Race Issues Dog Sotomayor

Geez, maybe Sonia Sotomayor will become President Obama's Harriet Myers!

The New York Times has an interesting report, "Sotomayor’s Focus on Race Issues May Be Hurdle." And William Jacobson, in "Sotomayor's Damned Statistics ," takes apart Tom Goldstein's analysis at SCOTUSblog, "Judge Sotomayor and Race — Results from the Full Data Set."

Looking past the "damned lies and statistics," check out Christopher Caldwell's analysis of Sotomayor on race:

A few of Sotomayor's decisions may ring a bell. It was she who ruled in 1999 that a law-school graduate with a learning disability was entitled to extra time to take a bar exam. More recently, she forbade the Environmental Protection Agency to use a cost-benefit analysis in antipollution enforcement (her ruling was later overturned). But the real fight over her confirmation will focus on her role in a case about tests for promotion within the New Haven, Conn., fire department. Although the tests were designed to be race-neutral, the pass rate for blacks was half that for whites. So New Haven threw out the test results. Several white firefighters who scored high enough for promotion sued the city. One of the plaintiffs was dyslexic and had hired tutors to help him. Sotomayor was on the three-judge panel that okayed New Haven's decision to nullify the tests. The panel did so in a one-paragraph blow-off that ignored a host of pressing constitutional issues and was striking for its lack of empathy, compassion and all those noble qualities that are supposed to come with growing up in the South Bronx. The case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, which could well overturn the decision in the next few weeks.

Whether or not you like racial preferences, they involve a way of looking at the law that is sophisticated rather than commonsensical. If the New Haven opinion is fair, it is the kind of fairness you learn at Yale Law School, not the kind you learn in the South Bronx. Sotomayor may be a child of the barrio, culturally speaking, but the judicial philosophy she represents comes from the mandarin, not the proletarian, wing of the Democratic Party.

Affirmative action has been a revolution in American rights and in our ideas of citizenship. To judge from almost all polls and referendums over the past few decades, it is reliably unpopular. Judges prop it up. Since the election of the first black President, it has been a shoe waiting to drop. The rationale it rests on — that minorities are cut off from fair access to positions of influence in society — has been undermined, to put it mildly. Elevating a hard-line defender of affirmative action is thus a provocation in a way that it would not have been in years past.

This woman boasts some nasty race politics. But will that be enough to force her withdrawal?

See also, "Top Ten Reasons Sotomayor Won't Be Confirmed."

More at Memeorandum.

Sotomayor's a Disaster on the Issues

Lots of folks are saying conservatives should forget whether Sonia Sotomayor qualifies as a “racist” ... So okay, let's take a look at her record on the issues ...

How about Sotomayor on foreign policy and international law? Well, she's a radical. Check Joshua Keating, "How Sotomayor Sees the World":

Five ways Obama's Supreme Court nominee could change U.S. foreign policy.

The issue: One of the fiercest debates among legal scholars today is the degree to which it is proper for U.S. judges to cite foreign case law in making decisions. Conservatives, notably Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, tend to take the view that international agreements and laws should not apply, as they derive from different constitutional systems, while liberals, notably Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tend to argue that a more "internationalist" legal philosophy is needed.

Sotomayor's record: The 2000 case Croll v. Croll involved the application of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Mrs. Croll had removed her child from Hong Kong to the United States in violation of a Hong Kong court's joint custody order and Mr. Croll filed a petition under the Hague Convention seeking the child's return. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where Sotomayor currently sits, sided with the mother, ruling that the convention did not give Mr. Croll the right to determine the child's place of residence.

Sotomayor dissented, not only arguing for a more expansive interpretation of the treaty, but also referring to foreign case law to make her argument. "Sotomayor went through the foreign cases quite extensively and found that the view she was taking was consistent with what had been found by foreign courts. She paid a lot more attention to them than the majority had," said attorney and SCOTUSBlog co-founder Amy Howe.

This suggests that Sotomayor sides with those who believe that foreign case law should at least be considered when applicable. Howe, whose firm is currently arguing a largely identical case before the Supreme Court, is thrilled. "We think she's brilliant," she said.

Sotomayor also holds an expansive view of international insitutions, and hence on limitations on U.S. sovereignty. As Keating observes, Sotomayor seems to take a "positive view toward the construction of international courts and legal institutions."

*****

Okay, how about gun rights? Check Bob Owens, "Sotomayor: Obama’s End Run on the Second Amendment" (via Memeorandum):

The recent landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller put an end to decades of arguments regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment. In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS rejected the collectivist interpretation favored by gun control advocates such as President Obama, noting that the Second Amendment’s protection of the right of citizens to own firearms for private use is an individual right that predates the Constitution, with its authority tied directly to the natural right of self-defense.

Just six months after Heller, however, Sotomayor issued an opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo that the protections of the Second Amendment do not apply to the states, and that if your city or state wants to ban all guns, then they have the right to disarm you. Such an opinion seems to fly directly in the face of Heller, exposing Sotomayor as an anti-gun radical who will affirm full-on gun prohibitions and believes that you have no right to own a firearm, even for the most basic right of defending your family in your own home.

*****

How about Sotomayor on racial preferences, and not whether she benefitted from them, but whether she'll rule in favor of minority racial preferences? David Paul Kuhn offers a devastating indictment of Sotomayor in, "Obama, Sotomayor, Ricci and White Male Privilege":

It is now asked whether Sonia Sotomayor has empathy for Frank Ricci.

It's a question larger than the first Latina nominated to the Supreme Court, larger than the first black president who selected her and larger than the case before the high court of a firefighter who did not get a promotion because he was white and male.

Three personal narratives interlocked as Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor on Tuesday. Sotomayor, if confirmed, would be the first Latina and only the third woman of the 111 justices to serve on the high court.

Sotomayor is a legal heavyweight. But she was also chosen, in part, because of her color and gender.

In an odd twist of fate, the first Latina nominee now finds herself cast not as the discriminated but the discriminator.

Sotomayor sits on the appellate court that decided against Frank Ricci, one of the more significant affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court in decades. The case evokes issues of discrimination. It highlights whether we can see white men as victims, a half-century after affirmative action was first implemented.

