What Mosque 'Inside' the Pentagon?

For some reason leftists think they've pwned conservative opponents to the Ground Zero Mega Mosque. The title of Think Progress' post is misleading: "Reminder to critics who think a mosque is offensive to the legacy of 9/11: There’s already one at the Pentagon" (via Memeorandum):

In opposing the planned Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City, conservative stalwarts have picked up on right-wing extremists’ paranoid hysteria over the initiative.

Read the whole thing. Think Progress argues that there's a mosque "inside" the Pentagon and cites a Salon essay by Justin Elliot as the source, a post titled, "Why did no one object to the 'Pentagon mosque'?" The only problem is that there is no "mosque" at the Pentagon. Elliot cites Navy imam Chaplain Abuhena Saifulislam in an attempt to smear conservatives as unhinged hypocrites, and then Elliot got picked up by Daily Kos and then finally back over to Think Progress. Elliot's essay at Salon is also illustrated with imagery designed to ridicule some kind of irrational conservative "fears" of Islam:

This at minimum caricatures the views of Ground Zero Mosque opponents, and I'd be too generous to say Think Progress et al. are mostly just dishonest. Elliot links to an article at the Washington Times from 2007, "Pentagon observes Muslim holy month." Notice the key difference in language: The Pentagon "observes" Muslim holy month, which is Ramadan. Thus the context is the Defense Department policy of allowing sectarian services for Muslims at the Pentagon building. And that is a far cry from building a "conquest mosque" at the site where 184 people died on September 11th. The left's false analogy decontextualizes the concerns of those who perished at WTC, those who view the development of a new Islamic center as a victory monument to Islam. Such opposition is strengthened by the fact that Ground Zero Imam Abdul Rauf has ties to the Gaza flotilla and is an ideological spokesman for modern Islamic jihad.

On top of that, it's not like conservatives HAVEN'T objected to the actual construction of Muslim facilities at military installations. Imam Saifulislam, who as far as I can tell is the only Muslim cleric being cited by Salon and Think Progress, was at the center of controversy in 2006 when an "Islamic Prayer Center" was being established at the United States Marine Corps training center at Quantico, Virgina. See, "Taxpayers fund Islamic center: Prayer building on Marine base not really mosque, officials say." And note the key information at the passage:

An announcement that the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Va., has refurbished a building to be used as a prayer room for Muslim soldiers and civilians on base is a "bad signal," one critic has concluded.

The Marines announced earlier this summer that one of the buildings on the base had been repainted so that Muslims would have a place to pray and hold religious services

The new "Islamic Prayer Center" is the first of its kind on a Marine base, and "serves to express the Marine Corps' recognition of diversity among service members and the commitment to provide continued support to all Marines regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender," the base announcement said.

However, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer said he wonders why the Marines do not seem concerned such facilities might to used to generate anti-American sympathies.

"It's going to go up as part of a testament to American multiculturalism and so on without any indication of the possibility that this could be a source of what we're fighting against," he said. "It just sends a bad signal."

At the dedication ceremony, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England praised the estimated 4,000 Muslims in the U.S. military. Joining him were leaders of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

CAIR describes itself as America's largest Muslim civil liberties group and boasts 32 offices, chapters and affiliates nationwide and in Canada. Its mission, it says, is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

However, CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a "front group" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.

"It is sadly ironic and lost on most that the plan to dedicate the prayer center and build a new mosque was approved by military leaders occupying a building that was attacked on 9/11 – the Pentagon – where more than 100 of its occupants were killed on that day," was the conclusion of those at Homelandsecurityus.com, a private security organization.

Justin Elliot and Think Progress might want to revise their posts. Robert Spencer (along with Pamela Geller) is among the leading opponents of the New York Mega Mosque. Thus, not only is there not a "mosque" at the Pentagon, but an earlier initiative to establish a fully designated "Islamic Prayer Center" met with the same kind of opposition that we're now seeing with the Cordoba Center. I'd add as well that the same folks who protest the erection of Islamic victory mosques have stressed repeatedly their respect for freedom of religion. Imam Saifulislam's Pentagon prayer services allow Muslim service-members to worship their faith as fully protected members of America's pluralist religious order. The U.S. did not prohibit Islam after 9/11. And our armies in the field are working with Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world to defeat militant jihadis who kill indiscriminately, regardless of faith.

Mega Mosque opponents are asking Muslim religious leaders to exercise their rights responsibly. No one is attempting to take away those rights.

The essays at Salon, Daily Kos, and Think Progress are simply additional examples of the anti-intellectual smear tactics disguised as "debate" that are found routinely on the left. Just watch. More people will die from this kind of conservative-bashing. Talk about political opportunism. It's pretty sick.

RELATED: At America.gov, "Bangladeshi American Is First Muslim Chaplain in Marine Corps: Abuhena Saifulislam counsels troops from all backgrounds and faiths."

Added: Linked at JustOneMinute, "Geez, It's Almost As If 'The Right' Is Not Reflexively Anti-Muslim."

The Lady Gaga/Katy Perry Boobular Arms Race

From Luke Lewis, "Does Katy Perry really have to strip off to get on the cover of Rolling Stone?"

Lewis says no but I say yes, that is, if Katy Perry wants to compete in the strategic arms race with Lady Gaga. Nudity is mainstream nowadays. The latest cover of Vanity Fair features Gaga nude. Katy Perry was recently featured semi-nude on the cover of Esquire. The first conclusion of course is that this sells magazines — with the prominence of virtually no-holds-barred web publishing, dead-tree magazines are going nuclear to keep up. As for Gaga and Perry, it's a strategic (boobular) arms race, and there's a theory for that:

The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During the Cold War, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries also developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.

In the boobular arms race neither side has developed a strategy of deterrence, since the threat of mutual assured destruction has yet to appear inevitable at the top-tier of celebrity competition. But as this is an existential superpower rivalry between Gaga and Perry, second-tier stars are hoping for an arms (boobs) reduction treaty to bring the world back from the brink of boobular annihilation.

