Venezuela's Anti-Semitic Problem

Travis Pantin, at Commentary, offers an eye-opening analysis of the rise of anti-Semitism in Venezuela: "Hugo Chávez's Jewish Problem":

Venezuela’s Jewish community, amounting to less than 1 percent of the country’s total population of 26 million, is among the oldest in South America, dating back to the early 19th century. During the struggle for independence from Spain, the fugitive revolutionary Simón Bolívar found refuge among a group of Venezuelan Jews, some of whom later went on to fight in the ranks of his liberating army. Today, the majority of the country’s Jewish population is descended from an influx of European and North African immigrants who arrived during the years surrounding World War II. Most reside in the capital city of Caracas, comprising a tightly knit community made up of roughly equal numbers from Ashkenazi and Sephardi countries of origin.

Venezuelans pride themselves on living in an ethnic and religious melting pot. Their homeland, unlike its neighbors Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile, has no history of having harbored Nazi fugitives. Before Chávez came to power, members of the Jewish community reported little animosity from either the government or the populace, and sharply anti-Zionist rhetoric was relatively uncommon. Nor did Venezuela’s fifteen synagogues (all but one of them Orthodox) experience much of the anti-Semitic vandalism common in other Latin American countries with tiny Jewish populations. The Hebraica center—its building functions as a lavish social hub, elementary school, country club, sports facility, and gathering place for Caracas Jewry—was largely left in peace.

No longer. Since Chávez took the oath of office at the beginning of 1999, there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world. Prominent Jewish figures have been publicly denounced for supposed disloyalty to the “Bolívarian” cause, and “Semitic banks” have been accused of plotting against the regime. Citing suspicions of such plots, Chávez’s government has gone so far as to stage raids on Jewish elementary schools and other places of meeting. The anti-Zionism expressed by the government is steadily spilling over into street-level anti-Semitism, in which synagogues are vandalized with a frequency and viciousness never before seen in the country.

The details are arresting.

• Graffiti, often bearing the signature of the Venezuelan Communist party and its youth organization, have appeared on synagogues and Jewish buildings, with messages like “mata niños” (“child killers”), “judios afuera” (“Jews get out”), “judios perros” (“Jews are dogs”), and swastikas linked to stars of David by an equals sign.

• Sammy Eppel, a columnist for the independent Caracas newspaper El Universal, has documented hundreds of instances of anti-Semitism in government media. To take one particularly noxious example, in September 2006 El Diario de Caracas, until recently one of the country’s most important papers, published an editorial containing these fiery words:

Let us pay attention to the behavior of the Israeli-Zionist associations, unions, and federations that are conspiring in Venezuela to take control of our finances, our industries, commerce, construction—which are infiltrating our government and politics. Possibly we will have to expel them from our country . . . as other nations have done.

• On television, Mario Silva, the host of a popular pro-Chávez show called La Hojilla (“The Razor Blade”), has repeatedly named prominent Venezuelan Jews as anti-government conspirators and called on other Jews to denounce them. “Rabbi Jacobo Benzaquén and Rabbi Pynchas Brener are actively participating in the conspiracy in conjunction with the media,” Silva has said. “So as not to be called an anti-Semite,” he added, “I repeat that those Jewish businessmen not involved in the conspiracy should say so.”

• Armed government agents have conducted two unannounced raids on the Hebraica club during the past five years. The first occurred during the early morning hours of November 29, 2004, when two dozen men wearing masks invaded the elementary school just as pupils were arriving for class. In the second, which came shortly after midnight on December 2, 2007, government agents broke through the front gate and disrupted hundreds of celebrants at a wedding party in the nearby synagogue. In each case, allegedly, the agents were looking for weapons and other evidence of “subversive activity.”

• The last few years have seen the creation of a terrorist group in Venezuela calling itself Hizballah in Latin America. The group has already claimed responsibility for placing two small bombs outside the American embassy in Caracas in October 2006—one of them, it is thought, intended for the embassy of Israel. Although neither of the two bombs detonated, the group’s website hailed the man who planted them as a “brother mujahedin” and has urged other, simultaneous attacks throughout Venezuela in solidarity with Hizballah in Lebanon.

In this connection, although there is no direct evidence linking Chávez with Hizballah in Latin America, the group’s website has featured words of praise for him, and the feeling may well be mutual. Not only has Chávez repeatedly expressed support for Hizballah in general, but (according to Venezuelan newspapers) he paid $1 million to print posters of himself with Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to be displayed at a Hizballah rally in Beirut.

Be sure to read the whole thing, at the link.

What's interesting is how Pantin makes clear that Venezuela's anti-Americanism interacts closely with trends in anti-Jewish sentiment under the Chávez regime.

See also, the Wall Street Journal, "Anti-Americans On the March: Inside the Unlikely Coalition of the U.S.'s Sworn Enemies, Where Communists Link Up With Islamic Radicals."

Blogopticon: A Guide to the Blogosphere

I enjoy all of the maps and guides to the blogosphere, and Vanity Fair's is especially cool:

Click on the link for the full "blogopticon."

While Vanity Fair doesn't match the techno-sophistication of the Presidential Watch "map of the blogosphere," the blogopticon's got a neat four-quadrant frame that intuitively places blogs and news aggregators within categories of news and opinion, and earnest and scurrilous.

Plus you can click on each icon to reach that page.

Enjoy!

(Side Observation: I would suggest that the placement of Crooks and Liars and Think Progress, among others, should be much closer to the scurrilous side. Still, folks can quibble with individual blog placement and still marvel at the chart's parsimonious organization of the blogosphere's diversity).

Calls for War Crimes Indictments are Misguided

I've noted previously how Democrats and their netroots supporters are pushing for war crimes trials for Bush administration officials (see, "In Power, Obama May Seek War Crimes Tribunals").

