Chalk this one up as yet another school district caught in the grip of an establishment that values leftism over learning and casually scorns the values and concerns of the community’s parents, viewing them instead as the ignorant rabble, little more than revenue sources to keep their bureaucratic boondoggles afloat. The same scene has been repeating itself in thousands of schools across the nation for years—it’s way past time for America to say “enough.”
As her undergraduate thesis topic, Kagan chose to write about the demise of the American socialist movement, a story which she called “a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America.... In unity lies their only hope.”
She explained in the acknowledgements that her brother’s “involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.”
And Michael Goldfarb has more, from May 8, 2010, "Elena Kagan, Radical?":
Yesterday THE WEEKLY STANDARD obtained a copy of Elena Kagan's senior thesis, written almost thirty years ago while an undergraduate at Princeton. The title of the thesis: "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."
Big problems. Big achievements. Big costs.Cartoon Credit: Bosch Fawstin.
Historians say President Obama's legislative record during a crisis-ridden presidency already puts him in a league with such consequential presidents as Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt. But polls show voters aren't totally on board with his achievements, at least not yet, and the White House acknowledges that his victories have carried huge financial and political costs.
"There are always costs in doing big things," Obama told USA TODAY.
Obama's ambitions are on display again this week as he prods the Senate toward passage of the most sweeping financial regulatory change since the aftermath of the Great Depression, a bill that aims to curtail the Wall Street risk-taking that fed the meltdown in 2008. The bill follows a string of laws and regulations that have reshaped the American landscape in fundamental ways: overhauling the health care system, rescuing U.S. automakers, imposing stricter rules on credit card companies, designating more than 2 million acres of public land as protected wilderness, expanding equal-pay protection for women and more.
"Even if he wasn't African-American, he'd have a considerable entry in the history books," says Princeton professor Fred Greenstein, author of The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama.
I love watching Horowitz, especially how easily he handles this woman, dismissing her at the end, "You don't get to make a speech."
Meg Whitman says she became one of the world's wealthiest CEOs by always asking, "What is the right thing to do?"A crooked RINO buying the governor's mansion. Golly Gee Wilikers! Just what California needs!
In her recently released autobiography, the front-runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination disavows Wall Street "self-dealing and fraud" and rejects as myth the idea that successful executives must "step on people, stretch the truth . . . and make heartless decisions based only on the bottom line."
Several of Whitman's actions while in corporate office and as an investor, however, raise questions about whether her conduct has squared with the image she has created in the book, on the stump and through tens of millions of dollars' worth of campaign commercials. Her ethical compass was tested repeatedly as she went from young Harvard MBA to chief executive of the online auction giant EBay, and some shareholders, regulators and business partners found it wanting.
A lucrative deal that Whitman cut for herself with investment banking giant Goldman Sachs was called "corrupt" by the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. The partnership she forged between EBay and online rival Craigslist landed in court and is still there; Craigslist has accused EBay of stealing trade secrets and fraudulent advertising. At another company, her dismissal of a subordinate executive resulted in an age-discrimination lawsuit and a secret court settlement.
As an investor, she put millions of dollars into private equity firms with a reputation for callous business practices. Subsidiaries of one of the "distressed asset" firms in which she identifies herself as a limited partner foreclosed on dozens of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"It's nice to say if you just behave ethically, you will make profits," said Meir Statman, a professor of finance at Santa Clara University who focuses on ethics. "If that were true, life would be really easy. But . . . there are tradeoffs. And if you are a politician, you have to account for them."
Whitman declined to be interviewed, referring questions to her campaign staff.
In December 2007, al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, made a little-noticed nod to the fact that his organization's popularity was taking a nosedive: He solicited questions from jihadi forum participants in an online question-and-answer session. It looked like a rather desperate gambit to win back al Qaeda’s dwindling support. And it was. Since the September 11 attacks, the terrorist organization and its affiliates had killed thousands of Muslims -- countless in Iraq, and hundreds more in Afghanistan and Pakistan that year alone. For a group claiming to defend the Islamic ummah, these massacres had dealt a devastating blow to its credibility. The faithful, Zawahiri knew, were losing faith in al Qaeda.