The superpowers have eschewed strategic restraint (see, "Katy Perry Strips Down for Rolling Stone: Photos From Her Sexy Cover Shoot"), and the danger of a boobular holocaust has forced the issue to the heights of transnational cooperative efforts for reductions in force and norms against boobular violence (see, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women" and "Pornography Is a Civil Rights Issue".)

A Brief History of the Bikini

Via Diana Adams.

Which gives me a chance to post a Katy Perry bikini shot:

Hat Tip: R.S. McCain.

Churchill Ordered UFO Cover-Up?

At Astute Bloggers, "EISENHOWER AND CHURCHILL COVERED UP PHENOMENAL UFO SIGHTING DURING WW2." The link's to the BBC, "Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show":

Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: "The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.

"But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.

"The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views."

Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.

I was trying to think of a hefty wisecrack here, but see Brain Fung at Foreign Policy, "Either the tin hats were right all along, or Churchill was as crazy as the rest of 'em." (Via Memeorandum.)

'Green Lantern'

Green Lantern is scheduled for release in June 2011.

Blake Lively stars as Carol Ferris. No doubt she'll heat up the screen (as an aerospace executive at that):

Hat Tip: Tom Cruise.

65 Years After Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima

At Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, "65 years later, survivor of first atomic bomb still has vivid memories":

UPLAND - Sumi Umemoto has no memory of the destruction that descended on her hometown of Hiroshima 65 years ago today. She was just 4 months old, a baby girl born at the dawn of the nuclear age.

Although she never saw the mushroom cloud, she definitely heard about it when she was old enough to understand.

"It was a different kind of bombing," Umemoto said. "That mushroom cloud was something different, and everybody was so scared."

The nightmare lasted long after World War II ended, and Umemoto remembers the aftermath - her blood-stained walls, the post-war hunger and countless checkups by doctors studying the effects of radiation.

Umemoto, now an Upland resident, grew up in a home more than a mile from ground zero. But on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, she was at her grandmother's house, about 20 miles away. Her father and cousin were home and both miraculously survived.
That day, Umemoto and her family became hibakushas, or survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place three days later on Aug. 9.

Hibakushas are entitled to government compensation and health care in Japan. To this day, Umemoto meets with visiting Japanese doctors in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo for physicals on an occasional basis. Her cousin, who suffered severe burns after the bomb, was worried over the stigma of radiation exposure and never applied for hibakusha status.

World leaders, including the U.S. ambassador to Japan, will mark the anniversary in the port city where the American plane dropped a 9,700-pound bomb 65 years ago. The event, claiming some 140,000 lives in the months following the Hiroshima bombing and some 80,000 more after the Nagasaki bombing, led to the Japanese surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, thus ending the deadliest war in history. It forever changed Japan, bringing a pacifist identity to national discourse and its constitution.

More at the link.

Readers might recall my discussion last weekend of the case study method. (I had shown the opening scenes of "The Paper Chase" during summer school, including the part where Professor Kingsfield discusses the Socratic method). Well, for a time I organized my World Politics classes around case study analysis, and I used Carolyn Rhodes', Pivotal Decisions: Select Cases In Twentieth Century International Politics. One of the best chapters is "The Decision to Drop the Bomb on Japan." A lot of students were overwhelmed by the case studies, and I imagine that's because Rhodes' cases were extremely in-depth and rigorous, and thus required more advanced training than many entry-level students possessed. That said, there were some beefy discussions. I can remember at least one student --- and a couple of others to a lesser degree --- who basically broke down during the discussion of whether the U.S. should have used nuclear weapons to end the war. I mean, really, the discussions were almost traumatizing for some. So while the article above notes that the Japanese are perhaps the world's most pacifist people, especially with regards to nuclear weapons, some the post-'60s cohorts of neo-socialist youth have internalized tremendously strong feelings about this as well. Of course, I don't think such ideological sentiment leads to rigorous thinking, but at least those views are deeply held.

More on this at NYT (FWIW), Kenzaburo Oe, "Hiroshima and the Art of Outrage."

Mary Hart Leaving 'Entertainment Tonight' After 29 Seasons

I write about 1980s pop music quite a bit ... so, how about a television flashback as well?" Mary Hart's leaving "ET" after 29 seasons. (I used to be a fan):

After nearly three decades as host of "Entertainment Tonight," Mary Hart is calling it quits.

Hart announced Thursday that she plans to leave the show after the upcoming season, which launches Sept. 13. Her exact departure date has not yet been revealed.

Hart joined the syndicated showbiz newsmagazine in 1982.

“I've reached a point when I clearly realize it's time for a change," Hart said in a statement. "There are many things I want to do in my life and I'd better get on with them. It will certainly be with mixed sentiments that I say 'goodbye' at the end of the season, but it will definitely be with a sense of celebration…30 years of Entertainment Tonight, are you kidding me? That's an accomplishment and something I'm very proud of!”

Lara Spencer, Hart's lovely replacement at "ET", will be 70 years-old if she too does 29 seasons: "Exclusive: 'Insider's' Lara Spencer Will Replace Mary Hart on 'ET'."

Developments in the Gulf

At Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "BP prepares to finish up 'static kill' with cement":

And see, "Factbox." Plus, "Gulf Update: Some Oil Disappears, Static Kill Seems to Be Working."

Birtherism Lives? Only 42 Percent of Americans Believe Obama Is a Citizen

It's kinda funny, but it just occurred to me that the folks so insistent that President Obama is fully eligible to be president of the United States have themselves turned into a cult that mirrors those who they so often criticize: the "birthers." This is evident by reading through the comments at Steven Taylor's post, "Birtherism Lives." What interested me was Steven's appearance of absolute certainty of President Obama's eligibility for office, which even from my perspective hasn't been shown conclusively. At issue is the new poll from CNN showing that 6 in 10 have doubts about Obama's birth: "CNN Poll: Only 42% Of Americans Believe Obama is a Citizen, Only 23% Of Republicans." The survey was released on Obama's birthday. In response, MSNBC's Chris Matthews nearly had a heart attack, "Chris Matthews: Birthers Are Trying To “Assassinate” Obama “With Their Lies”."