Stuart Taylor argues that calls for war crimes tribunals are deeply misguided:

Almost 60 House liberals, along with prominent lawyers, journalists, and retired officials and military officers, are lobbing an inflammatory charge - "war crimes" - toward a large number of the Bush administration's most senior current and former officials and lawyers. These critics accuse them of approving torture and other illegal interrogation methods.

We are likely to hear a growing clamor for appointment of a special prosecutor, presumably by the next administration. And human-rights activists are already suggesting that their friends abroad should snatch and prosecute any former members of what they call the Bush "torture team" who dare visit Europe.

These critics are right to denounce waterboarding and some other interrogation methods that were approved at the administration's highest levels as abusive, deeply damaging to the nation's traditions and international standing, arguably torture, and profoundly unwise. Critics also make a strong case that under the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the Geneva Conventions two years ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the harsher methods violated international law.

But the critics are deeply misguided to call for criminal investigations of people who did their best to protect the country in dire times. The process would ruin lives and tear the country apart. And there is no evidence that any high-level official or lawyer acted with criminal intent.

Among those calling explicitly or implicitly for criminal investigations are 56 House Democrats; retired Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal; liberal groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the ACLU; human-rights lawyers including Scott Horton of New York and Philippe Sands of London; and the New York Times editorial page. Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, has raised the possibility of prosecuting current and former administration lawyers "in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Is Wilkerson aware that his friend Powell is also among the targets of those hurling accusations of war crimes? So are Vice President Cheney; David Addington, Cheney's powerful legal counsel; Condoleezza Rice, Powell's successor; former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; former CIA Director George Tenet; and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. With the approbation of Bush, they all discussed in detail and approved specific interrogation methods, including simulated drowning ("waterboarding"), according to an April 9 ABC News report.

The most immediate target appears to be former Pentagon General Counsel William J. (Jim) Haynes II, whom Sands indicts at length in a recent book, Torture Team, and whom Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., grilled with palpable hostility at a June 17 hearing.

Why single out Haynes? Perhaps in part because targeting Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld at this point might seem too radical. Perhaps in part because the top officials would (and Haynes might not) have a solid defense of good-faith reliance on authoritative Justice Department advice that the methods they approved were legal. And perhaps in part because a detailed paper trail shows that Haynes--along with Rumsfeld--approved a list of 15 coercive methods for use against an identified detainee and other "uncooperative" prisoners at Guantanamo.

(Disclosure: At Haynes's invitation, I joined a group of journalists and others in a one-day tour of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility last summer, at Pentagon expense. I also met him several times for lunch at his Pentagon office at his invitation, usually in the wake of columns assailing administration policies on Guantanamo. He has always struck me as thoughtful, patriotic, and extraordinarily interested in dialogue with critics.)

Haynes has another distinction that his attackers ignore or play down: He is the only former official whose paper trail also shows that he blocked a request to use waterboarding and two other harsh methods that administration lawyers had advised were legal and that the CIA had already employed.

In the same November 27, 2002, memo to Rumsfeld that recommended approval of 15 of the 18 methods proposed by officers at Guantanamo, Haynes also wrote that the three other methods--waterboarding, threats of severe pain or imminent death, and exposure to cold weather or water--"might be legally available" but were not warranted "as a matter of policy ... at this time," because "our armed forces are trained to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint."

Haynes wrote that memo under excruciatingly difficult circumstances. In the wake of deadly Qaeda bombings in Bali, Pakistan, and Tunisia, and amid urgent intelligence warnings of a possible attack even more catastrophic than 9/11, the administration was desperate for clues.

Meanwhile, the military had learned that a Guantanamo detainee named Mohammed al-Kahtani had probably been the "20th hijacker," slated to help four others seize United Flight 93, which ended up crashing in rural Pennsylvania on 9/11. Kahtani had flown from London to Orlando in August 2001 to meet Mohamed Atta, who was waiting at the airport. But an alert immigration agent turned Kahtani back. He ended up being captured in Afghanistan three months later.

Might Kahtani have information that could save lives? After months of gentle questioning, he was mocking his interrogators with obvious lies. So officers at Guantanamo sent their list of 18 coercive methods up the chain of command. The attacks on Haynes center on some of the 15 that he and Rumsfeld approved as legal, with the concurrence of Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith:

Isolation for up to 30 days; "use of 20-hour interrogations"; "removal of clothing"; forced grooming and shaving of beards; depriving detainees of light and sound; hooding them (without restricting breathing); withholding hot rations; "grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing"; using "individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress"; and "the use of stress positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours."

Human-rights activists view some of these methods as torture. But as a legal matter, Haynes's advice was reasonable. None of the approved methods comes close to violating the 1994 U.S. law that makes torture a crime. That law defines torture quite narrowly, as the intentional infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." The law further specifies that mental suffering qualifies as "severe" only if it involves "the prolonged mental harm" caused by use of mind-altering substances or the threat of severe physical suffering or imminent death.

Some of the Pentagon-approved methods do appear to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions' ban on "humiliating or degrading treatment." And as of 2002, the War Crimes Act of 1996 provided criminal penalties for violations of that Geneva provision.

But until the unprecedented June 2006 Hamdan decision, administration officials reasonably believed--as did a federal Appeals Court and four of the Supreme Court's nine justices--that the Geneva Conventions were not intended to protect stateless terrorists such as Al Qaeda. The president had so determined, based on a plausible (if debatable) Justice Department reading of the treaties' language and history. That determination was binding on all executive branch officials. In Hamdan, however, a bare majority of five justices held that Geneva did protect Al Qaeda.

It would be a grave injustice to prosecute any official who had relied before Hamdan on the executive branch interpretation of Geneva. And in the Military Commissions Act of October 2006, Congress effectively barred any such prosecutions.

Critics such as Levin claim that pressure for harsh interrogations originated from high-level political appointees including Haynes, rather than from Guantanamo. The evidence suggests some of both. But the important question is not which people took the lead in pushing coercive methods. It is whether they acted with criminal intent. The answer is no.

