September.

Western security officials said the missive thanked the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for providing assistance to al-Qaeda to set up its terrorist network in Yemen, which has suffered ten al-Qaeda-related terror attacks in the past year, including two bomb attacks against the American embassy.

In the letter al-Qaeda's leadership pays tribute to Iran's generosity, stating that without its "monetary and infrastructure assistance" it would have not been possible for the group to carry out the terror attacks. It also thanked Iran for having the "vision" to help the terror organisation establish new bases in Yemen after al-Qaeda was forced to abandon much of its terrorist infrastructure in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

There has been intense speculation about the level of Iranian support for al-Qaeda since the 9/11 Commission report into al-Qaeda's terror attacks against the U.S. in 2001 concluded that Iran had provided safe passage for many of the 9/11 hijackers travelling between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia prior to the attacks.

Scores of senior al Qaeda activists - including Saad bin Laden - sought sanctuary in Iran following the overthrow of the Taliban, and have remained in Tehran ever since. The activities of Saad bin Laden, 29, have been a source of Western concern despite Tehran's assurances that he is under official confinement.

But Iran was a key transit route for al Qaeda loyalists moving between battlefields in the Middle East and Asia. Western security officials have also concluded Iran's Revolutionary Guards have supported al-Qaeda terror cells, despite religious divisions between Iran's Shia Muslim revolutionaries and the Sunni Muslim terrorists.

As Jihad Watch notes:

So much for the notion that Sunnis and Shias can never cooperate...

I'll update when I get word that, Cernig, the nihilist left's anti-Western wannabe intelligence pro, confirms this is all a hegemonic plot hatched by Halliburton operatives with a moles in Western security agencies feeding disinformation to the right-wing Judith Miller press-types to boost the case for regime change Iran.

War Mobilization Ended the Great Depression

There's a little controversy online today over the effacy of the New Deal recovery programs in restoring growth to the Amercan economy in the 1930s. Here's George Will discussing a "new" New Deal on "This Week":

Here's the take over at Think Progress:

This morning on ABC’s This Week, conservative columnist George Will echoed the false right-wing meme that FDR’s New Deal policies made the Depression worse:

Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge that the first New Deal didn’t work?

To back the argument, Think Progress makes an obligatory - though-irrelevant - reference to "Nobel-laureate" Paul Krugman, who's recently promoted his work on "Depression economics." Yet Krugman's Nobel prize, of course, was for his research on international trade theory and economic geography, a far cry from Keynesian demand-side economics used to justify a spending binge, or whatever other new-left growth theories that have come around to rescue that failed Keynesian paradigm.

Think Progress also posts a graph from economist Brad DeLong, which suggests that private domestic investment had returned to pre-1929 levels by 1937. Of course, investments in capital and labor would normally take time to stimulate the economy, so it's not especially clear as to how that's supposed to debunk Will's recitation of the facts in 1937 on the continuing collapse of economic growth during the New Deal period of the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

It's basic historical knowledge that the Great Depression ended as a result of wartime production, which restored a full employment economy by 1943. Even Wikipedia's main page gets it right:

The Depression continued with decreasing effect until the U.S. entered the Second World War. Under the special circumstances of war mobilization, massive war spending doubled the GNP (Gross National Product) Civilian unemployment was reduced from 14% in 1940 to less than 2% in 1943 as the labor force grew by ten million. Millions of farmers left marginal operations, students quit school, and housewives joined the labor force.

Unemployment was still 14 percent in 1940!

Yeah, sure, let's just jump-start a "new" New Deal!

These progressives are brilliant! And just think, the Huffington Post (Arianna's in the video above) and Think Progress are two of the top-five bloggers ranked today. Figure that?

At least Barack Obama plans a round of tax cuts with his proposal today to spend upwards of $700 billion to stimulate the economy. I guess those conservative think tanks might know a thing or two after all.

The GOP and Black America

Sophia Nelson is a black Republican and former GOP congressional staffer and committee counsel. She's got a long essay at the Washington Post discussing the paucity of black Americans in the Republican party.