It was Obama who emphasized empathy as he discussed the makeup of his ideal Supreme Court nominee. And it was also Obama, in his acclaimed race speech during the presidential campaign, who noted that when whites hear "that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed ... resentment builds over time."

That resentment is captured by the Ricci case. Ricci has brought affirmative action back into the political debate at a time of towering firsts. It's these same firsts that bring culturally uncomfortable questions forward of affirmative action's role in the era of Obama ....

In 2003, the New Haven fire department had several vacancies for new lieutenants and captains. Candidates for promotion had to take a written and oral test. Candidates had three months to prepare. Ricci gave up a second job to study. Because he is dyslexic, Ricci paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes. He studied 8 to 13 hours a day. And he succeeded. Ricci's exam ranked sixth among the 77 candidates who took the test.

But New Haven's civil service board ruled that not enough minorities earned a qualifying score. The city is more than a third black. None of the 19 African-American firefighters who took the exam earned a sufficient score. The city tossed out the exam. No promotions were given. Ricci and 17 other white firefighters, including one Hispanic, sued New Haven for discrimination.

In 2006, a Federal District Court ruled that the city had not discriminated against the white firefighters. Judge Janet Bond Arterton argued that since "the result was the same for all because the test results were discarded and nobody was promoted," no harm was done.

But in reality, the decision meant that Ricci and other qualified candidates were denied promotions because of the color of their skin. This is the essence of discrimination. The exclusion of a person from earned advancement because of his or her race. The Ricci case exemplifies decades of faulty policy that mistook equal opportunity for equal outcome.

When the case came before the three-judge panel of the New York federal appeals court, Arterton's ruling was upheld in an unsigned and, as the New York Times described it, "unusually terse decision." One of the judges who upheld the ruling was Sotomayor.

Judge Jose Cabranes' dissenting opinion noted that the ruling "lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal" and "contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case," concluding that the "perfunctory" actions of the majority in their decision "rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal."

As Slate's Emily Bazelon wrote, "If Sotomayor and her colleagues were trying to shield the case from Supreme Court review, her punt had the opposite effect. It drew Cabranes' ire, and he hung a big red flag on the case, which the Supreme Court grabbed."

In April, the Supreme Court took up the case in oral argument. The ruling is expected in June. Most legal scholars expect Ricci to prevail. But the debate over affirmative action will continue.

Okay, that should be enough substance for a policy discussion on Sotomayor's nomination.

This woman will be a left-wing disaster on the Supreme Court.

Maybe she'll be Obama's Harriet Miers?

Fore more on that, see The Astute Blogger, "Sotomayor is Tostada, (That's Latina for Toast, Gringo!)."

Obama Denies Fundamental Equality of the Child

Robert George is the most eloquent and powerful pro-life writer working today. Here are excerpts from his essay, "Obama and His Pro-Life Apologists":

A chasm separates those of us who believe that every living human being possesses profound, inherent, and equal dignity, and those who, for whatever reasons, deny it. The issue really cannot be fudged, as people sometimes try to do by imagining that there is a dispute about whether it is really a human being who is dismembered in a dilation and curettage abortion, or whose skin is burned off in a saline abortion, or the base of whose skull is pierced and whose brains are sucked out in a dilation and extraction (or “partial birth”) abortion. That issue has long been settled—and it was settled not by religion or philosophy, but by the sciences of human embryology and developmental biology

*****

President Obama knows that an unborn baby is human. He knows that the blood shed by the abortionist’s knife is human blood, that the bones broken are human bones. He does not deny that the baby whom nurse Jill Stanek discovered gasping for breath in a soiled linen bin after a failed attempt to end her life by abortion, was a human baby. Even in opposing the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was designed to assure that such babies were rescued if possible or at least given comfort care while they died, Barack Obama did not deny the humanity of the child. What he denied, and continues to deny, is the fundamental equality of that child—equality with those of us who are safely born and accepted into the human community.

*****

Throughout his political career, Obama has consistently and fervently rejected every form of legislation that would provide unborn babies or children who survive abortions with meaningful protection against being killed. Indeed, he has opposed even efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would discourage the practice, limit its availability, or directly favor childbirth over abortion.

*****

We recognize that women with undesired pregnancies can undergo serious hardships, and we believe that a just and caring society will concern itself with the well-being of mothers as well as their children. We agree with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who by precept and example taught us to reach out in love to care for mother and child alike, never supposing that love for one entails abandoning care and concern for the other. President Obama holds a different view. He has made clear his own conviction that the equality of women depends on denying the equality and rights of the children they carry. He has made what is, from the pro-life point of view, the tragic error of supposing that the equality of one class of human beings can and must be purchased by denial of the equality of another.

*****

Because the President does not believe in the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every member of the human family; because he does not believe that babies acquire human rights until after birth; because he does not see abortion as tragic because it takes the life of an innocent human being, he is utterly and intransigently unwilling to support even efforts short of prohibiting abortion that would plainly reduce the number of abortions. Moreover, he is adamantly in favor of funding abortions and abortion providers at home and abroad, and has already taken steps in that direction by revoking the Mexico City Policy and proposing a budget that would restore publicly funded abortions in Washington, D.C.—despite the well-documented and universally acknowledged fact that when you provide public funding for abortion, you get more abortions.

A Moment for Conservatives?

Cassandra at Villainous Company sent me her post, "Judging Sotomayor: A Moment of Truth for Conservatives."

Cassandra argues that conservatives have been reduced to cheap smears against Sonia Sotomayor, that our arguments have lost their punch:

Politics is the art of persuasion. The problem with conservative arguments is that although we're quite good at telling the public what's wrong with what we oppose, we are not so adept at articulating what it is we support. It's not enough to run down the competition. A good salesman highlights the positive attributes of his product as well as distinguishing it from the competition. For as long as I can remember our opponents have successfully (and all too often with our enthusiastic help) characterized conservatism as a negative political philosophy. We are painted as a party full of fearful and reflexively authoritarian killjoys, out to harsh the national mellow and steal everyone else's corn flakes. Unfortunately, our response to this inaccurate portrayal often does more to confirm than refute that flawed premise ....