Haynes's attackers also fault him for disregarding the concerns of some senior military lawyers about the methods he approved; for failing to set limits on simultaneous use of several harsh methods for long periods of time; for failing to prevent Kahtani's interrogators from tormenting him to extremes by overdoing the approved methods--with 18-to-20-hour interrogations almost daily for seven weeks, for example--and for using unauthorized methods such as repeatedly pouring water over his head. More broadly (and more debatably), critics accuse Haynes, Rumsfeld, and others of allowing a culture of prisoner abuse to infect the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantanamo in late 2002 and 2003--while giving them no credit for later adopting a ban on coercive methods.

It's fair game to accuse these people of tragic failures of judgment and leadership. But such failures do not make them war criminals.

Legalities aside, we should all have some empathy for those who had to make the hard decisions about interrogation methods in the dark aftermath of 9/11, and who had to weigh what might be the cost in American lives of failing to learn the secrets of the man whose apparent mission had been to help crash United Flight 93 into the Capitol.

I wrote on Phillippe Sands' research (which forms the classic antiwar manifesto for war crimes) in an earlier entry, "From Impeachment to War Crimes: The New Revenge Against BushCo."

Recall, too, that Scott McClellan's embrace by the left is founded in the expectation that he'll be the next John Dean, providing inside information to bolster the left's vindictive push for criminal indictments against the administration.

Bush Administration's Korea Diplomacy Defies Critics

The New York Times reports that the Bush administration's diplomatic breakthough on North Korea's nuclear program is one for the history books:

North Korea’s declaration of its nuclear activities is a triumph of the sort of diplomacy — complicated, plodding, often frustrating — that President Bush and his aides once eschewed as American weakness.

In more than two years of negotiations, the man who once declared North Korea part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq, angrily vowing to confront, not negotiate with, its despotic leader, in fact demonstrated a flexibility that his critics at home and abroad once considered impossible.

That is why Mr. Bush is likely to receive only grudging credit, if any, for the accomplishment, which could turn out to be the last significant diplomatic breakthrough of his presidency.

North Korea’s declaration — and the administration’s quid pro quo lifting of some sanctions — faced criticism from conservatives who attacked it as too little and from liberals who said it came too late.

“The regime’s nuclear declaration is the latest reminder that, despite Mr. Bush’s once bellicose rhetoric, engaging our enemies can pay dividends,” Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, whom Mr. Bush defeated in the 2004 presidential election, said in a statement after the declaration on Thursday.

“Historians will long wonder,” he continued, “why this administration did not directly engage North Korea before Pyongyang gathered enough material for several nuclear weapons, tested a nuclear device and the missiles to deliver them.”

History will not judge Mr. Bush as a dove, even if North Korea steps back from the nuclear threshold. The war in Iraq and his sanction of aggressive tactics in the war on Al Qaeda and other terrorists will shape his legacy more than anything he accomplishes diplomatically.

But his second term has featured far more pragmatism and far less confrontation in matters of national security than his first, reflecting the ascendancy of aides like Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and, most significantly in the talks with the North Koreans, Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.

The White House is now pursuing a similarly painstaking multilateral strategy for resolving the international confrontation over Iran’s nuclear activities. Mr. Bush has invested his personal prestige in a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians after years of unambiguous support for Israel’s toughest actions.

It's not unusual for presidents to seek diplomatic triumphs toward the end of their terms - President Reagan's INF treaty of 1987 was seen as a dramatic breakthrough that contrasted with the often bellicose bilateral U.S.-Soviet relations of the administration's first term.

But note that "peace through strength" applies here: Having shown a willingness to topple regimes that violate international law and multilateral norms of world community, the United States has shown its diplomacy will move beyond the language of deterrence in bringing about fundamental change in the international system.

Thus, it's much too early to go soft on Iran, for example, by continuing the endless U.S.-European diplomatic track that's allowed the Tehran regime to move closer to nuclear capability.

Will Conservatives Be Roused Into Action?

Here's an interesting follow-up to my previous entry, "Dark Moment of American Conservatism?"

Grover Norquist, over at the Financial Times, argues that the right will come out in droves in November in support of the Republican ticket:

The case for Republican pessimism is well understood. Too much President George W. Bush for too long. Gasoline at $4 a gallon. Most Americans believe we are heading in the wrong direction. Iraq drags on. Republicans are listless. Time for something new.

The election is Tuesday, November 4, still four months away, and the case for a Republican resurgence is strong, if unseen by the establishment media.

What is the centre-right coalition that rose up to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, install a Republican Congress in 1994 and for the next five elections, and drag Mr Bush across the finish line twice? This coalition is made up of voters who, on their main vote-moving issue, want one thing from the government: to be left alone.

Taxpayers want lower taxes. Businesses want low taxes and less regulation. Investors and owners of 401ks want low taxes on their retirement portfolios. Second Amendment voters – the 4m members of the National Rifle Association and 20m hunters – want their guns left alone. Home-schoolers wish to be left alone to educate their children. Social conservatives – the so-called religious right – are a parents’ rights movement that wishes to be left alone with their faith and families. They organised in the late 1970s when the government threatened Christian radio stations and Christian schools with new regulations.

In 1994, every segment of the centre-right, “leave us alone” coalition felt threatened by Bill Clinton and a Democrat congress that raised taxes and threatened to nationalise healthcare, steal their guns, tax private pensions, empower unions against small businessmen and heavily tax the self-employed and small business owners. Parents were told the “village” would be running more family matters, displacing their authority.

After 12 years of a Republican Congress and seven years of Mr Bush, all parts of the “leave us alone” coalition felt safer and forgot the plans Democrats have for them. Since the 1993 Clinton tax rise, no tax increase has been enacted at the federal level. This is the longest period in US history – going back to that tea thing – without one. Gun laws lapsed. There have been no labour union power grabs. Add the boat anchor of Iraq to a coalition lulled into a false sense of security and many conservative voters failed to notice that the left is unchanged in its ambitions.