Ninety-five percent of black voters turned out for Barack Obama this year, and Nelson was one of them. She doesn't really explain her personal decision, other than suggesting that the GOP's basically blown off black Americans and the party's lack of vigorous outreach has apparently left her feeling like a jilted lover.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, at the Atlantic, has a brief post on Nelson, and here's an interesting perspective on the GOP from "Ivan," in the comments:

The article strikes me as misguided in its prescriptions, as the Republicans have a much bigger problem with people of color than "lack of outreach" and "not talking to them": namely, that it is a safe haven for racists of various stripes. Worrying about outreach in its current situation is like worrying about a car's paint job when the engine won't even run. The GOP needs to make it clear, both in style and in substance, that racists are no longer welcome, and it needs to do so consistently and for a long period of time to convince people that its racism is in the past (the way Democrats did by supporting civil rights and rejecting the Dixiecrat wing). In essence, they need to disown the Southern Strategy.

The big problem for the GOP is that they've become dependent on that wing of the party for electoral successes, so over the short term such a rejection will be very costly in electoral terms. But if they don't do this, they're dead in the long term, not just because of fast-growing minority populations (Latinos don't like the GOP crypto- and not-so-crypto-racist policies and rhetoric any more than Blacks) but because it aggressucely alienates the young-voter demo, whites included.

Basically, the GOP made a deal with the devil when they welcomed the Dixiecrats into the party. It gave them a generation's worth of dominance at the Presidential level, but now the bill is coming due and the compounded interest looks brutal.

Ivan puts a reasonably plausible face on the common left-wing smear of the GOP as a party of racists.

The problem, of course, is that since Ronald Reagan's landslide reelection in 1984 - where the GOP won 49 out of 50 states - it strains logic to suggest the post-1960s Republican Party is an exclusively Southern-based political machine. Sure, the party appealed to issues that generated subtantial support among white Southerners, many of whom were Democrats and would cross party lines to vote for Republicans when latent racial issues were salient.

But one key theme associated with this debate is the "Southernization of the America," a topic developed by historians and sociologists, and which was discussed in an Economist essay in 1994 (see also this entry at Wikipedia). The party appealed to cultural and economic issues that were increasing important to white working class voters, and these issues were nationalized. It's frankly not racist to be outraged that white workers were being passed over in the workplace due to aggressive racial quota programs, or that qualified disadvantaged white students were being shut out of placement at competitive universities because of race-based affirmative action.

Indeed, as Thomas Edsall has argued, agressive welfare-state liberalism, and extremely race-conscious policies, drove moderate-to-conservative white working class voters from the Democratic Party in droves:

Public policies backed by liberals have driven these new alignments. In particular, busing, affirmative action, and much of the rights revolution in behalf of criminal defendants, prisoners, homosexuals, welfare recipients, and a host of other previously marginalized groups have, for many voters, converted the government from ally to adversary. The simultaneous increase, over the past two and a half decades, in crime, welfare dependency, illegitimacy, and educational failure have established in the minds of many voters a numbing array of "costs" - perceived and real - of liberalism.

Everyday Americans, frankly, were revolting against the excesses of the rights revolution and the cost of welfare state liberalism that to this day has not reduced poverty in America, and has contributed to the decay of the black American family, the radicalism of the gay rights militant movement, and irresponsibility in foreign policy and war.

Today, the GOP's failure to come up with a new governing vision, and the dramatic personality-driven politics of the Democratic Party under Barack Obama, explains the party's drubbing at the polls, among all demographics. In fact, Obama simply consolidated a black voting constituency that has turned out for Democratic candidates at rates of 80 percent since the Lyndon Johnson administration.

Those black Americans who refuse to abandon a victim's mentality aren't likely to be attracted to the more individualistic and responsibility-driven ethic that's been the basis for GOP conservative economic and social values for generations. To the extent that we've had a Democratic political realignment this year, it's largely been a matter of economic trauma. If and when the Democratic Party restores confidence and growth in the American economy, and voters find more opportunity across the free market system, we may see more of a return to a normal pattern of party competition based on relative evaluations of the parties' statements of core convictions and support for decency, mobility, and responsibility.

Until then - until the GOP can credibly restore its image of economic fairness and meaningful traditional values - the Democrats can get away with a politics of grievance that treats black voters as the same sharecroppers that Southern Democratic Party bosses exploited before the 1960s.

Liberal Hollywood Threatens Prop 8 Backers

The Los Angeles Times reports that Hollywood's left-wing activist community is preparing to boycott individuals and companies who contributed to California's Proposition 8:

Should there be boycotts, blacklists, firings or de facto shunning of those who supported Proposition 8?