Zawahiri's Web session did not go well. Asked how he could justify killing Muslim civilians, he answered defensively in dense, arcane passages that referred readers to other dense, arcane statements he had already made about the matter. A typical question came from geography teacher Mudarris Jughrafiya, who asked: "Excuse me, Mr. Zawahiri, but who is it who is killing with your excellency's blessing the innocents in Baghdad, Morocco, and Algeria? Do you consider the killing of women and children to be jihad?"
Like a snake backed into a corner, however, a weakened al Qaeda isn’t necessarily less dangerous. In the first comprehensive look of its kind, Foreign Policy offers the Almanac of Al Qaeda, a detailed accounting of how al Qaeda's ranks, methods, and strategy have changed over the last decade and how they might evolve from here. What emerges is a picture of a terrorist vanguard that is losing the war of ideas in the Islamic world, even as its violent attacks have grown in frequency.
It's not because the United States is winning -- most Muslims still have extremely negative attitudes toward the United States because of its wars in the Muslim world and history of abuses of detainees. It's because Muslims have largely turned against Osama bin Laden's dark ideology. Favorable ratings of the terrorist leader and the suicide bombings he advocates fell by half in the two most-populous Islamic countries, Indonesia and Pakistan, between 2002 and 2009. In Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's ruthless campaign of sectarian violence obliterated the support al Qaeda had enjoyed there, deeply damaging its brand across the Arab world.
The jihad has also dramatically failed to achieve its central aims. Bin Laden's primary goal has always been regime change in the Middle East, sweeping away the governments from Cairo to Riyadh with Taliban-style rule. He wants Western troops and influence out of the region and thinks that attacking the "far enemy," the United States, will cause U.S.-backed Arab regimes -- the "near enemy" -- to crumble. For all his leadership skills and charisma, however, bin Laden has accomplished the opposite of what he intended. Nearly a decade after the 9/11 attacks, his last remaining safe havens in the Hindu Kush are under attack, and U.S. soldiers patrol the streets of Kandahar and Baghdad.
If this looks like victory in the so-called war on terror, it is an incomplete one. The jihadi militants led by bin Laden have proved surprisingly resilient, and al Qaeda continues to pose a substantial threat to Western interests overseas. It could still pull off an attack that would kill hundreds, as the most recent plot to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009 attests. We know from history that small, determined groups can sustain their bloody work for years with virtually no public support. Al Qaeda's leaders certainly think that their epic struggle against the West in defense of true Islam will last for generations. -- Peter Bergen
One of Jasper Johns’s seminal Flag paintings, from 1960-1966, that had belonged to Michael Crichton, the best-selling writer, became the star of Christie’s post-war and contemporary art auction on Tuesday night when it brought $28.6 million ....RTWT.
The buyer was Richard Rossello, a dealer in American paintings based in Bryn Mawr, Pa., who could be seen with a cell phone glued to his ear during the bidding.
The Johns flag, in encaustic, an ancient technique in which pigment is suspended in wax, giving each brush stroke a distinct materiality, is a hot commodity in auction circles because few ever come for sale. And on Tuesday night five other bidders tried to buy the painting, which had been officially estimated to bring $10 million to $15 million.
In selecting Elena Kagan to be the country's next Supreme Court Justice, President Obama has tapped the legal world's version of himself: a skillful politician whose cautious public persona belies a desire to transform the court and shape a new Constitutional liberalism.Video Clip: Drill scene from Brian De Palma's "Body Double" (1984).
In announcing her appointment yesterday, Mr. Obama praised the Solicitor General as someone who had won kudos from "across the ideological spectrum" and proven that she could work with conservatives, even (gasp) hiring some while dean of Harvard law school. Known for her personal charm and politesse, Ms. Kagan is also a woman of the modern judicial left who is unlikely to break from the High Court's liberal bloc on any major legal dispute ....
Mr. Obama may also see in his nominee a reflection of his philosophy that judging cases should be guided as much by personal experience and "empathy" as by the plain words of the Constitution. Writing in 1993 in the Texas Law Review about Justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked, Ms. Kagan provided a glimpse into her own jurisprudence.