The next four months will provide the necessary and perhaps sufficient reminders to bring them to the polls in force....

The centre-right voters, Reagan Democrats and Ross Perot voters are coming to understand the sharp edges of the Democrats’ agenda: the old one borrowed unchanged from Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry.

It's interesting that Norquist fails to mention John McCain's name.

If "centre-right" voters are going to turn-out in large numbers come November, they'll need to be motivated by more than an anything-but-Carter-Mondale-Dukakis-Gore-Kerry antipathy.

We've already seen a large number of "Obamacans" emerge by now, and for the life of me, I can't understand it (the interaction of Bush and McCain derangment on the right of the spectrum, perhaps).

Whatever happens, Norquist's thesis needs vindication, that's for sure, or we'll be out in the political wilderness for four years, at the least.

Dark Moment of American Conservatism?

I took a lot of heat this winter and spring in my unfllinching support for John McCain, as many readers may recall.

It's hard to forget how bitter were the attacks against those supporting McCain, or against those backing Mike Huckabee - with some of the most intense attacks levied by the right-wing partisans at the National Review (which had endorsed Mitt Romney).

I'm thus once again feeling on the "right" side of things - being faithful to my convictions, in my earlier blogging - after reading this piece by Adam Graham on his second thoughts about joining the "relentless assaults" against Mike Huckabee's primary bid:

National Review is set this Friday to release the names of four people it views as unacceptable Vice-Presidential Candidates: Tom Ridge, Charlie Crist, Joe Lieberman, and Mike Huckabee, and frankly I could care less.

In December, I listened to and joined in the DC echo-chamber that slammed Mike Huckabee mercilessly. I fed on the constant negative drumbeat of National Review and their relentless assaults on Arkansas’ former Governor. I bought into it, I regurgitated it.

I never bothered to look into the facts, particularly in regards to the charges against Mike Huckabee’s fiscal record. If I had, I would have found out that he had two court rulings come out against his state that forced increases in Medicaid and Education, and that on top of that he faced a legislature that was at least 70% Democrat every year he was in office and could override his veto by a simple majority. I wonder which Huckabee critic could have done more for conservative values than Huckabee under those circumstances.

If this past election cycle taught us nothing, it taught us that bias exists in the conservative media. The one-sided attacks on Mike Huckabee last December were not only unfair, they allowed the rise of John McCain to the Republican nomination, as the National Review-anointed leader of the Conservative movement surrendered on February 7th after having won only one competitive primary.

Conservative defeat is the legacy of National Review in the 2008 campaign. Why bother listening to them? Last week, I did a podcast in which I began to talk about some of the activities of John McCain, the nominee that obsessive huckacritics pushed over the top by becoming the echo chamber of groups like National Review and the Club for Growth and I wept for what I helped to bring about.

I feel as Heritage Foundation Founder Paul Weyrich did when he rose to speak to the National Policy Council to confess, “Friends, before all of you and before Almighty God, I want to say I was wrong”....

Beyond this dark moment in the history of American Conservatism, I see glimmers of hope ... There is hope for our country. It just won’t be found in places you’d expect like the offices of National Review.

I just don't pay that much attention to National Review, although actually some of the recent writing over there's gotten better, with Andrew McCarthy and Peter Weiner, for example.

But this is the first I've heard about National Review's warning on the un-Fantastic Four noted above. I don't know enough about Crist to say either way, but I think Ridge is a no-name, and Lieberman is simply a pro-war Democrat who would not be accepted by rank-and-file Republicans as McCain's running-mate.

With Huckabee, however, I personally thought he might consolidate a lot of evangelicals around McCain in the general, if he were to wind-up on the ticket (I also noted, at the time, however, that Huckabee needed to drop out of the race, rather than delay McCain's victory lap).

I generally don't prognosticate on the veepstakes - as long as McCain selects someone young and experienced, I'll be happy.

Neocon Blog Wars! An Update

In an earlier entry, "Neocon Blog Wars!," I made light of the conflict between Joe Klein and the neoconservatives over at Commentary.

Well, it turns out this is not a laughing matter. As Jennifer Rubin relays, the Anti-Defamation League has gotten involved, calling out Klein for allegations of "divided loyalties" among Jewish Americans on the war in Iraq:

Fulfilling its historic role as a nonpartisan watchdog against anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League has acted quickly in the case of Joe Klein and his jaw-dropping use, on the Time Magazine blog Swampland, of the anti-Semitic argument of “divided loyalties” against Sen. Joseph Lieberman and those neoconservatives who supported the war. In a plainly worded letter sent yesterday, the ADL honcho said this:

We were deeply troubled by your outrageous assertion on Time Magazine’s “Swampland” blog that Jewish neoconservatives “plumped” for the war in Iraq and are now doing the same for “an even more foolish assault on Iran” with the goal of making the world “safe for Israel.” (”Surge Protection,” June 24). Whether or not one feels that America’s war on Iraq was justified, the charge that it is being fought by the United States on behalf of Israel is both offensive and categorically false.

There can be no question that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, legitimate and serious American security and foreign policy interests played a critical role in President Bush’s decision to attack Iraq. Moreover, many top decision-makers in the administration who advocated for war hardly fit the mold of a “Jewish Neocon” – Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell being the most prominent among them.

The notion that Jews with “divided loyalties” were behind the decision to go to war is reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government….We are disappointed that a respected and thoughtful writer of your caliber you would resort to such stereotyping.