In watching the debate over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, I've found myself returning again and again to an ancient legal maxim: Venire contra factum proprium non valet. Loosely translated, it means "Arguments which contradict one's prior actions will fall on deaf ears." For as long as I can remember conservatives have decried the Borking of judicial nominees on ideological grounds. But more than this, we have vigorously defended the right of a sitting President to nominate jurists whose views are compatible with that of the party in power ....

There are principled arguments to be made here. Not against Barack Obama's absolute right to nominate a judge whose views he finds compatible with his own, but against the views themselves. That places the responsibility for appointing Constitutionally faithful judges back where it belongs - at the top. It also makes it a lot harder for our opponents to mischaracterize our arguments as mean spirited or bigoted. It's hard to see how employing the very tactics we've derided in our opponents does anything to strengthen the Republican brand (unless of course our message is "Do as we say - not as we do!").

There's more at the link.

I love Cassandra, and my comments are directed at her arguments, not her. We need less personal infighting on the right (got that Rod Dreher?).

Cassandra notes that it's perfectly fine to hammer Sotomayor on her "wise Latina" statements, as long as we focus on ideas and avoid "over the top personal attacks."

Well, yeah ... I only disagree to the extent that I don't think hammering Sotomayor on her race-consciousness is "over the top." So what, don't call her a racist? Fine, we can then just sit back and oppose her on ideas while THE LEFT ATTACKS US as racist. Yep, that ought to work! That's what it's all about nowadays, you know?. Racist this, racist that ... pretty soon we're all racists!

The truth is, as we've seen in everyday interactions, as well as in academic research, conservatives are nicer, more compassionate people than liberals. Yet, we stand on clear moral principles, and especially on traditional values, and we're thus attacked as "haters," "bigots," and "racists."

Look at what happened to Carrie Prejean. She wasn't being mean or nasty. She called no one names, nor did she turn up her nose in contempt for gay oppositional values. All she did is say she was raised to believe that marriage was between a man and a woman. The knives came out immediately, from all angles. Perez Hilton called Prejean a dumb bitch. Keith Lewis and Shanna Moakler attacked Prejean as violating the values of the Miss California pageant, as if honesty and integrity weren't values worth emulating.

But why stop there?

I've been called "racist" so many times for supporting merit in university admissions that I've lost count. Conservatives are excoriated simply for standing up for values that the progressive-left has labeled "archaic" and "Neanderthal." It's kind of sick, when you think about it.

Cassandra basically places herself along with moderate Republicans who pride themselves in the use of "reason and logic informed by an objective approach to the facts."

Actually, so do I. I backed John McCain in last year's GOP primaries. I took a lot of flak for it too. But I don't regret it. I've learned from it. McCain's moment passed him up. His success was in supporting a winning war strategy that paid no political dividends by the end of 2008. The progessive mindset that wars are automatically bad had taken hold after eight years of Democratic betrayal and disinformation (and we were winning, in any case). All Barack Obama had to do was tack with the wind of Bush fatigue and war weariness. In turn, McCain had little in his policy quiver to offer voters besides "fight with me." Well, when people weren't so worried about the fight overseas, when the guts were being sucked out of the American financial system, and when the housing debacle sucked everything under with it, McCain was left stumbling along the campaign trail like a dumb mule.

The funny thing is that conservative ideas are there. In education, in economic policy, in deregulation, in energy. The list goes on. The problem is that ideas such as reliance on personal initiative and self-reliance, on school choice, vouchers, and market competition in service delivery, on domestic energy exploration and production, on downsizing government, on compellence in international relations ... all of these ideas are reviled by progressives, unions, and the liberal media establishment. Conservatives have ideas. They haven't been tried. George Bush managed the war on terror. He fought for American national security in Iraq and the broader Middle East. The conflict was not a "disaster." But we've been told that so many times it's become the conventional wisdom. Young people's minds have been turned off to the realities of market choice at home and the deployment of power abroad. People have been led to believe that spending trillions of dollars, and preparing for Democratic budgets as far as the eye can see, won't cost them anything. The "rich" will pay for it! Let's raise taxes! Make them pay their fair share! And then as soon as hundreds of thousands of Americans take to the streets and the plazas to protest the loss of liberties on April 15th what happened? We were all attacked as ... wait for it ... tea-baggers and racists!

Perhaps Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrinch lack the style and grace of a Ronald Reagan. But who does? Where is our glamorous man (or woman) on horseback to lead us from the political wilderness? Are we even ready for a leader? We don't even have a Republican vision anymore. Governor Taxinator? He didn't even campaign for his own tax increases in California when the voters were about to say, "enough is enough"! And you know where he was ... with Jennifer Granholm in Washington, visiting President Barack "Infanticide" Obama and his tax-cheat adminstration! Now we've got people like John Cornyn saying forget about atttactive young up-and-coming Hispanic conservatives. We need to go with GOP moderate in Charlie Crist, who just Wednesday broke his no-taxes pledge in signing a Flordia state budget that raises $2.2 billion in new fees and taxes!

Is this the kind of policy conservatives are supposed to argue in favor of? Is this something in which we need to articulate our "support"?

I can't help but think this is a disaster for conservatism. Moderation? Well, sometimes you just have to say no. Reagan did. Reagan said no. Why can't we? Reagan said forget about it brother, "cut taxes, spending, and regulation, and got government out of the way and let free people create new jobs and businesses."

In any case, back to Sotomayor ...

What's the meme right now, against the "evil" conservatives? Well, "G. Gordon Liddy On Sotomayor: ‘Let’s Hope That The Key Conferences Aren’t When She’s Menstruating’." Wow, Liddy? Oh he's a real spokesman for the party!

And this, "GOP Hispanic Strategists Stunned, Outraged By Sotomayor Attacks." Stunned? Who says? The Huffington Post? Of course they're going to say that.

Meanwhile, the news is out that Sonia Sotomayor attacked Princeton University as an institution of bigotry: "Sotomayor, as Student, Attacked Princeton as Anti-Latino."

Well, there's that race-consciousness I mentioned! But conservatives will be attacked as "racist" just for pointing it out ...

Now where was that "moment" we're looking for? Will we get another "moment" if we play nice on Sotomayor? Who knows? Maybe we'll get another "taxable-moment" with people like tax-hike Charlie down in Florida!