It's all pretty funny to me. Since the left's attacks on the birth eligibility issue is pretty much like being attacked as RAAAAACIST! --- that is, it's simply a means of shutting down debate and dissent. The MSM plays it up, and all of a sudden you're lumped in with the 9/11 truthers if you question why no one's ever released the long form birth certificate, which was issued in August 1961 by the State of Hawaii. (The computer generated COLB is incomplete documentation, and includes no signatures from medical professionals witnessing the birth.)

In any case, for some related humor, see Jerome Corsi, "Oops! Obama Mama Passport 'Destroyed'":

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's 1961 birth are missing.

The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other "nonvital" passport records, including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.

Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding light on whether Dunham did or did not travel out of the country around the time of Barack Obama's birth.

The claim made in the Freedom of Information response letter that many passport records were destroyed during the 1980s comes despite a statement on the State Department website that Passport Services maintains U.S. passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present.

The records released, however, contain interesting tidbits of new information about Obama's mother, including the odd listing of two different dates and locations for her marriage to Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

Image Credit: The Astute Bloggers, "Naughty Obama Mamma."

BONUS: I have a long response to Steven Taylor at Outside the Beltway. He claims there's irrefutable proof of Obama's birth eligibility. I have raised questions there that so far he's not answered.

Mary Jo Kilroy: Enemy of Israel

A new clip from the Emergency Committee for Israel:

PuffHo is not pleased.

Background from Jennifer Rubin, "Defending the Gaza 54." Also, at Timothy Birdnow, "Open borders with Gaza? 54 Democrats sign letter for it."

How Communists Exploit WikiLeaks

It's one thing when you have communist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewing convicted computer hacker and communist activist Julian Assange on the U.S. government's response to WikLeaks. It's quite another thing when mainstream newspaper editors also come down on the side of the WikiLeaks/communist alliance. But that's what's happening today at LAT, "WikiLeaks and a Journalism 'Shield Law'." Speaking of Senator Schumer's legislative effort to police criminal organizations like WikiLeaks, the Times notes:

Rather than trying to figure out who should be protected and who should not, Congress should focus on what it is trying to accomplish — namely, to preserve for citizens of this democracy the information they need to govern themselves, information that sometimes only becomes public if those who have it can supply it anonymously.

Spoken like a true hardline communist apparatchik.

If you travel around the horn of the Internet, you'll find a clear split between those patriots who recognize that WikiLeaks' criminal activities put lives at risk (military and civilian) and those anti-Americans who want to damage the United States at all costs.

This Ain't Hell has more, "Left Plots Exploitation of WikiLeaks Documents":

The Left didn’t waste any time getting together in New York City yesterday looking for ways to use the documents from the Wikileaks drop for their own nefarious purposes. Someone dropped a link to me Saturday about the conference. They highlighted the luminaries that they had invited to speak;

* Dahr Jamail, journalist, author of “Beyond the Green Zone”
* Cindy Sheehan, antiwar leader, author, Director, Peace of the Action
* Josh Stieber, Army veteran of Bravo Company 2-16
* Matthis Chiroux, Army veteran, Iraq war resister
* Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace
* Ray McGovern, former CIA Agent, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
* Jeff Paterson, Courgage to Resist, spokesperson for Bradley Manning Support Comm
* Elaine Brower, military mother, World Can’t Wait
* Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

Debra Sweet calls them “a strong group of resisters and truth-tellers”. They resist common sense and none would know the truth if it bit their collective ass. Dahr Jamail has made a career of ignoring facts that get in his way, Cindy Sheehan you all know, Josh Stieber bears witness to the “Collateral Murder” video yet he was still behind the wire during the events of that day. Matthis, well he’s a celebrity here. TSO dealt with Jeff Paterson’s hyperbole last year. Elaine Brower, hiding behind her son’s service, calls other troops baby killers.

That's Debra Sweet of the communist World Can't Wait organization: "Webcast: Anti-War Leaders and Veterans Respond to the WikiLeaks Revelations."

This is the leftist coaltion we're dealing with. Or, this is the domestic/international enemy coalition stabbing our troops in the back. (And recall also that the New York Times has been right at the center of this entire criminal leaking enterprise. Treasonous and disgusting.)

Michaele Salahi of 'D.C. Housewives' on 'The View'

I'd almost forgotten about the Salahis. I guess Whoopi Goldberg touched Michaele on yesterday's episode of "The View'. Now it turns out the "Real Housewives of DC" star (and former White House gate-crasher) is claiming she was "abused." And attorney Lisa Bloom (Gloria Allred's daughter) is on the case. At CBS News, "Michaele Salahi's Lawyer: 'View' Appearance Degrading." Plus, at ET, "'The View' update: Whoopi says she used 'choice words' backstage but 'didn't hit' Michaele Salahi."

The key moment's at about 1:50 at the clip. Looks like Whoopi simply touched her:

Mosque is No Way to 'Build Bridges'

From Thomas Kidd, at USA Today:

On Tuesday, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted, correctly, to deny landmark status to a fairly nondescript building that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory retailer. The only reason that the notion of landmark status had come forward (despite weak arguments about the building representing mid-19th century economic growth) was because a Muslim organization wants to build a mosque there, and the building stands near Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center. Building the mosque near the epicenter of the 9/11 tragedy is in extremely bad taste, but the Constitution's protection of religious freedom should allow it to be built.