Klein responded quickly, and with the same quiet dignity that characterized his original post:

I have never said that Jewish neocons were the primary reason we went to war in Iraq….But Jewish neoconservatives certainly played a subsidiary role in providing an intellectual rationale for the war. In a 2003 column, I called their arguments “the casus belli that dare not speak its name.” The notion of a “benign domino theory”–benign, that is, for the interests of Israel—was certainly abroad in the community during that time….And there is now, in my opinion, an even more dangerous tendency among Jewish neoconservatives to encourage a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering—given the vast dangers and complexities of an attack on Iran–is nauseating….

I am disappointed, but not surprised, by your claim of antisemitism. But that’s what you do for a living, isn’t it? I find your “outrage” particularly galling because the people you defend are constantly spewing canards against those who favor talking to the Palestinians, or who don’t favor witless bellicosity when it comes to Iran. Their campaign of defamation has cost people jobs, damaged reputations and careers. I am very tired of having reasonable people accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “unpatriotic” or favoring “surrender”–Joe Lieberman’s favorite—by Jewish neoconservatives who seem to have a neurotic need to prove their toughness….

Foxman has now responded:

Our concern is with the term “Jewish neoconservatives” and the distressing claim that those individuals are eager to serve Israel’s interests against the interests of their own country….

Neoconservatives have the right to make their case without having their religion brought up. So, too, do those on the opposite end of the political spectrum, whether Jewish or not….Contrary to your assertion, ADL is extremely careful in making accusations about anti-Semitism and we spend every day in our work all over the country assessing the validity — or lack thereof — of such accusations….

The letters can be read in full here.

I'll update when I have more.

Klein's essay in question, "Surge Protection," is here.

Barack Obama and Progressive Netroots Rage

Anyone who's followed the FISA debate this week will have seen the violent froth around the blogosphere, which is a good indicator as to how totalitarian are those on the extreme left of the political spectrum.

For example, Sam Stein, at Huffington Post, discusses just how angry were some leftists with Barack Obama's support for the congressional compromise on government surveillance:

Only weeks into the general election campaign and already a notable tension is beginning to materialize within the Democratic Party. At question is Sen. Barack Obama's relationship with the progressive netroots, the online community that helped aid the Senator's rise to the presidential nomination, but has since seemingly played second fiddle in terms of courted constituencies.

Obama's decision to embrace a compromise on FISA legislation -- a virtual slap in the face to some progressive bloggers demanding no legal immunity for telecommunications companies -- was the catalyst of the recent chatter. Other concerns arose days prior when Obama cut an advertisement on behalf of a conservative southern Democrat whose primary challenger was favored by the liberal blogosphere.

But for some progressive activists, the issue is not simply one of policy, but a concern that Obama's willingness to snub their political wishes is far more endemic.

"You can see it with FISA. He really doesn't feel that much kinship with the priorities of the netroots and I don't think he has made any secret of that," said Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake. "I have to say he is very consistent. He has gone outside the netroots for his strategy... People who feel betrayed right now, I'm not sure why, because it is extremely consistent with what they should have expected."

Stein notes that not all of those in the radical leftosphere are upset with Obama, which further enrages those steaming at Obama's apostasies. In addition to Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald's been going off on anyone who's not taking HIS position on FISA's alleged extreme criminality.

Rick Moran, at Right Wing Nuthouse, in his post on the "progressives" and FISA, really captures the essence of the far-left's rage:

The hysterically exaggerated, intellectually dishonest portrayal of the workings of the NSA surveillance program by many on the left is something I have catalogued on this site since its existence was revealed by the New York Times way back in December of 2005.

To be honest, the netroots have made themselves ridiculously easy targets for ridicule.

My own reservations about the program remain. Reasonable, honest people can debate how this program skirts the law and may – depending exactly how it works which is something that to this day remains hidden – cross the line of legality. The fact that debate raged in the Justice Department over the legality of the program with many career prosecutors opposed while others supported it should demonstrate to any reasonable person that at worst, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was an extremely close call.

Not so scream the netnuts. To the hysterical three year olds who make up the “reality based community,” facts don’t matter nor does it cross their infantile minds that such a surveillance program is even necessary. The program is illegal – no debate is allowed.

To such an incurious crowd we are now about to hand the reigns [sic] of government.

What is most worrisome is that they have so much invested in denying the reality of the terrorist threat – that the whole thing was dreamed up by Bush to seize power and become dictator – that one can legitimately question just how serious these mountebanks will be about national security. No doubt they will be relentless in their pursuit of terrorists – after we’ve been hit again. Cold comfort for those Americans who die as a result of their “terrorists are innocent until they commit an overt act” mindset.

Holy Christ! Even Barack Obama thinks the NSA surveillance program is indispensable to our national security. Of course, Obama has no better idea that the program is or was illegal despite his claims to the contrary. He is simply “playing the rubes” in the netroots community as Ian Welsh tells it at Firedoglake:

The FISA Cloture vote just passed. The Senate will now consider the motion to proceed with the bill, then they’ll head to the bill itself ... Various motions will be put forward to strip immunity, odds are they will fail. Then a number of the 80 who voted to restrict debate will vote against FISA so they can say they were against the bill. However this was the real vote, and the rest is almost certainly nothing but kabuki for the rubes.

Obama and McCain were both absent, as was Clinton. Unimpressive, but unsurprising, though I suppose I’m disappointed by Clinton (Obama has made it clear he didn’t intend to try and stop the bill.) Clinton and Obama will claim there was no point since it wasn’t close. But, with their leadership, it might well have gone the other way.

The folks who actually voted for the Bill of Rights are listed below. Remember, after the debate there’ll be a larger number of people who vote against this bill, but this was the real vote, and those Senators are just playing the rubes.

In less stressful, less partisan times, it may have been possible to debate the necessity for this surveillance program and even whether or not it actually steps over the line of legality, although how any definitive answers could have been arrived at with key parts of the program still classified and unknown to all but a very select few in government would have been problematic indeed.

Note again Moran's key point: These are the folks we're about to hand the reins of government.