Now that's the way to eviscerate the Reagan legacy!

Back to you, Cassandra!

Male Prom Queen is Rage at Fairfax High

From KABC-TV Los Angeles, "Male Teen Wins Prom Queen at Fairfax High:

For many high school students, being openly gay can be a long walk down a lonely hallway. But for Sergio Garcia, it helped him earn a title high school students dream about: Prom queen.

The high school senior was one of 10 students seeking the tiara, and as would be expected the other nine were all female.

Garcia didn't let that faze him. "It suits my personality the most, you know. Deep down inside I feel like I am obviously very feminine. I feel like it was something that was meant for me. Like I'm a queen," Garcia said

No doubt RepMasterBarebacker3 approves!

To each his own, you know! Or her own? Oh just forget it!

And where ARE my knitting needles anyway!

On the Chrysler Dealergate Controversy

Here's some information for readers on what's happening with the Obama administration's Chrysler "Dealergate" scandal. The media and leftist bloggers dismissed the fact that almost every single Chrysler dealer being shut down had ties to the GOP.

Via Memeorandum, Robert Stacy McCain has some background,"What DealerGate Says About the Conservative 'Message' Problem":

Did the administration purposefully use its bailout-acquired influence to put the squeeze on Republican auto dealerships? It doesn't actually matter what the answer to that question is.

The point is, there was evidence to suggest that the Obama administration may have been wielding its economic power -- gained at future taxpayers' expense -- to punish political enemies. The accusation was serious enough to call for very thorough reporting, but the major media tried to dismiss the accusation before actually doing the reporting. Malkin says:

Some professional journalists, however, have shown obstinate unwillingness to get to the bottom of the decision-making process.

Ask any good reporter. You get a tip that, if true, would be a big story, and so you check it out. I once spent two days in the Library of Congress trying to research such a lead. It didn't pan out, but until you've done the research, you don't know whether it's a story or not.

There's definitely more to this story than what leftists would have you believe. So I was pleased to see the International Business Daily picked up the story from conservative media and blogging outlets:

Earlier this month, Chrysler announced it was seeking permission from bankruptcy court to kill franchise agreements with 789 of its 3,181 dealers to save costs. Dealers, many of whom ran profitable businesses, told the media that the news was devastating.

Aside from the loss of a business, many of these franchisees may have something else in common: It looks like all the dealers who are losing their Chrysler franchises, with only a single exception found so far, have links to the Republican Party.

Chrysler, an American institution, is no longer being operated as a private-sector company. It's being run by a task force appointed by the White House. So far, the government has halved Chrysler's ad budget and forced it into a shotgun wedding with Italian carmaker Fiat.

Has it also directed the company to end its contracts with dealers who dared give contributions to the Republican Party and its candidates? The mainstream media seem less than curious. But the new media haven't shied away from asking the question.

"Many of the closed dealers were also major donors to Republican candidates and political action committees, a review of campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission shows," Kenneth Timmerman wrote at NewsMax.com.

"How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?" asked Examiner.com editorial page editor Mark Tapscott.

"The initial pass at the list of shuttered dealers showed they had donated, in the aggregate, millions to Republican candidates and PACs and a total of $200 to Barack Obama," writes blogger Doug Ross.

WorldNetDaily reviewed all 789 of the dealerships the company wants to close. It found that "owners contributed at least $450,000 to Republican presidential candidates and the GOP, while only $7,970 was donated to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign and $2,200 was given to Sen. John Edwards' campaign. Obama received a combined total of only $450 in donations."

Has our political class grown so petty that it would use the power of government to punish the political opposition? We hope this isn't true. If it is, the country's in more trouble than we thought.

This story deserves a lot of attention.

Here's Doug Ross' latest, "Dealergate: 40 Democrat-friendly Dealerships Become 42 After The Dust Settles; Their Competition Gutted As Well."

Joey Smith has this, "Information on Auto Task Force Influence on Chrysler Dealer Closings."

And see Gateway Pundit's latest, with links to previous reports, "Dealergate Update: Corrupt Dem-Donating Auto Group Keeps Dealerships ...Update: Dem Dealerships Go From 40 to 42."

Mancow's Waterboarding a Hoax?

Folks are suggesting that Erich "Mancow" Muller's waterboarding trial last week was a stunt. And it may well have been. Michelle Malkin's even got a post suggesting "lefty blogs got punked."

I watched the original video, and there was nothing fake about "Mancow" having water poured over his face. Did he jump up overly-excited to call it torture? Perhaps. But check out this episode of Keith Olbermann from Tuesday night. "Mancow" talks calmly about how genuine his fear was:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The folks at Gawker think they were taken for a ride. They provide the video to Christopher Hitchens' waterboarding from 2007:

Readers can compare for themselves. Punked or not punked? Hitchens' handlers are way more professional at waterboarding. But perhaps "Mancow" just wants to shed his newfound "pussy" reputation?

"Mancow" has a post up at Big Hollywood, in any case, via Memeorandum.

Cornyn: Calling Sotomayor Racist is "Terrible"

Look, I'm sure Senator John Cornyn's a nice guy, but he's ending up on the wrong side of some things lately.

"Clueless Cornyn," as he's been called elsewhere, gave the early endorsement for Charlie Crist's GOP Senate bid in Florida, kneecapping up-and-comer Marco Rubio.

Now Cornyn's taking on Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich for suggesting Sonia Sotomayor is a "racist." But note something important here: It's not like Newt Gingrich, a former House Speaker, is some right-wing extremist; and Rush Limbaugh's got his pulse on the conservative beat. That their criticisms of Sotomayor are dead on just makes Cornyn's howling even more ridiculous. How long are folks like Cornyn going to cave to the left-wing propaganda that the GOP needs to "moderate"?

Raul Bosque, my friend and former student, left a comment on my previous post, "It's Sotomayor's Ethnic Authenticity, and Shut Up About It!."

Raul answers the question of whether Sotomayor's indeed "racist":

She is a racist. The problem is no one has the courage to label an Hispanic woman as such and the left knows it. She's somewhat shielded by popular opinion and by the MSM. As an Hispanic, I have no problem calling her and La Raza what they are, radical leftists and racist scum, I wish the Republicans will grow a pair and call her out on it.