That's the issue consuming many in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat the initiative banning same-sex marriage and are now reeling with recrimination and dismay. Meanwhile, activists continue to comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to support the ban.

The piece discusses the case of Richard Raddon of Film Independent, a production company. Raddon is Mormon. He gave $1,500 to the Prop 8 campaign.

Raddon has been a particularly polarizing figure because Film Independent's board includes many independent film stalwarts, including Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Fox Searchlight President Peter Rice and Oscar-winning writer Bill Condon. One of the group's explicit missions is to promote diversity.

Last week, Raddon offered to resign. According to one board member, a conference call was hastily arranged, and after much discussion the board voted unanimously to keep him.

Yet the anger continues to stew.

"There is still roiling debate within the organization," says distributor Howard Cohen, an advisor to the film festival who is gay. "Is it OK to let this go? There are a lot of gay people who work at Film Independent. The issue has not been closed."

No one is certain how the current protest will affect Film Independent's Spirit Awards in the spring, a popular event recognizing work that "challenges the status quo." And there are already indications the Los Angeles Film Festival could be affected.

Gregg Araki, director of the critically acclaimed gay cult hit "Mysterious Skin" and an influential figure in "new queer cinema," has said he won't allow his films to be shown there, while others, such as "Milk" producers and gay activists Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, say they're going to "study in depth all the facets of our specific situation before making a decision."

Araki says Raddon should step down. "I don't think he should be forcibly removed. The bottom line is if he contributed money to a hateful campaign against black people, or against Jewish people, or any other minority group, there would be much less excusing of him. The terrible irony is that he runs a film festival that is intended to promote tolerance and equality."

Others are leery of punishing free speech, even if they consider it hateful. "I can't quite stomach the notion that you fire somebody because of what they believe. It doesn't feel right to me," says Christine Vachon, a pillar of gay cinema who produced such films as "Boys Don't Cry" and "Far From Heaven."

Raddon declined to comment, but Dawn Hudson, executive director of Film Independent, says, "Are we happy with his donation? No. But he has a right to his religious and personal beliefs.

And that's the point: Gay activists don't respect Raddon's rights, his political beliefs, or his religion. The movement's totalitarian, and many inside the industry are recoiling against the gay liberal extremism.

Pilgrim at Say Anything identifies the gay rights activists as "the new brownshirts":

Let me say this - just because you didn’t support gay marriage doesn’t make you homophobic and certainly doesn’t make someone a bigot. Gays already have the right to marry. Nobody is denying them that. They simply do not have the extra right to marry someone of their own sex.

So ... it’s really about having an extra right granted to them that other people don’t have.

Anyway, these people are actively going after anyone they can show to have supported Proposition 8 and that, folks, is genuinely scary stuff. It’s even making many in the gay community uncomfortable ...

Yes, all of this is making a lot of reasonable people uncomfortable, and that's exactly what the gay rights ayatollahs want. They'll harass, heckle, and hound Americans of good will until they feel so terrorized they'll simply give up the fight, capitulating to a creeping left-wing authoritarianism bubbling-up from depths of the nihilist Democratic Party base.

Where is the Political Middle?

With Barack Obama appointing establishment Democrats to key posts in his upcoming administration, leftists are braying that "progressivism" has been abandoned: Obama was a centrist all along, don't you know, and forget about hopes for a truly left-wing ideological agenda after the inauguration.

Glenn Greenwald published an e-mail from Digby, where she actually cheers the economic crisis as helping promote the left-wing agenda, the only thing truly pushing U.S. towards socialism:

The villagers and the right made it very clear what they required of Obama - bipartisanship, technocratic competence and center-right orthodoxy. Liberals took cultural signifiers as a sign of solidarity and didn't ask for anything. So, we have the great symbolic victory of the first black president (and that's not nothing, by the way) who is also a bipartisan, centrist technocrat. Surprise.

There are things to applaud about the cabinet picks -- Clinton is a global superstar who, along with Barack himself, signals to the world that the US is no longer being run by incompetent, extremist, political fringe dwellers. Holder seems to be genuinely against torture and hostile to the concept of the imperial presidency. Gaithner is a smart guy who has the trust of the Big Money Boyz, which may end up being useful considering the enormous and risky economic challenges ahead. Emmanuel is someone who is not afraid to wield a knife and if we're lucky he might just wield it from time to time against a Republican or a right wing Democrat. Napolitano seems to have a deft political touch with difficult issues like immigration which is going to be a battleground at DHS. And on and on.