Of course, we've still got the fall campaign, but I'll be relieved if Obama, upon taking office, really does diss the radical lefties. Such a turn could be the biggest act of political statesmanship since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

See also, "Netroots Jilted by Obama FISA Stand."

The Thugs Win? The Liberal Backlash Begins

The ink's barely dry in today's Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, but the left-wing backlash has begun.

Here's Colbert King at the Washington Post:

There's one group of District residents absolutely unfazed by today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling shooting down the District's strict handgun ban: the dudes who have been blowing away their fellow citizens with abandon since the law was put on the books 32 years ago.

Operating under the notion that it's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, our shooters long ago decided not to wait for the high court's thoughts on the matter. They simply arrogated to themselves the right to keep and bear arms and, with that right, license to shoot and kill, with impunity, whatever and whenever the evil spirits moved them.

The record will show that our home-grown shooters have blown through the city's so-called strict handgun ban like John Riggins going up the middle. Over the past 20 years, there have been more than 6,500 homicides in the nation's capital, most committed with firearms, predominantly handguns. In 1976, the year the ban was put in place, the District had 135 gun-related murders, according to CNN. Last year, the number reached 143. Thus far this year, we've had 85 murders.

You thought D.C. stands for "District of Columbia? "Dodge City" is more like it.

If D.C. street thugs are pleased by anything, it's probably the fact that five of the justices - a slim majority, but that's all it takes to win - have come around to seeing things their way.

Well, if D.C. really was more like Dodge City, I'm betting more citizen-cowboys would be shootin' their way to a safer metropolis.

More later...

Supreme Court Favors Gun Owners, Obama Waffles

The big political news this afternoon is the Supreme Court's decision in the D.C. Second Amendment case.

The Los Angeles Times has the background:

Americans have a right to keep a gun at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled today in striking down part of a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.

By a 5-4 vote, the court concluded that the 2nd Amendment and its famous right "to keep and bear arms" protects the gun rights of individuals, rather than just a state's right to maintain a militia.

Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking for the court, said the history of the 2nd Amendment shows its authors intended to protect the "right of the people" as individuals to have weapons, both to defend themselves and their community.

The ruling is the first in the high court's long history to strike down a gun law based on the 2nd Amendment.

But the court's ruling appeared to be narrow. Scalia stressed that nothing in today's decision casts doubts on laws that forbid felons or the mentally ill from having guns.

He also said the government can strictly regulate when and where people have guns. For example, he said guns may be prohibited near schools and in or near government buildings.

"Like most rights, the right secured by the 2nd Amendment is not unlimited," Scalia said.

But the four dissenters faulted the majority for opening the door to legal challenges to various gun-control measures. Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the dissenters, said the 2nd Amendment "was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several states to maintain a well-regulated militia."

"The court is making new law today" to extend this right to individuals acting on their own, Stevens said.

The White House issued a statement calling the case historic. "The president strongly agrees with the Supreme Court's historic decision today that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms," it said. "This has been the administration's long-held view. The president is also pleased that the court concluded that the D.C. firearm laws violate that right.

From the campaign trail, Republican John McCain hailed the decision as "a landmark victory for 2nd Amendment freedom" and chided Democrat Barack Obama for not joining him in a friend-of-the-court brief. For his part, Obama issued a statement saying that the court had in effect endorsed his view that while "the 2nd Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms" it does not preclude "the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures."

It turns out Obama's trying to get on the right side of public opinion on gun rights (73 percent believes the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to gun ownership).

For more, see "Obama Camp Disavows Last Year's 'Inartful' Statement on D.C. Gun Law."

Taggers Shoot Business Owner in Hollywood

The Los Angeles Times reports that an auto body shop owner was shot in the chest while confronting graffiti taggers defacing the side of his building:

An auto body shop owner shot in the chest Wednesday during a confrontation with gang-affiliated taggers who had scrawled graffiti on his Hollywood business was in stable condition today, according to authorities and the man's brother.

The midday incident took place in the 5000 block of Hollywood Boulevard shortly after 1 p.m. when workers at the business spotted taggers painting a side wall with 6-foot high black letters and told the owner.

The man and his employees were writing down license plate information when the alleged taggers got out of their car, said LAPD Sgt. Alfredo Flores. The owner told the two youths --described as white males, each not much taller than 5 feet -- not to tag his property, Flores said. One of the youths pulled out a handgun, shot the man in the chest and then got back in the car and drove away.

Authorities said the youths are believed to have ties to a local gang, known as Armenian Power. Surveillance video from the shop is being used by detectives who said they think they have identified the youths and are searching for them now, said LAPD Cmdr. Pat Gannon.

Gannon said other youths had been questioned but no arrests had been made in the case. A vehicle believed to have been used by the suspects was found Wednesday in the San Fernando Valley and seized by officers. The auto body shop had previously been tagged with graffiti and the owner had installed video cameras connected to the store's computers to monitor activity.

At the shop this morning, the wounded man's brother, who would not give his name, said only that his brother was doing fine.

The taggers' bold black letters were still fresh on the building's beige wall. At least one coat of paint already covered a previous paint job. The wall faces the parking lot for a costume rental shop and a Head Start program.

The article continues, at the link.

Neocon Blog Wars!

Let me say right off the bat that it's better to observe blog wars that to engage in them, LOL!!

My reference is the big kerfuffle breaking out between Joe Klein and the neocons.

Max Boot's got his latest installment here, but I was especially intrigued by the outside observations over at the American Scene:

I imagine Joe Klein is in a bind. He was one of the most truculent liberal hawks, when he rightly attracted the ire and condemnation of smart young liberals. He later accepted their criticisms — wisely — but instead of taking on a more humble and thoughtful pose, he has reinvented himself as a liberal firebrand, actively participating in internal debates on the left, paying close heed to the shifting moods and tendencies of the center-left blogosphere. And a good thing too: there’s a lot of wisdom to be mined there, as most readers of The American Scene know firsthand. Yet my sense is that Klein’s community-mindedness is leading him astray.