Interestingly, Senator Cornyn has responded to the pushback against the Crist endorsement, at at Red State. Here's a key snippet:

Some believe that we should be a monolithic Party; I disagree. While we all might wish for a Party comprised only of people who agree with us 100 percent of the time, this is a pipedream. Each Party is fundamentally a coalition of individuals rallying around core principles with some variations along the way. My job as Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee is to recruit candidates who have the best chance of winning and holding seats – and to do so in as many states as possible. Earlier this month, two Republicans candidates emerged for the open Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez in the Sunshine State: Marco Rubio, the young and talented Hispanic former Speaker of the state House, and Charlie Crist, the state’s popular Governor.

Although Cornyn's discussing the NRSC's decision in the Florida Senate race, the larger "big tent" meme of GOP ideological moderation reflects the underlying tension between the party honchos and the conservative base.

The GOP has lost its backbone, if not its soul. John Cornyn's wrong in attacking critics of Sonia Sotomayor and in disregarding the hunger at the base for real conservative Senate candidates. Florida's primary is August 24, 2010. Sotomayor may have long been seated by that time, but conservatives can send a message to the national party bosses by electing Marco Rubio as Florida's Republican Senate nominee.

It's Sotomayor's Ethnic Authenticity, and Shut Up About It!

Here's Kimberley Strassel on Sonia Sotomayor:

President Barack Obama has laid down his ground rules for the debate over Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The big question now is whether Republicans agree to play by rules that neither Mr. Obama nor his party have themselves followed.

Ground Rule No. 1, as decreed by the president, is that this is to be a discussion primarily about Judge Sotomayor's biography, not her qualifications. The media gurus complied, with inspiring stories of how she was born to Puerto Rican immigrants, how she was raised by a single mom in a Bronx housing project, how she went on to Princeton and then Yale. In the years that followed she presumably issued a judicial opinion here or there, but whatever.

The president, after all, had taken great pains to explain that this is more than an American success story. Rather, it is Judge Sotomayor's biography that uniquely qualifies her to sit on the nation's highest bench -- that gives her the "empathy" to rule wisely. Judge Sotomayor agrees: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she said in 2001.

If so, perhaps we can expect her to join in opinions with the wise and richly experienced Clarence Thomas. That would be the same Justice Thomas who lost his father, and was raised by his mother in a rural Georgia town, in a shack without running water, until he was sent to his grandfather. The same Justice Thomas who had to work every day after school, though he was not allowed to study at the Savannah Public Library because he was black. The same Justice Thomas who became the first in his family to go to college and receive a law degree from Yale.

By the president's measure, the nation couldn't find a more empathetic referee than Justice Thomas. And yet here's what Mr. Obama had to say last year when Pastor Rick Warren asked him about the Supreme Court: "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation."

In other words, nine months ago Mr. Obama thought that the primary qualification for the High Court was the soundness of a nominee's legal thinking, or at least that's what Democrats have always stressed when working against a conservative judge. Throughout the Bush years, it was standard Democratic senatorial practice to comb through every last opinion, memo, job application and college term paper, all with an aim of creating a nominee "too extreme" or "unqualified" to sit on the federal bench.

Mr. Obama knows this, as he took part in it, joining a Senate minority who voted against both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. Mr. Obama also understands a discussion of Judge Sotomayor's legal thinking means a discussion about "judicial activism" -- a political loser. In a day when voters routinely rise up to rebuke their activist courts on issues ranging from gay marriage to property rights, few red-state Democrats want to go there. Moreover, a number of Judge Sotomayor's specific legal opinions -- whether on racial preferences, or gun restrictions -- put her to the left of most Americans.

Keep reading, here, for Ground Rule No. 2 (Hint: What, you're criticizing Sotomayor? You racist!).

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez.

O'Reilly Gets Hammered on Hypocrisy!

Here's a follow-up to my post yesterday, "Bill O'Reilly Slams Hot Air!"

It turns out that O'Reilly offered a half-baked apology.

Here's Glenn Reynold's take:

JUST WATCHED BILL O’REILLY OFFER A NON-APOLOGY APOLOGY on the Hot Air matter — sorry, but totally inadequate. O’Reilly misrepresented something as Hot Air’s when it came from a commenter — either deliberately, or because he’s got a lousy staff that misinformed him — and he should have apologized frankly. He didn’t, and his wriggly response made him look worse. Earlier on the show he talked about the New York Times losing the trust of readers; later in the show he bragged about his own ratings. Perhaps he should consider that the Times’ fate might become his, if he squanders the trust of viewers in Times-like fashion ...

And the video:

But wait! On top of all of this, O'Reilly's own website shows him to be a total hypocrite!

I'm with the conservatives bloggers on this one! Hey, maybe The Lonely Conservative is on to something.

Now, perhaps Dan Riehl will post an update to his post yesterday!

Reporter Carried Away From Air Force One

Here's the video from KABC-TV Los Angeles on Brenda Lee, who was carried away, "kicking and screaming," from President Obama and Air Force One yesterday. Ms. Lee is apparently a credentialed journalist. She was insisting on giving Obama a letter in person, even after Secret Service officers said they would deliver it for her.

It turns out that Ms. Lee "wanted to hand Obama a letter urging him 'to take a stand for traditional marriage'." While she may be a bit kooky, I can see why the Secret Service carted her off: Can't be talkin' 'bout gay marriage now! Maybe Pam Spaulding will be attacking Ms. Lee as a "Dominionists"!

There's commentary on this at Memeorandum:

See also, "Oh, Lawd!: Reporter Dragged Away At Obama Landing."

Video Credit: KABC-TV Los Angeles "Reporter Carried Away From Air Force One."

Child Executions in Iran

Just the title of this article sounds horrendous, "Debate Over Child Executions Roils Iran's Presidential Vote":

The day before two of his young clients were to be hanged, lawyer Mohamad Mostafaei went to a Justice Ministry office here to request a stay of execution.

Mr. Mostafaei's errand should have been routine, if solemn: He represents 30 of the 135 criminals under the age of 18 on Iran's death row. Instead, he says, he was detained and grilled for an hour and a half, part of Iran's widening crackdown on human-rights activists.