None of them are liberals, but then Obama said repeatedly that he wasn't ideological, that he cared about "what works." I don't know why people didn't believe that. He's a technocrat who wants to "solve problems" and "change politics." The first may actually end up producing the kind of ideological shift liberals desire simply because of the dire set of circumstances greeting the new administration. (Hooray for the new depression!) The second was always an empty fantasy - politics is just another word for human nature, and that hasn't changed since we were dancing around the fire outside our caves.

If you want to press for a cabinet appointment at this late date who might bring some ideological ballast, I would guess that labor and energy are where the action is. It would be really helpful to have somebody from the left in the room when the wonks start dryly parceling out the compromises on the economy and climate change. But basically, we are going to be dealing with an administration whose raison d'etre is to make government "work." That's essentially a progressive goal and one that nobody can really argue with. But he never said he would make government "work" for a liberal agenda. Liberals just assumed that.

Now, Big Tent Democrat has a different take. He's not too worried about any lurch to the right. Indeed, putting all these establishment types in office will simply be a way to reposition progressivism as the new political center:

By default, President-Elect Obama gets to define what the middle is. I believe he will define progressivism as the middle. If that is called "Center-Right," so much the better. Consider what that makes Extreme Republicanism (out of the mainstream of political thought instead of occupying the White House) and what that makes the formerly loony Left (the respectable Left flank.) Role reversal. This is a good thing.

I'm putting my money on Big Tent's prediction. Digby's a loon, not to mention Greenwald. But Big Tent's already been attacked as a traitor to the neo-Marxist vision of today's radical left, so for him to suggest the possibility of a new "progressive middle" is a major concession.

And that's the key: Establishment Democrats are just that, part of the governmental establishment. If they've had to tack to the political center, meaning a genuinely moderate-to-conservative balance point, that's because other political actors and the American public required it. Now with unified Democratic control of Congress and the executive come January, we'll see the greatest political liberation on the left since the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Nolan Finley, at the Detroit News, puts things in perspective:

As they await his ascension, Republicans are reassuring themselves that President-elect Barack Obama, worried about winning re-election in four years, will shake off a lifetime of liberal allegiance and govern the nation from the middle.

They're delusional. Little that Obama has said or done since Election Day supports that theory. Rather, there's every indication that Obama will enthusiastically lead the liberals who now firmly control Washington in enacting a far-left agenda.

Take as proof last week's unwarranted dumping of Dearborn's John Dingell as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The libs scored their first major victory by replacing the moderate Dingell with environmental extremist Henry Waxman of California, and Obama didn't intervene.

That's because his own views on the environment fall closer to Waxman's than to Dingell's. He's already promised to rescind the executive order opening Utah's promising oil shale fields to exploration and will fully undo the domestic oil production expansion Democrats reluctantly agreed to before the election.

Since the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter, most Democrats who've won office have done so by dodging the liberal label and declaring themselves pro-growth moderates. Even true liberals eschewed that word, insisting that they be called "progressives."

And while Obama hasn't embraced the liberal label, he has endorsed the ideology.

Listen to what he's saying. On the economy, he's calling for a stimulus package that will create jobs through massive government spending on new projects and programs, rather than by cutting taxes and improving the business climate. Start packing, Adam Smith; welcome home, John Maynard Keynes.

Also on his early schedule is a promise to push through the Freedom of Choice Act, which will exempt abortion from all reasonable regulation by the states.

Big Labor has been assured he'll fight to make it easier to organize workers and harder to adopt free trade agreements.

Finley basically makes the case the Obama's early appointments are window dressing for the true leftist agenda being hatched under the radar.

I simply see the positioning of top moderates as bringing to power the establishment Democrats who have thus far been frustrated by checks and balances and public approbation.

When we see Obama call for tax increases on incomes as low as $31,000, when we see global warming legislation elevated to holy writ to save the world, when non-uniformed terrorist killers at Guantanamo are affored public defenders, and when spending programs from public works to welfare entitlments are expanded to the highest levels since the War on Poverty, we'll know just how progressive this new administration really is.

Of course, Greenwald and Digby still won't be satisfied until we nationalize the economy and dismantle the military.

Contraceptives for 12 Year-Olds?