Justice Marshall, she wrote admiringly, "allowed his personal experiences and the knowledge of suffering and deprivation gained from those experiences, to guide him." In his view, she explained, Constitutional interpretation demanded that the courts "show a special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged . . . and however much some recent Justices have sniped at that vision, it remains a thing of glory."
Across her career, Ms. Kagan has also been a reliable legal partisan. While Harvard dean, she joined three other law school deans in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on detainee policy, arguing that "immunizing the executive branch from review of its treatment [of detainees] strikes at the heart of the idea of the rule of law." In a 2007 Harvard commencement speech, Ms. Kagan disparaged legal memos written by John Yoo as "expedient and unsupported legal opinions," that "failed to respect the law." So much for crossing the intellectual aisle.
Ms. Kagan is nonetheless likely to clear the Senate, barring some new development. The Senate confirmed her as Solicitor General last year 61-31, and at least as many will vote against her again for what is a lifetime appointment. But Republicans lack the votes to defeat her even if they were inclined to filibuster, and we doubt that they are.
"There's a lesson here: Society's obsession with eradicating bigotry has gone so far that even history's ultimate hatemongers apparently classify in the victim category -- much in the same spirit that "human rights" advocates (including, perversely, Jewish groups) champion "hate speech" laws that inhibit journalists such as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant from criticizing militant, anti-Semitic Islamists lest such criticism be seen as "Islamophobic."Hat Tip: Blazing Cat Fur.
Photo by Adam Nemser/PHOTOlink, Courtesy JewsForSarah.com
RELATED: Donald Marron, at National Affairs, "America in the Red":
Some Americans prefer a large, active government that provides a broad range of services and redistributes income among individuals and families in order to diminish disparities in economic outcomes. Other Americans prefer a smaller, limited government that provides essential public services — defense, a legal system, and a basic social safety net — but leaves most other decisions to individuals, families, and the private sector. A smaller government makes the task of keeping spending — and therefore deficits — under control somewhat easier. But if we choose a larger government, Americans must recognize that we will have to pay for it through higher taxes. Unbridled borrowing is simply not a viable long-term option ....
President Obama has backed himself into an unsustainable position with his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on Americans who earn less than $250,000 a year. The difficulty of upholding that pledge has already been illuminated by the debate over how to pay for an expanded federal role in health insurance. Once we turn to our ongoing fiscal problems, it will become obvious that high-income Americans simply do not make enough money to bear all the costs of fixing the federal budget. Consider some recent analysis by the Brookings-Urban Tax Policy Center's Rosanne Altshuler, Katherine Lim, and Roberton Williams, whose calculations suggest that the top two marginal tax rates would have to be increased to at least 70% to bring the deficit under control through tax increases on high earners alone. And even that measure seems unlikely to work — since, as they note, these calculations do not take into account the negative economic consequences of such high tax rates ....
Lobbyists are already arguing that various temporary provisions in the 2009 stimulus bill should be made permanent. While the congressional committees with oversight of education spending have found a way to eliminate $80 billion from the federal student-loan program, they plan to use most of it to expand other spending, rather than to reduce the deficit. The committees in charge of energy and environmental policy are considering proposals that would create almost $1 trillion worth of carbon allowances over the next ten years — only to give away or spend 99% of that money. And then there is the Democrats' health-care initiative, which would make a series of cuts to the budget only to use the savings to expand the federal government's role in financing health care.
Hat Tip: Linkiest.
The selection of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the nation’s 112th justice extends a quarter-century pattern in which Republican presidents generally install strong conservatives on the Supreme Court while Democratic presidents pick moderate candidates who often disappoint their liberal base.More at the link, plus related rants at Memeorandum.
Ms. Kagan is certainly too liberal for conservatives, who quickly criticized her nomination on Monday as a radical threat. But much like every other Democratic nominee since the 1960s, she does not fit the profile sought by the left, which hungers for a full-throated counterweight to the court’s conservative leader, Justice Antonin Scalia.