"Anything can happen to you at any time," said Mr. Mostafaei, 34 years old. A Justice Ministry spokesman said the mid-May incident wasn't a detention, and that Mr. Mostafaei was merely asked the purpose of his visit.

Agencies Suffer in Iran
View Slideshow

Newsha Tavakolian/Polaris for The Wall Street Journal

At left, Mahak Hospital employees play with children in early stages of cancer treatment at the hospital's playroom in Tehran.
As Iranians prepare to elect their next president on June 12, a range of civil-liberties issues -- from juvenile executions to the freedom to blog -- have become hot topics. Ending a period of relative openness, the government has pursued a clampdown on dissidents, human-rights activists, journalists and students, the likes of which hasn't been seen here in decades.

The crackdown is led by conservative lawmakers who rose to power in recent years. Analysts say Iran's regime tends to view dissent as a national-security risk and a departure from the ideals of Iran's Islamic revolution of the 1970s under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In June's vote, all three of the major candidates seeking to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- two reformists, and one conservative -- have criticized his government for its lack of tolerance. Each has promised more personal and social freedom if elected.

Iran's use of the death penalty in juvenile cases has become particularly controversial, largely due to efforts by Mr. Mostafaei. The past two years, Iran led the world with a total of 28 hangings of youth offenders. Iran's constitution stipulates that the age of maturity for boys is 15, and for girls, 9 -- the ages at which Islamic law calls for children to take on religious duties such as prayer and fasting. (Executions aren't carried out until the person reaches 18.)

Some other Islamic countries also have juveniles on death row, but executions are rarer. According to Human Rights Watch, since January 2005, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen have carried out a total of six juvenile executions.

In some U.S. states, death penalties for crimes committed by juveniles over the age of 15 remained legal until 2005, when the Supreme Court said the punishment should be reserved for individuals who had committed their crimes after reaching the age of 18. That ruling ended a 29-year era in which the U.S. executed 22 people for crimes committed as juveniles.

I'm no fan of the "evolving standards of decency" doctrine in the U.S. (which prohibits executions of 16 and 17 year-olds for capital crimes), but the death penalty for 9 year-old girls in Iran? God, that is barbaric.

Nouriel Roubini on the Economic Crisis

Here's this from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books, "The Crisis and How to Deal with It."

The featured commentators are all liberals (including Bill Bradley, Paul Krugman, and George Soros). I probably wouldn't post them here except Nouriel Roubini's among them. Roubini's been recognized for the predictive accuracy of his economic analysis this last year. He published, "Warning: More Doom Ahead," in the January/February issue of Foreign Policy.

Here's Roubini's comments on the way forward at the NY Books symposium:

It's pretty clear by now that this is the worst financial crisis, economic crisis and recession since the Great Depression. A number of us were worrying about it a while ago. At this point it's becoming conventional wisdom.

The good news is probably that six months ago there was a risk of a near depression, but we have seen very aggressive actions by US policymakers, and around the world. I think the policymakers finally looked into the abyss: they saw that the economy was contracting at a rate of 6 percent–plus in the US and around the world, and decided to use almost all of the weapons in their arsenals. Because of that I think that the risk of a near depression has been somewhat reduced. I don't think that there is zero probability, but most likely we are not going to end up in a near depression.

However, the consensus is now becoming optimistic again and says that we are going to go from minus 6 percent growth to positive growth in the second half of this year, meaning that the recession is going to be over by June. By the fourth quarter of 2009, the consensus estimates that growth is going to be positive, by 2 percent, and next year more than 2 percent. Now, compared to that new consensus among macro forecasters, who got it wrong in the past, my views are much more bearish.

I would agree that the rate of economic contraction is slowing down. But we're still contracting at a pretty fast rate. I see the economy contracting all the way through the end of the year, going from minus 6 to minus 2, not plus 2. And next year the growth of the economy is going to be very slow, 0.5 percent as opposed to the 2 percent–plus predicted by the consensus. Also, the unemployment rate this year is going to be above 10 percent, and is likely to be close to 11 percent next year. Thus, next year is still going to feel like a recession, even if we're technically out of the recession.

The outlook for Europe and Japan, both this year and next year, is even worse. Most of the advanced economies are going to do worse than the United States for a number of reasons, including structural factors in Japan and weak policy response in the case of the Euro zone.

The problems of the financial system are severe. Many banks are still insolvent. If you don't want to end up like Japan with zombie banks, it's better, as Bill Bradley suggested, to do what Sweden did: take over the insolvent banks, clean them up, separate good and bad assets, and sell them back in short order to the private sector.

Now, on the question of policy responses, there is no inconsistency between monetary easing and fiscal easing. Both of them should be stimulating demand, and the monetary easing should be leading also to restoration of credit. Of course, in a situation in which the economy is suffering not just from a lack of liquidity but also problems of solvency and a lack of credit, traditional monetary policy doesn't work as well. You also have to take unconventional monetary actions, and you have to fix the banks. And we need a fiscal stimulus because every component of our economy is sharply falling: consumption, residential investment, nonresidential construction, capital spending, inventories, exports. The only thing that can go up and sustain the economy for the time being is the fiscal spending of the government.

However, fiscal policy cannot resolve problems of credit, and it is not without cost. Over the next few years it's going to add about $9 trillion to the US public debt. Niall Ferguson said it's the end of the age of leverage. It's not really. There is not deleveraging. We have all the liabilities of the household sector, of the banks and financial institutions, of the corporate sectors; and now we've decided to socialize these bad debts and to put them on the balance sheet of the government. That's why the public debt is rising. Instead, when you have an excessive debt problem, you have to convert such debt into equity. That's what you do with corporate restructuring—it converts unsecured debt into equity. That's what you should do with the banks: induce the unsecured creditors to convert their claims into equity. You could do the same thing with the housing market. But we're not doing the debt-into-equity conversion. What we're doing is piling public debt on top of private debt to socialize the losses; and at some point the back of some governments' balance sheet is going to break, and if that happens, it's going to be a disaster. So we need fiscal stimulus in the short run, but we have to worry about the long-run fiscal sustainability, too.

The whole symposium is here, if you want to get your dose of big-government liberalism for the day.