This case is a perfect example of the delicate nature of religious freedom. Religious freedom is most tenuous when the religious act in question is unpopular, and the building of this mosque is unpopular, to put it mildly. The proposed Islamic center shows an incredible lack of sensitivity on the part of the Cordoba Initiative, the group backing the mosque. One wonders whether Oz Sultan, spokesman for the group, can be serious when he says that the project will "build bridges" and that the Cordoba Initiative is "committed to promoting positive interaction between the Muslim world and the West." Could this group really be so out of touch, or is it intentionally trying to provoke a harsh reaction to prove some point? We don't know, but the overwhelming consensus of public opinion is that the idea of building this mosque on this property is deeply offensive. It insults the memory of those who died at the hands of jihadist terrorists.

More at the link.

Cartoon Credit: Sean Delonas.

In the Mail: The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election

Came to my home address, which is unusual. Available at Amazon.

And from the publisher's page:

Barack Obama's stunning victory in the 2008 presidential election will go down as one of the more pivotal in American history. Given America's legacy of racism, how could a relatively untested first-term senator with an African father defeat some of the giants of American politics?

In The Obama Victory , Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson draw upon the best voter data available, The National Annenberg Election Survey, as well as interviews with key advisors to each campaign, to illuminate how media, money, and messages shaped the 2008 election. They explain how both sides worked the media to reinforce or combat images of McCain as too old and Obama as not ready; how Obama used a very effective rough-and-tumble radio and cable campaign that was largely unnoticed by the mainstream media; how the Vice Presidential nominees impacted the campaign; how McCain's age and Obama's race affected the final vote, and much more.

Briskly written and filled with surprising insights, The Obama Victory goes beyond opinion to offer the most authoritative account available of precisely how and why Obama won the presidency.

'I Never Swallow'

This dude's a riot. Impeccable timing as well: "Obama does not endorse gay marriage. As a candidate for president, he consistently said marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman." Freakin' homophobe!

Plural Marriage is Waiting in the Wings

Flashback.

Stanley Kurtz, from 2005:

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2005, the 46-year-old Victor de Bruijn and his 31-year-old wife of eight years, Bianca, presented themselves to a notary public in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. And they brought a friend. Dressed in wedding clothes, Victor and Bianca de Bruijn were formally united with a bridally bedecked Mirjam Geven, a recently divorced 35-year-old whom they'd met several years previously through an Internet chatroom. As the notary validated a samenlevingscontract, or "cohabitation contract," the three exchanged rings, held a wedding feast, and departed for their honeymoon.

When Mirjam Geven first met Victor and Bianca de Bruijn, she was married. Yet after several meetings between Mirjam, her then-husband, and the De Bruijns, Mirjam left her spouse and moved in with Victor and Bianca. The threesome bought a bigger bed, while Mirjam and her husband divorced. Although neither Mirjam nor Bianca had had a prior relationship with a woman, each had believed for years that she was bisexual. Victor, who describes himself as "100 percent heterosexual," attributes the trio's success to his wives' bisexuality, which he says has the effect of preventing jealousy.

The De Bruijns' triple union caused a sensation in the Netherlands, drawing coverage from television, radio, and the press. With TV cameras and reporters crowding in, the wedding celebration turned into something of a media circus. Halfway through the festivities, the trio had to appoint one of their guests as a press liaison. The local paper ran several stories on the triple marriage, one devoted entirely to the media madhouse.

News of the Dutch three-way wedding filtered into the United States through a September 26 report by Paul Belien, on his Brussels Journal website. The story spread through the conservative side of the Internet like wildfire, raising a chorus of "I told you so's" from bloggers who'd long warned of a slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy.

Meanwhile, gay marriage advocates scrambled to put out the fire. M.V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, told a sympathetic website, "This [Brussels Journal] article is ridiculous. Don't be fooled--Dutch law does not allow polygamy." Badgett suggested that Paul Belien had deliberately mistranslated the Dutch word for "cohabitation contract" as "civil union," or even "marriage," so as to leave the false impression that the triple union had more legal weight than it did. Prominent gay-marriage advocate Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, offered up a detailed legal account of Dutch cohabitation contracts, treating them as a matter of minor significance, in no way comparable to state-recognized registered partnerships.

In short, while the Dutch triple wedding set the conservative blogosphere ablaze with warnings, same-sex marriage advocates dismissed the story as a silly stunt with absolutely no implications for the gay marriage debate. And how did America's mainstream media adjudicate the radically different responses of same-sex marriage advocates and opponents to events in the Netherlands? By ignoring the entire affair.

Yet there is a story here. And it's bigger than even those chortling conservative websites claim. While Victor, Bianca, and Mirjam are joined by a private cohabitation contract rather than a state-registered partnership or a full-fledged marriage, their union has already made serious legal, political, and cultural waves in the Netherlands. To observers on both sides of the Dutch gay marriage debate, the De Bruijns' triple wedding is an unmistakable step down the road to legalized group marriage.

More important, the De Bruijn wedding reveals a heretofore hidden dimension of the gay marriage phenomenon. The De Bruijns' triple marriage is a bisexual marriage. And, increasingly, bisexuality is emerging as a reason why legalized gay marriage is likely to result in legalized group marriage. If every sexual orientation has a right to construct its own form of marriage, then more changes are surely due. For what gay marriage is to homosexuality, group marriage is to bisexuality. The De Bruijn trio is the tip-off to the fact that a connection between bisexuality and the drive for multipartner marriage has been developing for some time.

Photo Credit: "The Polygamists - FLDS: An exclusive look inside the FLDS."

And from the comments at Christianity Today:

Big deal. Sticking a reproductive organ into an excretory canal will never constitute grounds for biblical marriage. Also, it's not over, yet. This will be appealed to the SC where it will be a 5 to 4 decision against homosexual marriage. If not, there is no logical reason to prevent plural marriage or any other arrangement. This federal judge must be a crackhead.

RELATED: From Dale Carpenter, "A Maximalist Decision, Raising the Stakes" (via Memeorandum).