In many ways, this reflects how much the nation’s long war over the judiciary has evolved since Ms. Kagan was a child. While the American left back then used the Supreme Court to promote social change in areas like religion, race and abortion, today it looks at it more as a backstop to defend those rulings. The right, on the other hand, remains aggrieved and has waged an energetic campaign to make the court an agent of change reversing some of those holdings.
Along the way, conservatives have succeeded to a large extent in framing the debate, putting liberals on the defensive to the point where Sonia Sotomayor echoed conservatives by extolling judicial restraint in her confirmation hearings last year and even President Obama recently said the court had gone too far in the past. While conservatives have played a powerful role in influencing Republican nominations, liberals have not been as potent in Democratic selections.
In that vein, then, no Democratic nominee since Thurgood Marshall in 1967 has been the sort of outspoken liberal champion that the left craves, while Justice Scalia has been joined by three other solid conservatives in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. By all accounts, Mr. Obama did not even consider the candidates favored most by the left, like Harold Hongju Koh, his State Department legal adviser, or Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford Law School professor.
President Barack Obama will nominate Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, choosing a woman who has worked in elite legal and policy jobs but has never served as a judge, according to people familiar with the situation.Also at ABC News, "15 minutes ago AP: Elena Kagan is Obama's Pick for the Supreme Court" (via Memeorandum).
The selection is to be announced Monday. If confirmed by the Senate, she would succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, the 90-year-old leader of the court's liberal wing.
In making his choice, aides said the president looked for someone with not only a top legal mind but also the ability to bring people of differing views together. With the Supreme Court closely divided ideologically, the president is hoping his pick will be a leader who can build majorities in close cases.
He saw that quality in Ms. Kagan, who earned a reputation for bridging divides as a policy adviser in the Clinton White House and, in particular, over six years as dean of Harvard Law School. At Harvard, she aggressively recruited new faculty of all ideological stripes and went out of her way to make sure conservatives felt comfortable on the left-leaning campus. She won accolades from colleagues and students across the political spectrum.
Conservatives with whom she has worked are likely to endorse her nomination, providing helpful support as the Senate considers the matter. The White House has already lined up people willing to speak out on her behalf, including conservatives, women's groups and public interest law advocates.
Harvard is what comes to mind for me. Obama's a Harvard Law grad, and he knows the culture of that institution and perhaps has a feel for Kagan's administrative style as a result. More importantly, Kagan's not an ideological progressive, and while folks are saying the defeat of Utah Senator Bob Bennet is a victory for the tea parties, that's just as true with Kagan, especially since she's a national security centrist, which will likely help the administration avoid a more bruising confirmation battle than might otherwise be expected.
And of course, perhaps the president's interested in breaking more civil rights barriers. See, "Obama Will Pick That Rumored Lesbian Elena Kagan for Supreme Court."
AND PREVIOUSLY: "Is Elena Kagan Lesbian?"
A society whose state resources are expended to break up families and tear mothers and fathers out of the hands of their children must be saved from its own moral depravity.And sheesh! These radical protest organizations just sprout like weeds. See, "The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)."
Millions of immigrants work, live and go to school under a cloud of fear every day in California - fear that federal immigration officers will drag off one of the people they love. The rank inhumanity of that policy is becoming clear to more people. The mainstream media has begun to tell the real story of families being split up and torn apart by the raids. Churches across the country have joined the sanctuary movement.
More and more municipalities throughout California have recognized officially what is increasingly obvious to millions of people: immigrants, irrespective of official status, play an integral, indispensable and overwhelmingly positive part in our state, and in our nation economically and socially. The cities across California and across the country that have officially declared themselves as sanctuary cities are simply recognizing a practical reality of modern economic life. The new civil rights movement stands at the front of the effort to achieve sanctuary status for cities and states all over. Our movement and organization stands at the front of the effort to stop the anti-immigrant raids.
People who are a contributing part of the society are citizens, regardless of where they come from, what forms they have filled out, or what government office they have waited in. The attack on Mexican and other Latin American immigrants is just bigotry and racism. The corrosive effect of having a section of people in a society with separate, unequal and inferior legal rights is unacceptable. The new immigrant rights and civil rights movement will fight and defeat any attempt to impose an inferior double standard of rights on immigrants.