Here's Mark in Irvine, in the comments from my post on the latest left-wing backlash to Sarah Palin, "Save Turkeys, Kill Fetuses: The Left's Response to Sarah Palin":

If you are concerned about abortion (as I am) you can help reduce the number of abortions by promoting universal sex education and availability of contraception NO QUESTIONS ASKED for all people of reproductive age. It won't eliminate abortion, but the more people who know how to avoid pregnancy, the more pregnancies will be avoided, and the fewer people will be in the "market" for abortion.

Think about that: "People of all reproductive age" includes girls at 12 year-old and younger (see, "When Little Girls Become Women: Early Onset of Puberty in Girls").

I simply can't fathom why anyone would want make contraceptives available to adolescents, unless people have completely given up on the notion of delaying pregnancy until adulthood.

Early pregnancy is one of the greatest indicators of life-long poverty for woman. The phenomenon imposes tremendous material and moral costs on socity, and reducing such pregnancies has been considered a national priority. Here's this from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy:

Teen pregnancy is closely linked to a host of other critical social issues — poverty and income, overall child well-being, out-of-wedlock births, responsible fatherhood, health issues, education, child welfare, and other risky behavior. There are also substantial public costs associated with adolescent childbearing. Consequently, teen pregnancy should be viewed not only as a reproductive health issue, but as one that works to improve all of these measures. Simply put, if more children in this country were born to parents who are ready and able to care for them, we would see a significant reduction in a host of social problems afflicting children in the United States, from school failure and crime to child abuse and neglect.

Access to contraceptives is one alternative to preventing teenage pregnancy.

On top of any list of remedies should be adolescent education in sexual abstinence, and, frankly, the restoration strong family traditions that encourage young people to delay sexual gratification until marriage (and if marriage is passe, then until after high school).

The fact the Mark in Irvine doesn't mention any other possible preventative measures perhaps reflects how much traditional values are spurned among those on the left of the political spectrum.

Candace Gingrich: A Letter to Her Brother

Candace Gingrich, the half-sister of former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and an activist with the Human Rights Campaign, has published a "Letter to My Brother" at the Huffington Post. After ridiculing her brother for "bashing" gay marriage protesters demonstrating against Proposition 8, she says this:

Welcome to the 21st century, big bro. I can understand why you're so afraid of the energy that has been unleashed after gay and lesbian couples had their rights stripped away from them by a hateful campaign. I can see why you're sounding the alarm against the activists who use all the latest tech tools to build these rallies from the ground up in cities across the country.

This unstoppable progress has at its core a group we at HRC call Generation Equality. They are the most supportive of full LGBT equality than any American generation ever - and when it comes to the politics of division, well, they don't roll that way. 18-24 year olds voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8 and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. And the numbers of young progressive voters will only continue to grow. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, about 23 million 18-29 year olds voted on Nov. 4, 2008 - the most young voters ever to cast a ballot in a presidential election. That's an increase of 3 million more voters compared to 2004.

These are the same people who helped elect Barack Obama and sent a decisive message to your party. These young people are the future and their energy will continue to drive our country forward. Even older Americans are turning their backs on the politics of fear and demagoguery that you and your cronies have perfected over the years.

This is a movement of the people that you most fear. It's a movement of progress - and your words on FOX News only show how truly desperate you are to maintain control of a world that is changing before your very eyes.

Then again, we've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group - one that looks down upon minorities and women - when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of "traditional" marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of "historic Christianity" you claim to champion.

Again, nothing new here. This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing.

What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so '90s, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.

In other words, stop being a hater, big bro.

I have commented on most of the points raised by Candace previously (but see here and here, for samples), so I'll just say a couple of more things.

One, I genuinely don't think Proposition 8 was a campaign "based on hate" - the "hate" meme is the wedge device deployed by the left to delegitimize real concerns that the gay agenda has moved too far too fast. Such demonization is the stock-in-trade of people like Andrew Sullivan.

The voters in this state are rightly concerned with the fact that a four-member majority on the California Supreme Court would overturn the will of a 61 percent popular majority that banned gay marriages in Proposition 22 in 2000. Candace conveniently spins the hate of her allies, which is truly undemocratic and counterproductive to whatever compromises might be necessary for political accommodation.

Also interesting is this thesis that the views of young voters are the wave of the future. Candace assumes, first, that the youth vote is a monolithic pro-same-sex marriage cohort. But one of the most counterintuitive results of the November 4th vote in California was the huge majority of black voters who turned out in favor of the initiative, many of whom were apparently young and active in social justice issues facing the black community.