WikiLeaks: Criminal Enterprise

From Marc Thiessen, at Washington Post, "WikiLeaks Must be Stopped":

Let's be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise. Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible -- including to the United States' enemies. These actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism. The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents -- and its leadership brought to justice. WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, proudly claims to have exposed more classified information than all the rest of the world press combined. He recently told the New Yorker he understands that innocent people may be hurt by his disclosures ("collateral damage" he called them) and that WikiLeaks might get "blood on our hands."

With his unprecedented release of more than 76,000 secret documents last week, he may have achieved this. The Post found that the documents exposed at least one U.S. intelligence operative and identified about 100 Afghan informants -- often including the names of their villages and family members. A Taliban spokesman said the group is scouring the WikiLeaks Web site for information to find and "punish" these informers.

Beyond getting people killed, WikiLeaks' actions make it less likely that Afghans and foreign intelligence services (whose reports WikiLeaks also exposed) will cooperate with the United States in the future. And, as former CIA director Mike Hayden has pointed out, the disclosures are a gift to adversary intelligence services, and they will place a chill on intelligence sharing within the United States government. The harm to our national security is immeasurable and irreparable.

RTWT.

Interesting discussion (FWIW), from Charli Carpenter, "Wikileaks and 'War Crimes'."

Cameras in the Supreme Court

Making the case at Reason:

HAT TIP: Glenn Reynolds.

Most Americans Want ObamaCare Changed or Repealed

At Fox News, "Most Voters Unhappy with Health Care Law":

Few American voters like the new health care law — and most want it changed or repealed.

In addition, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday, almost twice as many voters think changes in the law "go too far" as think they "don't go far enough."

Nearly half of voters — 45 percent — think the changes go too far, while 25 percent think the changes don't go far enough. Some 16 percent think the law includes the right amount of change.

Just 15 percent of voters like the new health care law and think it should be implemented as is. Most don't like the law in its current form: 42 percent think it needs to be changed, and another 36 percent would repeal it all together.

The full article and questionnaire at the link.

Palin Talks Tough

On Hannity's:

Hezbollah Ambush of IDF Troops at Lebanon Border

YNET has the story, "IDF: Journalists were tipped off."

Journalists and photographers were briefed in advance of the intention to ambush IDF troops and were therefore present at the site of Tuesday's deadly clash between Israeli and Lebanese forces, IDF officials charge.

The lethal skirmish ensued after IDF forces performing routine operations in a border-area enclave came under Lebanese fire. The Israeli troops fired back, killing three Lebanese soldiers and a local journalist.

The killed correspondent, Assaf Abu Rahal, worked for Hezbollah-affiliated Beirut daily al-Akhbar.

Another journalist, Ali Shuaib from Hezbollah's al-Manar station, was wounded in the incident and was taken to hospital for treatment.

IDF officials raised questions about the presence of journalists and even broadcast trucks at the scene even before the clash ensued, charging this further reinforces suspicions that the incident was a well-planned Lebanese ambush.

But see the detailed report from Melanie Phillips, "Here we go again...":

About the strategic significance of these events and their possibly momentous consequences for the region and world peace, the western public is today -- thanks to the uselessness and worse of the mainstream media -- almost wholly ignorant.

Phillips cites Yossef Bodansky, "Clash on Israel-Lebanon Border Holds Potential for Strategic Escalation."

But you don't get the full story at FDL, naturally: "IDF Tree Removal Kills Three in Lebanon."

Rule 5 Preview: Katy Perry at Esquire

Gettin' ready for the weekend!

Nihad Awad, Executive Director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Attacks Pamela Geller on 'O'Reilly Factor'

Nihad Awad is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and an unindicted co-conspirator in the FBI's Holy Land investigation. In a frankly bizarre appearance on last night's O'Reilly show, Awad smeared Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs as blaspheming Islam:

And Pamela responds:

I am perplexed not only by CAIR's presence on legit media, but by the absence of their true identity. O'Reilly has them on quasi-regularly and never identifies them as co-conspirators in the largest Hamas (also Muslim Brotherhood) terror funding trial in US history. The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document released during that same trial, to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within, and sabotaging its miserable house...so that Allah's religious is made victorious over other religions."

CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East.

CAIR is not only an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. Also, CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror, and CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.

Pamela made a short appearance last night, but as is usually the case, it didn't seem like she had enough time to make her case. Interesting, either way:

Modern Leftism and the Courts

Update to my earlier entry, "'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'."

Be sure to compare Judge Bork's comments at the link above to John Hinderaker, "Today's Proposition 8 Decision" (via Memeorandum):

Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, when a gay federal judge in San Francisco, relying on the opinions of mostly-gay "expert" witnesses, ruled that an amendment to the California constitution, which was adopted in perfectly proper fashion by a substantial majority of voters, is "unconstitutional." In this context, unconstitutional means "unpopular with me and my friends."

As a legal matter, Judge Walker's decision is a bad joke. It will be appealed, of course, but the outcome of the appeal will be determined by politics, not law. I think it is safe to assume that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President is explicitly or implicitly committed to the proposition that gay marriage is a constitutional right. If you think that is bizarre, stop voting for Democratic politicians.

And again, idiot Scotty smears rather than engage substance, "Former Time Blog of the Year Apparently Unaware That Federal State Entails Multiple Constitutions."

Kristallnacht in New York?

On November 10, 1938, the Gestapo, the SS and various Nazi Youth and other brown-shirt militias launched a massive pogrom against Jews in Germany. The "Night of the Broken Glass," the attacks resulted in nearly 100 Jews murdered and tens of thousands rounded up and shipped to concentration camps. Kristallnacht is widely considered the initial stage of the Nazi regime's "final solution" to the Jewish problem.