The American Scene calls the war "not the right thing to do," and links to the left's Patrick Cockburn and his recent article on Iraq, so you can see where the essay's headed.

I've written a little on the Klein/neocon blog wars, highlighting Peter Wehner's deft take down of Klein previously.

You might check out Andrew Sullivan as well, "Iraq = Germany."

It's all good reading, in any case. Enjoy!!

Obama Throws Maoist Hardliner Under the Bus

Via Gateway Pundit, it turns out another one of Barack Obama's community bloggers has been given the boot:

Mike Klonsky, the Maoist Hardliner, Obama supporter and former best friend of the Weatherman terrorist group founders William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, received a $175,000 grant from the William Ayers/Barack Obama-led Annenberg Challenge to run the Small Schools Workshop.

Klonsky belonged to the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and was best friends with William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who later became famous for their acts of terrorism when the SDS broke up and the Weathermen terror group was formed.

Between 1979 and 1981, Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (CPML) chairman and Obama supporter Mike Klonsky was repeatedly feted with state-dinner-level visits to Beijing.

There's more at the link. The Obama campaign's thrown Klonsky under the bus.

I'm frankly at pains to find a reason why these "community blogs" are a good thing.

But at least I'm I know this: It keeps on getting better and better at Obama's official page!

Screenshot Credit: LGF

Differing Concepts of Patriotism in Campaign '08

Newhouse News has an interesting piece on how the candidates embody differing concepts of patriotism:

The thunder of this year's Fourth of July fireworks may provide brief respite from the partisan clamor over who is the truer patriot — John McCain or Barack Obama.

The battle lines are familiar. They were drawn during the Vietnam War, when McCain was a prisoner of war, and Obama but a child.

Four decades later, the contrast between two presidential candidates has never been starker.

Here is the grizzled former Navy flier who has vowed "I will never surrender in Iraq." And there, the brash newcomer with the unlined face whose startling success already is the source of so much lump-in-the-throat pride in the genius of America.

A black father, a white mother and a name that couldn't help but confound. But here he is, and here we are.

John McCain is a classical patriot.

On the Fourth, he could deliver Thucydides' "Funeral Oration of Pericles" virtually verbatim, changing only "Athens" to "America."

It would fit, to a T.

Pericles, the Athenian statesman and military commander, delivered the oration — as recorded by the historian Thucydides — in 431 B.C., to honor those killed in the first year of what would be a very long war with Sparta. It is a paean to courage, duty and honor, but also to what Pericles proclaimed to be the uniquely Athenian virtues of democracy, freedom, tolerance and opportunity. And it is an exhortation to fight and die for the glory of an empire determined in its might — and required by its sense of superiority — to lead the world.

As his choice of Independence Day material, Barack Obama might want something a bit more contemporary, like the 1938 poem "Let America Be America Again." Written by the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, it is a plaintive call for America to eschew empty patriotism and live up to its founding ideals:

"O, let my land be a land where Liberty

"Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

"But opportunity is real, and life is free,

"Equality is in the air we breathe."

"Yes We Can," cried the Obama campaign, as if in reply to Hughes' lament.

"America can change," declared Obama in his March 18 speech on race in Philadelphia. "That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

Almost all Americans consider themselves to be very patriotic, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. But Pew has also found that Democrats and Republicans have discernibly different tendencies in the tenor of the patriotism.

Republicans tend to be far more likely than Democrats to believe "we all should be willing to fight for our country ... right or wrong," and to support the use of pre-emptive military force. They are less likely to care what the rest of the world thinks of us. (According to a recent Pew survey of citizens in 24 countries, the rest of the world prefers Obama to McCain.)

Over time, as Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer write in their book "The True Patriot," those different tendencies have hardened into a caricature that "says the right loves America, and the left looks down on it. It says conservatives are proud to wave the flag and proclaim America to be the best, and liberals, embarrassed by the whole chest-thumping spectacle, complain about America's errors."

It is a caricature that found unfortunate resonance for the Obama campaign in February, when Michelle Obama declared, "For the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

Before and since, said Liu, who supports Obama, nearly every assault on the Illinois senator has sought to blemish his patriotism, to pose the question, "Is he American enough?"

"This is going to be the dominant frame of the general election," said Liu, who served as a speechwriter and senior domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, and who believes Obama must do a better job of articulating an unself-conscious "progressive patriotism."

Well, I've offered my own theories as to why Democrats - and especially prominent Obama backers - announce their antipathy to the United States, and frankly to spin it as a postmodern version of patriotism doesn't sound compelling.

I'll let some of my commenters hash it out, but I'm firmly convinced that the GOP's brand of love-of-country's the appropriate tradition of patriotic support.

See also, "Should Revolutionaries Feel Good About Obama?"

Obama's Egocentrism

Karl Rove's got a great piece up this morning on Barack Obama's egocentrism, "It's All About Obama":

Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election.

His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign.

Consider his treatment of Jeremiah Wright. After Rev. Wright repeated his anti-American slurs at the National Press Club, Mr. Obama said their relationship was forever changed – but not because of what he'd said about America. Instead, Mr. Obama complained, "I don't think he showed much concern for me."

Translation: Rev. Wright is an impediment to my ambitions. So, as it turns out, are some of Mr. Obama's previous pledges.

For example, Mr. Obama has said he "strongly supported public financing" and pledged to take federal funds for the fall, thereby limiting his spending to roughly $84 million. Now convinced he can raise more than $84 million, he reversed course last week, ditching the federal money and its limits. But by discarding his earlier pledge so easily, he raises doubts about whether his word can be trusted.