Texting Teens

I saw this earlier, but since The Rhetorican's blogging it, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. From the New York Times, "Texting May Be Taking a Toll":

They do it late at night when their parents are asleep. They do it in restaurants and while crossing busy streets. They do it in the classroom with their hands behind their back. They do it so much their thumbs hurt.

Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.

The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation.

Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, Calif., recently surveyed students at two local high schools and said he found that many were routinely sending hundreds of texts every day.

“That’s one every few minutes,” he said. “Then you hear that these kids are responding to texts late at night. That’s going to cause sleep issues in an age group that’s already plagued with sleep issues.”

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, Professor Turkle went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”

As for peace and quiet, she said, “if something next to you is vibrating every couple of minutes, it makes it very difficult to be in that state of mind.

“If you’re being deluged by constant communication, the pressure to answer immediately is quite high,” she added. “So if you’re in the middle of a thought, forget it.”

I was actually sitting with my 13 year-old son when I first read this piece. He said he'd done 52 text messages that afteroon!

Video Credit: Fox News, "Can texting harm teens' development?"?

Rule 5 Rescue: Lady GaGa Nude!

Well, I thought I was done blogging for the night, but I might as well get a post up on Lady GaGa (partially) nude before Robert Stacy McCain can snag the Google bomb.

She really does take it (almost) all off. See the video, "Behind the Rolling Stone Cover Shoot: Lady Gaga."

Also at Rolling Stone, "Lady Gaga's Wild Looks: The New Princess of Pop's Craziest Wardrobe Moments." For excerpts from the interview, see "The New Issue of Rolling Stone: The Rise of Lady Gaga."

For an added bonus, check London's Daily Mail, "'My Attraction to Women Makes Boyfriends Uncomfortable,'Ssays Lady GaGa as She Poses Semi-Nude for Rolling Stone."

And once again, let's count this as a preview of Full Metal Saturday. Here are the links to my good blogging buddies: Ann Althouse, The Blog Prof, Chris Wysocki, Dana at CSPT, Dan Collins, Dan Riehl, Glenn Reynolds, Jimmie Bise, Little Miss Attila, Moe Lane, Monique Stuart, No Sheeples Here!, Private Pigg, Pundit & Pundette, The Rhetorican, R.S. McCain, Saber Point, Suzanna Logan, TrogloPundit, and William Jacobson.

Now, I'm really done for the day! I'm going to go read!

The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics

Robert Lieberman, at the new Perspectives on Politics, offers a powerful empirical political analysis of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. See Robert Lieberman, "The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics." The article's behind a subscription firewall, but I can give readers some flavor here. There's a response from Mearsheimer and Walt as well, but I'll save that for a later post. Here's Lieberman:

Why does the United States support Israel so strongly when that support appears to violate American national interests? In their recent book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argue that Israel is of little strategic value to American interests and that the moral case for supporting Israel is weak at best. They then argue that this apparent distortion in American foreign policy is due to the extraordinary influence of pro-Israel groups and individuals—a collection of actors they dub the “Israel lobby”—in American domestic politics. Not surprisingly, this book and the article that preceded it have provoked a great deal of criticism, as well as a fair amount of praise, focused largely on the merits of the book’s foreign policy argument. Much less attention has been paid, however, to their core argument, which consists of a set of causal claims about American politics and policymaking. In this article I examine this argument and conclude that the case for an “Israel lobby” as the primary cause of American support for Israel, although it points to a number of interesting questions about the mechanisms of power in American politics, is weak at best.

I treat Mearsheimer and Walt’s work as an exercise in the study of American politics, in which they attempt to mount an argument about the reasons for a particular set of American policy choices and the possible influence of an interest group in guiding those choices in the context of American policymaking institutions. My focus is exclusively on this part of their argument, and not on their assessment of American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East. I ask three sets of questions about their argument. First, what, exactly, are their causal claims? By what mechanisms do they suggest that pro-Israel individuals and organizations influence policy outcomes? What are their hypotheses about the forces that shape American policy toward the Middle East? Second, what does political science have to say about these mechanisms? Many of the political processes that Mearsheimer and Walt discuss have, of course, been the subject of extensive research by scholars of American politics. What guidance can the discipline’s state-of-the-art knowledge about policymaking in the American political system give us in evaluating their argument? And finally, what kind of evidence would be necessary to substantiate their hypotheses? Do Mearsheimer and Walt provide such evidence? What might systematic empirical tests of their claims look like?

How does their argument hold up when subjected to this kind of critical scrutiny? Not well. Their causal claims about American politics are often illogical or impossibly vague, are almost never supported by dispositive evidence, and frequently contradict well-established research findings in American politics. I begin by describing their argument in some detail in order to expose the argument’s theoretical underpinnings and discern the causal hypotheses that they explore. I then zero in on these causal claims and examine Mearsheimer and Walt’s treatment of them—the logic by which they submit these hypotheses to critical tests, the evidence they use to test them, and alternative approaches that might illuminate the problems they address. My primary purpose is to unpack and evaluate Mearsheimer and Walt’s claims about influence on American policymaking and not to propose and test a fully fledged alternative argument about the links between the activities of pro-Israel individuals and organizations and American foreign policy. To the extent that there are conventional standards for making causal inferences from empirical observations about influence in American politics, Mearsheimer and Walt generally fail to meet them. I note, however, that their argument involves claims not only about the lobby’s direct influence on policy outcomes but also about its ability to shape the policy agenda through the stifling of open debate and discourse in the United States about Israel and American policy toward Israel. These more subtle mechanisms of power are considerably harder to observe and there is no consensus among scholars of American politics about how to demonstrate their effects. Nevertheless, they offer a provocative and suggestive account of political influence that merits careful attention.

Notice how Lieberman finds that the arguments in The Israel Lobby are "almost never supported by dispositive evidence."

Frankly, I was shaking my head reading the book, especially chapter 3, "A Dwindling Moral Case." Mearsheimer and Walt mean a "dwindling moral case" for U.S. support for Israel, but reading the book it's hard not to see the authors as arguing the "dwindling moral case" for the existence of Israel. And that's why Lieberman's piece is so valuable. Mearsheimer and Walt are political scientists. But their work has been the focus of intense criticism outside of academe. One thing that Lieberman indicates is that Mearsheimer and Walt really do single out Jews as at the center of The Israel Lobby, at the expense of alternative interest-group actors likely to have just as important an influence on U.S. Middle East Policy.