It would seem pretty evident to any reasonable person in America today that the country's treatment of Muslim Americans doesn't even remotely resemble the persecution of Jews during the interwar period of German history, and then into WWII and the Holocaust. But if we've learned anything about the political left in the last few years (if not sooner) it's that the one political gambit that continues to pay off for Democrats and radicals is the claim of "discrimination." We're fortunately seeing some very successful pushback against the left's incessant claims of racism, but it's going to take continued efforts to beat back the lies and slanders that form the central discourses on the left-wing today.

My latest case in point is Andrew Sprung's entry,"Kristallnacht in New York?"

Sprung points to the New York Times' coverage yesterday, highlighting the passage suggesting that opponents "aggressively scrutinize" donors to the Cordoba Project. The highlighted section also quotes Dan Senor, who said there'd be "a real stigma associated with this project." Senor published one of the more thoughtful essays on the whole debate at yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "An Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque."

Your stated goal of interfaith and cross-cultural understanding is a good one-one that we all share and have devoted considerable energy to furthering. It may well be that this goal would be furthered still by the building and operation of Cordoba House. However, while we will continue to stand with you and your right to proceed with this project, we see no reason why it must necessarily be located so close to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

I hardly see how such concerns warrant vicious comparison to Gestapo anti-Semitic pograms in the 1930s, but that's where we are with today's radical left. Everything's about racism, discrimination, homophobia, hate speech, etc. Unreal. But one more example of a refusal of anti-conservatives to look at the issues dispassionately, and discuss things reasonably.

RELATED: At National Review, "Not at Ground Zero," via Memeorandum.

'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'

Folks are reacting to that line at the ruling.

AoSHQ is especially good. And Jeff Goldstein responds:

... this ruling does nothing more than enshrine the notion that what has always been the definition for marriage can no longer be the definition for marriage, because defining marriage as it has always been defined is discriminatory against those who wish it was defined in a way more to their liking, and in a way that changes what it is and has always been into something it never was nor ever has been. But be that as it may.

I've tired of writing about this, frankly. I'm not so much in the business of seeking to deprive people rights --- contrived rights, be that as it may as well --- and I'm to the point where the only legitimate solution I see would be a federalist one, to let the voters in their own states decide how they want to define marriage. The courts will not reflect the people on this, and the law will be tweaked to extend the right to marry to a faction that's not interested in the traditional bases of that institution. I'm reminded of Robert Bork's comments on the larger implications:

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s - the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex ...

NYT has a story up now (FWIW), "Court Rejects Same-Sex Marriage Ban in California" (via Memeorandum).

U.S. District Court Strikes Down California's Proposition 8

Via Doug Mataconis:

Added, at Los Angeles Times, "Judge strikes down Prop. 8, allows gay marriage in California." And at Legal Insurrection, "Fed Judge Finds Calif. Prop. 8 Unconstitutional":

Today, Chief Judge Vaugh Walker of the Northern District of California issued his ruling in the case holding that Prop. 8 violates the U.S. Constitution.

Here is the Judge's conclusion:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that oppositesex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Throughout the opinion, the Judge goes into great detail regarding trial testimony and justifications for Prop. 8. The Judge then holds, in essence, that the justifications are irrational and have no legitimate societal basis.

The Judge even designated a section of the opinion "Credibility Determinations." Many commentators think the Judge was trying to insulate the opinion from appeal since appeals courts do not normally overturn credibility determinations, since only the trial judge observed the witness.

In this case, the Judge seems to be trying too hard to insulate the opinion, and I doubt that on such a momentus finding of a new constitutional right for same sex marriage that an appeals court, much less the U.S. Supreme Court, will care much about the credibility of witnesses as a basis for a legal ruling.

Everyone expects this case to end up on the U.S. Supreme Court, which should test what Elena Kagan meant when she said, under oath, that there is no constitutional right to gay marriage.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger - Proposition 8 Unconstitutional

Stumbling All Over Academic Freedom

From Dennis Byrne, at the Chicago Tribune:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently allowed itself to be bullied by an anonymous student into firing a faculty member. All because the course content "offended" the student.

It's time to send those school officials responsible for the firing to a remedial course on the meaning of academic freedom and the idea of a university. If not that, then it's time to do some housecleaning to restore academic rigor to the state's blue chip public university.

This could happen in today's university environment only if the sensibilities that were offended were liberal ones. In this case, the sensibilities were on the side of stamping out views inconsonant with homosexual dictates.

Here. Here.

RTWT.

I've got some personal experience with folks trying to "stamp out" that which they can't rebut, so I'll be following this one. Byrne suggests that once the media glare winds down, the university may well give the permanent boot to Professor Kenneth Howell.

E.D. Kain Joins Balloon Juice: 'Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself'

Hey, that didn't take long. E.D. Kain's found his bone (e.g., "True/Slant Shuts Down — Charles Johnson, E.D. Kain Looking for New Digital Media Bones to Suck Dry").

Turns out the lying freak-blogger's joined John Cole's Balloon Juice, and the title of his post is fully apropos: "Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself." And hey, there's a song for that:

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate ...

Folks might not get my meaning, but those reading my blog for awhile will recall the E.D. Kain's a man of ZERO principle who sold his soul to the reigning zeitgeist of the leftist blogosphere. The secret that shall never be revealed at Balloon Juice is that E.D. Kain once published an up-and-coming neocon blog portal called Neo-Constant. Beaman's interview with British neocon Douglas Murray was first published there. Later though, folks like Beaman never did find out what happened to Neo-Constant, since E.D. Kain decided to close up shop without so much as a final thank to all of those who contributed there. I have written about this a number of times. I'm bothered not so much that E.D. Kain's an immature prima donna without a shred of principle, but that in his new blogging life he turned himself into a lackey of Charles Johnson and Andrew Sullivan. Totally lame. And after I started published some hot and heavy reports on this, E.D. Kain launched a campaign of workplace intimidation to get me to STFU. It went around for a while, getting to the point where E.D. had the gall to appeal to Christian ethics for me to stop. Right. No skin off my back though. It's yet another example of the evil I uncover so much around here. I'm all for self-interest, and if that was E.D.'s motivation for switching sides I'd have no problem. But when one then mounts unhinged Blitzkrieg assaults against the very icons of the former movement that rattles some sensibilities. It's thus fitting for E.D. to have staked his next double-crossing claim at Balloon Juice. John Cole's got a reputation of the same sort, although I can't vouch for it personally. I'll just leave it up to Cole's own words for folks to get an idea of the kind of digs slime-blogger E.D. Kain now claims as his own. See John Cole, "Let’s Be Blunt":

Go fuck yourself. To death.