We demand full and equal rights for all immigrants. We demand an end to the raids. We demand that California become a sanctuary state.
In case you missed it, here's Gochez's 2007 protest speech at UCLA:
And at the Facebook screencap, notice the poster art for ¡Alto Arizona! A quick search indicates that the National Day Laborers’ Organizing Network (NDLON) and allied La Raza groups are sponsoring nationwide protests on May 29th marked as the NATIONAL CONVERGENCE TO STOP THE HATE.
There's absolutely nothing "racist" about Arizona's SB 1070. As Kris Kobach noted earlier at NYT:
... the Arizona law hardly creates a police state. It takes a measured, reasonable step to give Arizona police officers another tool when they come into contact with illegal aliens during their normal law enforcement duties.Of course, the facts surrounding AB1070 haven't deterred the racist La Raza revolutionaries from mounting an unprecedented campaign of anti-American and anti-Arizonan demonization. Some sample artwork promoting the "NATIONAL CONVERGENCE TO STOP THE HATE":
And it’s very necessary: Arizona is the ground zero of illegal immigration. Phoenix is the hub of human smuggling and the kidnapping capital of America, with more than 240 incidents reported in 2008. It’s no surprise that Arizona’s police associations favored the bill, along with 70 percent of Arizonans.
“The Race” gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), which the late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized as “a radical racist group…[and] one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.”
Plus, despite the classic waffling, El Presidente Obarrio supports drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants, and he voted from them as a state senator:
Hat Tip: iOWNTHEWORLD.
Added: From Pundit & Pundette:
We are revolutionary Mexican organization here. We understand that this is not just about Mexico. It’s about a global struggle against imperialism and capitalism… At the forefront of this revolutionary movement is La Raza. We will no longer fall for these lies called borders. We see America as a northern front of a revolutionary movement… Our enemy is capitalism and imperialism.Well, we find more on Ron Gochez with a little digging. For one thing the guy's a rabid anti-Semite. In 2002, he published a Letter to the Editor, at SDSU's Daily Aztec, entitled "The Jewish-owned media continue to blind the masses with propaganda to keep them in fear." The letter's been taken down, but not the responses to it. For example, here's Tevia Schriebman, Jewish Student Union President:
I am writing in response to Ron Gochez's letter to the editor. His empty words are filled with racist remarks and lies. As the President of the Jewish Student Union at SDSU, I take personal offense at his comments and beliefs that "Jewish-owned media continues to blind the masses with propaganda to keep them in fear." This lie is the language of hate speech perpetuated by anti-Semitic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.And check the link. Schriebman's not alone in denouncing Gochez's racist bigotry.
The Southern California Immigration Coalition contingent, wearing red shirts and carrying red, Mexican and Honduran flags and flags from other Latin American countries, represented one of the largest groups in the united protest. SCIC includes over 40 organizations; some of the major ones are Union del Barrio, BAYAN-USA, Service Employees Local 721 Latino Caucus, Latino Congresso and the International Action Center/Bail Out the People Movement.The Southern California Immigration Coalition webpage is here, and Unión del Barrio is here.
Two of the rally emcees were Ron Gochez of Union del Barrio and Celina Benitez of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. Both are steering committee members of SCIC. They made comments and led chants that made it clear that any legislation calling for criminalization was not acceptable.
Mr. Gochez AKA Little Crow (Santee Tribe Leader!)'s BlurbsAnd who would he like to meet? Well, check out these bursting screencaps below, featuring some provocative pics from some of his tribe's underage hotties:
About me:
I'm a teacher at South Central LA High! I LOVE MY JOB! Teaching our young people is a beautiful thing! I wouldn't do anything else! I want to give the youth of South Central the best education that people like my parents NEVER had the opportunity to receive. I graduated from San Diego State and then I got my masters at UCLA. I love to travel, read, work out, watch movies, watch RAIDER FOOTBALL!! VIVA LA RAZA!!
Who I'd like to meet:
Ron Góchez, M.Ed., LAUSD, Association of Raza Educators, Los AngelesOf course, barely half of the Hispanic student population at Santee High School is proficient in English and math, and it's no wonder when you've got extremist social justice educators doing everything except actually teaching kids the basics.