For example, Lieberman dissects Mearsheimer and Walt's contention that The Israel Lobby enjoys inordinate influence in presidential elections:

Here the contention is that Jewish voters are decisive in presidential election—that the outcome of the election hangs, at least in part, on their vote choices and, presumably, that these vote choices depend on the stances or records of the candidates toward Israel. If, in fact, Jewish (or pro-Israel) voters ever cast the decisive votes in presidential elections, then it might be reasonable to expect more pro-Israel policies from the ensuing administrations than from administrations in which Jewish voters were not decisive—assuming, that is, that it is reasonable to equate “Jewish” and “pro-Israel” votes. Once again, the argument slides from a broader claim about the Israel lobby to more particular claims about Jewish voters; they do not discuss the potential electoral influence of evangelical “Christian Zionists” as a factor in pro-Israel electoral pressure, although such voters have received a great deal of attention in recent years as a powerful and decisive force in American politics.9 They also seem, once again, to ignore their own precaution against assuming that pro-Israel policies are of high importance to all American Jews.

Lieberman's argument is way more complicated than this. He subjects the electoral arguments in The Israel Lobby to empirical analysis. And he digs down into a number of issues specific to congressional policymaking as well. He finds the book wanting, and bad.

Lieberman also addresses Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis that the lobby attacks "Anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over U.S. Middle East policy stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite." But as Lieberman indicates, there's little empirical support for the claim, other than a few high profile examples (Jimmy Carter, Francis Fukuyama):

In most of these high-profile cases, as they also point out, the tactic was singularly unsuccessful as a means of silencing its intended targets (195–96). More to the point, however, they offer very little in the way of systematic empirical analysis that shows a causal connection between this threat and the behavior of would-be critics of Israel or American policy toward Israel.

After additional testing, Lieberman concludes:

It is quite clear that the book’s argument does not support Mearsheimer and Walt’s central contention, that the existence and activities of an Israel lobby are the primary causes of American policy in the Middle East. The claim is supported neither by logic nor evidence nor even a rudimentary understanding of how the American policymaking system works. Several questions remain, however. If the unified Israel lobby of Mearsheimer and Walt’s analysis is not the prime mover in shaping American foreign policy toward the Middle East, what alternative explanations might account for these policy outcomes?

I'll update with more on this debate later.

But before I close, I want to remind readers of the backlash I received from some trolling Israel-bashers at my earlier post, "William Robinson, UCSB Sociology Professor, Compares Israel to the Nazis."

Especially interesting was this cat called "Infensus Mentis." He writes the blog, "Crimes of Zion." A typical post there is like this one, "AIPAC Caught Meddling in U.S. Foreign Policy - Yet Again."

This guy's method is to launch preemptive attacks of distortion and slander, and then to shortcut any criticism of his slurs by bewailing, "Don't worry, I know, I know - I'm an "anti-Semite", right?"

Unfortunately, the flawed work of Mearsheimer and Walt pumps-up such anti-Semitic folks with an outlandish sense of moral righteosness. It's pretty awful, really.

L.A. Community Colleges Cut Summer Sessions

My college is not part of the Los Angeles Community College system. But the budget crisis is statewide, so my union's keeping close tabs on what's happening at other districts.

I'm getty a flurry of e-mails this week between faculty and the union. Also, the college president has warned, "Not since the passage of Proposition 13 have we seen such challenges to our community college system."

Anyway, the Los Angeles Times has this report, "L.A. Colleges Cancel Summer Sessions:"

Video Hat Tip: KABC-TV Los Angeles, "L.A. Colleges Cancel July Summer Session."

She Started to Hate Every Nigger and Jew...

You know, I had a copy of the X's LP, Los Angeles, right when it came out. And as I'm getting ready to post this video, I'm seeing a couple of different versions of the lyrics. Did she buy "a clock on Hollywood Boulevard the day she left," or "a Glock on Hollywood Boulevard the day she left"?

John Doe's clearly sing a "Glock" here. But I don't think I knew what a "Glock" was in 1980, and the record lyrics had "clock" at the time. It makes more sense now, obviously. But why the political correctness on the album? Hating "Niggers and "Jews" was AOK? Check it out:

And check this from the sidebar comments at the YouTube: "Many complaints about Exene's singing here." Actually, she practically sounds like Billy Holiday in this cut. After seeing X in concert numerous times, I can tell you: That woman can't sing for squat.

They were grubby and cool, though, and John Doe has appeared in a number movies over the years. Billy Zoom was probably the coolest guitarest ever to come out of the L.A.'s punk rock scene.

Obama Wussies Out on Backing Prop 8 Challenge

Allahpundit has the video of President Obama's DNC fundraiser at L.A.'s Beverly Hilton.

Not surprisingly, Obama wussied out on endorsing the challenges to Proposition 8. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Speaking to a well-heeled audience of campaign donors in Beverly Hills, Obama was strikingly upbeat and assured. He said he would stack his first four months in office against any president going back as far as Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"I'm confident in the future," Obama said. "I'm not yet content" ....

The enthusiasm inside the Beverly Hilton was palpable -- the president was greeted with repeated ovations -- and the payoff was handsome: between $3 million and $4 million in contributions to the Democratic National Committee.

But Obama notably sidestepped two of the biggest issues facing California: He said nothing about the state's disastrous financial condition or the issue of same-sex marriage, which heated up Tuesday when the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, a measure banning the practice.

Outside the hotel, about 200 demonstrators chanted and carried flags and protest signs, many urging Obama to take a stronger stand in favor of gay rights.

"The president made a promise when he made his speech about hope," said Rick Jacobs, one of the protest organizers. "I bought that promise and I still buy that promise, but it's time for him to start fulfilling that promise for all Americans."

Nancy Pelosi: Safe Environment a "Basic Human Right"

The Associated Press reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared a clean environment a "basic human right."

See also, Gateway Pundit, "Pelosi Preaches Junk Science to Chinese - Pushes 'Environmental Justice'."