I am tired of being patient with you nannies and your stupid self-serving rules and your slippery slopes and your bullshit and your need to be tough on crime and your earnest concerns about society. Mind your own business, get your own house in order, stop fucking interns and little boys and cheating on your wives and on your taxes and being found dead wearing two wetsuits with a dildo shoved up your ass. Just mind your own damned business, and let people do what they must to deal with their own screwed up lives, and let people handle their pain the best way they can.

I am sick of the bullshit. Life is hard for most people out there, and damned near impossible for people in chronic pain. Quit making it worse, you allegedly compassionate sons-of-bitches.

And that diatribe is all over some lady who committed suicide because authorities were gonna cut off her "medicinal" marijuana. Perhaps John Cole should take a couple of tokes himself --- calm down there buddy, sheesh. I'd have to check the archives, but it's a good bet that John Cole's pro-assisted suicide anyway, so perhaps the lady saved people time, no offense and God rest her soul. That said, it's a bit much to blame Bush/Cheney, dontcha think:

Robin Prosser is dead, and George Bush doesn’t even know or probably care who she is, but his government had a hand in her passing ... I didn’t think that was too much to ask until I realized what Bush and Cheney and their allies in Congress have done to this country. It is beyond time for them to grab their bibles and get the fuck out of the way.

And this begs the question: With that pedigree, why did E.D. sign on, unless it's just about fulfilling another lie?

John alluded to me as a ‘sane conservative’ and I’m sure plenty of people would take issue with both descriptors, but I’ll take what I can get. I look forward to stirring the pot around here a bit with my perfectly lucid advocacy of free markets, limited government and fiscal discipline. You may also find that I’m anti-war, anti-torture, anti-stupid-arguments-against-building-mosques, and anti-death-penalty. Indeed, I’m pro-life across the board though I have little interest in immersing myself in the endless culture war debates.

I also have very little interest in bashing other conservatives or, for that matter, liberals. Bashing has very limited utility. And others are better at it in any case.

E.D. Kain is a sane conservative the way that Andrew Sullivan is a sane conservative, which is to say not so much. The lead post at Balloon Juice right now is E.D.'s entry, "No Newt is good Newt." Click through and read it. So much for "no interest in bashing other conservatives"?

I don't like him, in any case. And I'm not going to pull punches or play nice. This is the blogosphere we're talking about ... know what I'm saying?

President Obama's Birthday

Obambi's 49 today. We should be nice, right? Perhaps. Although some folks want August 4th to be a national holiday. I can do without that. Maybe I'll take a holiday from posting Photoshops, although that photo with Rangel below is the real thing. And I'm no fan of Alex Jones (9/11 trutherism is not cool), but you gotta give the guy props at the clip for the creepy Obama overtones to the global conspiracy he's concocted.

Meanwhile, more on the conspiracy thing, from Keith Koffler at Politico, "Don't Celebrate President Obama's Birthday":

Today is President Barack Obama’s 49th birthday, which the president seems to think is an unhappy day. He has taken to lamenting his fading youth and graying hair, showing all the signs of a midlife crisis — minus the red Corvette. But unfortunately for the rest of us, his supporters are busy making Aug. 4 a sad day for the country by trying to turn the occasion into a kind of national celebration.

In an effort to drum up enthusiasm — and increase membership — the political operatives who run Organizing for America, an activist group devoted to the president, are set to stage hundreds of birthday parties around the country, giving Obama’s day of birth the feel of a holiday.

OFA members are being urged to bake birthday cakes, photograph them and send the image to OFA’s website for its blog. A letter from first lady Michelle Obama, posted on the Democratic National Committee website, directs people to the OFA site, where they can sign a “birthday card” for the president.

We don’t, as a country, generally celebrate our politicians’ birthdays. Except for those chosen few — like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

Other nations, founded on nationalism, religion or rigid ideologies, reaffirm their existence by glorifying rulers they believe embody these notions. They have constructed palaces to celebrate them during their lifetimes and embalm them in mausoleums to maintain their presence after death

But the United States is built on enduring democratic principles and ideas. Our leaders don’t represent us as the greatest nationalist or the exemplar of an ideology. Our Constitution limits the power of presidents and lawmakers. They are not symbols of the nation but temporary custodians of our freedoms. Power ultimately resides with the people.

The birthday parties are just the latest manifestation of a kind of worshipfulness that surrounds this president. His image and slogans are everywhere, emblazoned on shirts, hats, posters, walls, bumper stickers and even — uniquely for a sitting present — a few street signs.

More at the link.

The Washington Post is spreading the word, dontcha know? "Obama's birthday bash seen as a way to reengage his base."

Righteous & Wrong

Malise Ruthven takes on Paul Berman, at New York Review:

The Flight of the Intellectuals
by Paul Berman
Melville House, 299 pp., $26.00

Nomad: From Islam to America
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press, 277 pp., $27.00

Terror and Liberalism
by Paul Berman
Norton, 220 pp., $13.95 (paper)

Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents
by Ian Buruma
Princeton University Press, 132 pp., $19.95

Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name
by Timothy Garton Ash
Yale University Press, 464 pp., $35.00 (to be published in September)

**********

At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, stands an exhibit that is for some more unsettling than the replicas of the Warsaw Ghetto or the canisters of Zyklon B gas used at Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next to blown-up photographs of emaciated corpses from the death camps there is a picture of the grand mufti of Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, reviewing an honor guard of the Muslim division of the Waffen SS that fought the Serbs and antifascist partisans. The display includes a cable to Hajj Amin from Heinrich Himmler, dated November 2, 1943: “The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag ‘the extermination of world Jewry.’ Our party sympathizes with the fight of the Arabs, especially the Arabs of Palestine, against the foreign Jew.” There is also a quote from a broadcast the mufti gave over Berlin radio on March 1, 1944: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This is the command of God, history and religion.”