Come and learn how to organize! Ever feel like you wanted to organize something but didn’t know how? Come learn some basic/practical tactics that you can use to advance Social Justice both inside and outside of your classroom! As A.R.E we believe that being a Social Justice educator means being able to organize students, parents and fellow teachers! Come learn how from teachers who have led successful struggles in South Central LA.
This post is getting in just under the wire for inclusion at Sir Smitty's Sunday FMJRA Rule 5 extravaganza.
The degree to which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan or Faisal Shahzad had “ties to high-level Islamic radicals overseas” is a bit squishy ...Oh Barbara, behold Farouk Abdulmutallab training with al-Qaeda in Yemen. Is this "high-level" enough for you? At London's Daily Mail, "Revealed: Chilling video that shows failed Christmas Day bomber training with Al Qaeda in Yemen":
And I'm just laughing at the dismissal of Malik Hassan's radical ties (and really, high-level, low-level ... grieving Ft. Hood families don't care). And al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan are basically one-and-the-same, and as ABC News reported, "Times Square Bomber's Taliban Contacts Put Pressure on Pakistan: U.S. says Faisal Shahzad Got 'Regular' and 'Substantial' Connections to Taliban."
Barbara: ABC News is reporting that Faisal had DIRECT contact with al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. Yes, we should be worried about terrorist extremism in any form. But it's simply insane for leftists like Contessa Brewer to wish that Faisal was a tea partier. Unfortunately, this post in putting you over in that territory.RELATED: Jennifer Rubin, "The Enemy We Dare Not Name."
LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany—Helmut Kohl, frail and confined to a wheelchair, returned to public view this week, imploring his countrymen not to abandon the goal he spent his political life pursuing: a united Europe.RTWT.
"Today, I am convinced more than ever that European unification is a question of war and peace for Europe and for us, and the euro is part of our guarantee of peace," the former chancellor, his voice uneven and raspy, told guests at a celebration for his 80th birthday.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel looked on, Mr. Kohl issued a thinly veiled critique of her reluctance to help Greece, saying he couldn't understand "people who act as if Greece doesn't matter." Of course the situation is difficult, but Germany must pull out all the stops, he said, drawing applause from the crowd.
The scene underscored the threat Greece's turmoil poses to monetary union, the grandest expression of the European continent's drive toward integration. Mr. Kohl led the unification drive two decades ago. Now the increasingly disruptive debt problems in Greece and elsewhere post the question: What price is Germany willing to pay to save Europe?
The Times Square attack was the third time in the past six months that an individual terrorist with ties to high-level Islamic radicals overseas has launched an attack on the American homeland. In each instance, America’s vast, multibillion dollar intelligence and law enforcement establishment failed to detect the terrorists’ plans beforehand. And in each instance Obama administration officials moved quickly to minimize the significance of the attack and downplay the connections that the attackers had with international terrorists.RTWT.
On the morning of May 2, the day after the attack, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano appeared on ABC’s This Week. Jake Tapper asked her about the likelihood of international involvement in the attempted bombing, pointing to similarities between the crude bomb discovered in the SUV and those used in attempted bombings in London and Glasgow in 2007.
“Well, right now, we have no evidence that it is anything other than a one-off, but we are alerting state, local officials around the country, letting them know what is going on,” Napolitano replied.
Calling the attempted attack a “one-off” wasn’t a direct response to Tapper’s question. What’s clear is that Napolitano, who used “one-off” twice and also described the bomb as “amateurish,” wanted to downplay the seriousness of the attack. So did other Obama administration and law enforcement officials, who dismissed claims of responsibility by the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan).
Many details of Faisal Shahzad’s life remain murky. It will take weeks, if not months, to fill the gaps in our knowledge of his biography. But one thing is clear: When he drove a 1993 Pathfinder to Times Square on May 1, he was a committed jihadist, an Islamist radical inspired by religion to kill Americans.
And as always, see Bob Belvedere, The Daley Gator, The Other McCain, Theo Spark, and The Washington Rebel.