Further, survey data cast doubt on the meme of a hegemonic pro-gay-marriage youth wave. For example, a Pew Forum poll from April of this year found less than a majority of people under thirty (49 percent) favoring gay marriage. One of the key points raised by the Pew study is that the majority of Americans opposed to same-sex marriage is "stable" - that is, in the five years since Massachusetts approved gay marriages in that state public views on the issue have remained generally set.

Note, secondly, that the surge of young voters this year may very well be epiphenomenal, an artifact of Barack Obama's historic candidacy and the unpopularity of the current GOP administration. With the college-age cohort the least engaged demographic in American politics, it's safe to say that the gains in youth participation this year could erode as the novelty of Democratic power wears off (for a related scholarly argument to this effect, see W. Lance Bennett, "Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age").

What is clear is that Candace - who is apparently an active member of the radical LGBT activist community - is comfortable practicing the very politics she's quick to denounce - for example, defending radical gay allies who have indeed "lashed out," often violently, at those who have exercized their First Amendment rights to political participation.

California leads the nation in civil rights protections for gay Americans. For the same-sex marriage movement, the essential question is not equality before the law (gay marriage is not a federally-recognized civil right) but rather an overthrow of traditional culture, resulting in the establishment of a regime of secular humanism in which moral values based in faith, history, and tradition will be banished from the public sphere. The new order will amount to a cultural freedom of anything-goes licentiousness and irresponsiblity for one's actions, a secular polity of "rights" on demand.

This is what the fight over Prop 8 is about.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

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What Lieberman Tells Us About Center-Right "Repudiation"

Jamie Kirchick's got an awesome piece today on the failure of the Netroots to destroy Joseph Lieberman's tenure in the Democratic Senate caucus. The whole essay is a marvel, but I particularly like the concluding section, which throws cold water on all the leftist claims that America as a "center-right" nation has been repudiated:

In the wake of Obama's historic victory - he is the first Democrat to win a majority of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter and has seemingly reconfigured the electoral map by picking up states that Bush won just four years ago - many liberals have been quick to claim that the Democratic triumph means that we're now living in a liberal country.

They should take a deep breath before reaching such conclusions. Only 22% of voters this year consider themselves "liberal" while 34% call themselves "conservative," numbers roughly unchanged from four years ago. And as Doug Schoen pointed out in this space, it was moderates, not liberals, who played the decisive role in electing Barack Obama President. Obama knows this, which is why he has repudiated the Netroots time and time again, on issues ranging from Iraq withdrawal to FISA reform. Equally important, he rejected the hyperventilating wing of the party tonally, as evidenced by the calm and systematic way he ran his campaign.

The week before Tuesday's meeting, Obama let it be known that he bore "no grudge" against Lieberman. Setting a positive tone so early after a hard-fought election, he is already making good on his promise to, if not end, then at least lessen the "petty partisanship" he decried in the campaign. Among the positive outcomes of this week's abject lesson in letting bygones be bygones, it is reassuring to see that the leadership of the Democratic Party isn't as petty, vindictive and small as its left-wing supporters.

Maybe Dave "Pseudo-Fascism" Neiwert will get the memo?

Save Turkeys, Kill Fetuses: The Left's Response to Sarah Palin

Via Jill Stanek, here's the comment from Voices Carry on the left's "Turkeygate" attacks on Sarah Palin:

The hot YouTube clip of the day is Sarah Palin's interview with the turkey getting slaughtered in the background. Palin doesn't flinch. In fact, prior to the interview she was apparently asked if she wanted a different backdrop behind her and she said "no worries." I love it.

Even funnier is how [the] media protects us from the horror by blocking out the gory part and forewarning us to get the kids out of the room quickly.

Here's the bigger picture ... no shock and horror, ever, from liberals or the media regarding the dismembering of unborn children, but the sight of a turkey in a kill cone is appalling. Something's wrong when we have empathy for turkeys but are indifferent to the plight of the unborn.

Oh, the moral clarity!

I love it! I really do!

Sarah Palin is as genuine as you can get. How many millions of Americans will not eat turkey next Thursday after seeing this video of Governor Palin? Or, how many of those same Americans - a great many of whom supported Barack Obama - will continue to give the left's abortion-on-demand policies a pass after seeing the video above?

There's some pre-Thanksgiving food-for-thought.

See also, "Why Obama Really Voted For Infanticide."