As the Israeli historian Tom Segev suggests, “the visitor is left to conclude that there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jews and the Arabs’ enmity to Israel.” Paul Berman’s new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, makes the connection even more explicit. Although defeated in Europe, the virus of Nazism is, in his view, vigorously present in the Arab-Islamic world, with Hajj Amin the primary source of this infection. Instead of being tried as a war criminal, Hajj Amin was allowed to leave France in 1946, after escaping from Germany via Switzerland. A trial, Berman suggests, might have “sparked a little self-reflection about the confusions and self-contradictions within Islam” on matters Jewish, comparable to the postwar “self-reflections” that took place inside the Roman Catholic Church.

Hajj Amin received a hero’s welcome on his arrival in Egypt, where he renewed his connections with Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom he had previously supplied with funds from Nazi Germany and ideas for SS-type military formations. The Brotherhood proved fertile soil for the Nazi bacillus. As a result of Hajj Amin’s return, Berman concludes, “the Arab zone ended up as the only region in the entire planet in which a criminal on the fascist side of the war, and a major ideologue, to boot, returned home in glory, instead of in disgrace.”

Planet Berman evidently excludes India, where Subhas Chandra Bose, who broadcast anti-British propaganda for the Nazis before creating the Indian National Army to fight with the Japanese, is now honored in the pantheon of national heroes in Delhi’s Red Fort. It also excludes Finland, where Gustaf Mannerheim, commander of the Finnish forces that fought with the Germans against the Soviets and volunteered recruits for the Waffen SS, was elected by parliament to serve as the country’s president from 1944 to 1946. In 2005 he and his predecessor, Risto Ryti, who served a ten-year prison sentence for allying Finland with Nazi Germany, were voted the country’s top two national heroes in a survey by the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Berman, however, is not to be bothered by inconvenient truths that might arrest the flow of his rhetoric. His vision is crassly ideological: facts that might interfere with his argument—such as al-Banna’s stated belief that Nazi racial theories were incompatible with Islam, as well as other complicating factors—are liable to be discarded or ignored.

The thrust of his book lies in its title—a homage to La Trahison des clercs (1927), Julien Benda’s attack on the intellectual corruption of his contemporaries. In his famous essay Benda lamented the demise of philosophical universalism, accusing his peers of abandoning Enlightenment ideals in favor of nationalist particularisms and partisan ideologies. Published before Martin Heidegger joined the Nazis, and long before Jean-Paul Sartre “bit his tongue” about Stalin’s horrors to avoid discouraging the French working class, the book had a prophetic ring and is justly regarded as a manifesto for intellectual integrity. However, as his title suggests, Berman is less concerned with the betrayals or corruption of the intellectuals he excoriates than with what he claims to be their moral cowardice. One aspect of this is their “refusal to discuss or even acknowledge the Nazi influence that has turned out to be so weirdly venomous and enduring in the history of the Islamist movement.”

The charge is disturbing, but not without foundation. France and Belgium have seen an increase in anti-Semitic episodes, most of them laid at the door of Muslim immigrants or their descendants. Muslim polemics in Europe—reflecting the anti-Israeli rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah as well as traditional fulminations against Jews derived from the Koran and prophetic traditions—have long mixed anti-Semitic tropes derived from European sources in a toxic mix of diatribes.

The most egregious example is a reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a notorious tsarist forgery adopted and circulated by the Nazis—in the charter of Hamas, the Islamist movement now controlling Gaza. Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading ideologue who was executed by Nasser in 1966, was an outspoken anti-Semite, with views as extreme as Hitler’s, an issue that Berman addressed with considerable insight in Terror and Liberalism (2003). As Berman sees it, the poison of European anti-Semitism was subsumed in the broader eddies of Muslim totalitarianisms—Nasserist, Baathist, and Islamist. The atrocities these movements inflicted on Muslim societies (in Iraq, Sudan, and Algeria) turned out to have been “fully as horrible as the fascism and Stalinism of Europe” with victims numbered in millions. Instead of facing reality, Western politicians and intellectuals have engaged in “ideological systems of denial.” The wake-up call came on September 11. The War on Terror that followed

was an event in the twentieth-century mode. It was the clash of ideologies. It was the war between liberalism and the apocalyptic and phantasmagorical movements that have risen up against liberal civilization ever since the calamities of the First World War.

The Flight of the Intellectuals elaborates on the theme of an embattled liberal civilization facing a totalitarian or fascist onslaught. Where Terror and Liberalism took a broad-brush approach toward the modern appeasers—heirs to the “useful idiots” on left and right who defended or ignored the dangers of Nazi and Communist totalitarianism—The Flight points an accusing finger at two particular writers—Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash—whom Berman regards as exemplifying liberal intellectual pusillanimity. The book—originally published as a lengthy article in The New Republic—tries to perform a detailed autopsy on Buruma’s New York Times profile of Hassan al-Banna’s Swiss-born grandson, Tariq Ramadan, whose work I have reviewed in these pages

Not sure what to think. I'm with Berman on his earlier book, Terror and Liberalism, and I'm not one to play up the Islam/Nazi tie-in too much. Not only that, Ruthven's no appeaser. He sees Islam as a "religion of victory," but deals at a level of sophistication that we don't get in blog debates too often. Yet this is the New York Review, and that's pretty much a strike against, so what can you do?. RTWT. I'm thinking about this one a bit more.