Last month he replied "anywhere, anytime" to John McCain's invitation to have joint town hall appearances. Last week he changed his mind. Fearing 10 impromptu town halls, Mr. Obama parried the invitation by offering two such events – one the night of July 4, when every ambulatory American is watching fireworks or munching hotdogs, and another in August. His spokesman then said, "Take it or leave it." So much for "anywhere, anytime."

Read the whole thing.

Rove offers even more examples of Obama's hypocritical arrogance and egocentrism. It looks as though there's some empirical support for the claim that Obama's a snob:

See also my earlier entry, "The Obama Seal."

Related: Pandagon, "Rove Should Get A Better Candidate."

Congratulations Fresno State!

While watching Sunday Night Baseball last weekend, I noticed a blurb scrolling at the bottom of my TV screen: Fresno State had reached the national championship in the NCAA's College World Series.

I graduated from Fresno State in 1992.

As any alumnus knows, Fresno takes enormous pride in the university's athletic programs, so I'm proud to report that the Bulldogs not only won the national championship (the first for Fresno State's men's athletics in any sport), but came back from a 1-0 deficit in the series, and that's after being the lowest seeded entry into the tournament.

From "underdogs to wonderdogs" is the banner headline in the papers this morning. Here's this, from the Fresno Bee:

It happened, just as it does in the fairy tales. A happy ending to complete this Cinderella season. A movie based on real-life memories that won't go away anytime soon. Maybe not ever.

Fresno State captured the NCAA championship Wednesday night in front of an announced crowd of 18,932 at Rosenblatt Stadium.

It took a 6-1 victory against Georgia before a national television audience to complete the improbable run, which safely goes down as college baseball's most historic underdog run.

Unseeded Fresno State -- a team that needed to win the Western Athletic Conference tournament simply to make the NCAA Tournament and then was given a No. 4 regional seed survived its sixth elimination game of the postseason.

Fresno State lost the first game of this best-of-three series then came back to win the next two against a team that was seeded No. 8 nationally.

"Isn't this amazing?" said Fresno State outfielder Steve Susdorf as he clutched the NCAA trophy wearing a national champion T-shirt. "I'm shaking."

Wednesday's game, actually, wasn't too nerve-rattling for Fresno State.

There was no need for late-inning heroics to save the day.

Those types of performances were used earlier in Fresno State's run to get to Wednesday.

It really didn't go down to the final inning, though Fresno State coach Mike Batesole took no chances and marched out closer Brandon Burke in the end.

For the most part, all Fresno State needed was pitcher Justin Wilson and outfielder Steve Detwiler.

Despite pitching on three days of rest, Wilson lived up to his big-game reputation with seven shutout innings before finally allowing a run in the eighth.

With his fastball in the low 90-mph range and his offspeed pitches biting, the left-hander from Buchanan High struck out nine and allowed just five hits against a Georgia team that came in with a .311 average and had feasted off fastballs throughout the College World Series.

Often, Wilson would put batters away with an inside fastball that seemed untouchable -- too fast for hitters to catch up to and with too much natural movement to lock on to.

"What he did off three days of rest was unbelievable," Fresno State catcher Danny Grubb said. "They weren't going to touch him. Not when Justin's throwing like that. He found energy somewhere. Man, he was amazing."

Detwiler supplied the offense with a perfect performance at the plate -- going 4 for 4 with two home runs and driving in all six runs.

Moved up two spots in the lineup because Georgia started a left-handed pitcher, the right-handed Detwiler smashed a two-run homer to right field in the second inning then connected for a three-run shot to left field in the sixth.

In between, Detwiler supplied an RBI double in the fourth to pick up a Fresno State offense that seemed spent, having used all of its bullets a night earlier in amassing 19 hits in a 19-10 victory against Georgia on Tuesday.

Take away Detwiler on Wednesday and Fresno State hit 4 for 31 as a team.

And Detwiler did it with a torn tendon in his left thumb, suffered two months ago. He also was hitting just .231 (6 for 26) coming into the CWS finale.

"For him to have the game that he had today, it was perfect for the ballclub," Fresno State coach Mike Batesole said. "He's made of heart. To see him doing what he's doing, it inspires everybody."

The title run completed, Fresno State surely will inspire future underdog teams for years to come, when coaches might recount this 2008 season and tell their team, "If Fresno State could do it, so can we."

Congratulations Fresno State!

Photo Credit: "Fresno State’s Philosophy: One Game at a Time," New York Times.

Beijing's Olympic Nightmare

Betsy Newmark noted that restrooms at Beijing's Olympic facilities feature "squat toilets," and she adds:

I can say unequivocally that I'm not traveling anywhere where they don't have modern sit-down toilets.

I first saw squat toilets in 1973, on a summer vacation in France. I was just a kid and, and while fascinating, I didn't relate the type of restroom facilities to the level of state development in a nation, but Newmark's post got me thinking about China: It turns out that Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal, at the new Foreign Affairs, offer an eye-popping look China's public relations catastrophy heading into the summer games: "China's Olympic Nightmare":

On the night of July 13, 2001, tens of thousands of people poured into Tiananmen Square to celebrate the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing. Firecrackers exploded, flags flew high, and cars honked wildly. It was a moment to be savored. Chinese President Jiang Zemin and other leaders exhorted the crowds to work together to prepare for the Olympics. "Winning the host rights means winning the respect, trust, and favor of the international community," Wang Wei, a senior Beijing Olympic official, proclaimed. The official Xinhua News Agency reveled in the moment, calling the decision "another milestone in China's rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation."

Hosting the Olympics was supposed to be a chance for China's leaders to showcase the country's rapid economic growth and modernization to the rest of the world. Domestically, it provided an opportunity for the Chinese government to demonstrate the Communist Party's competence and affirm the country's status as a major power on equal footing with the West. And wrapping itself in the values of the Olympic movement gave China the chance to portray itself not only as a rising power but also as a "peace-loving" country. For much of the lead-up to the Olympics, Beijing succeeded in promoting just such a message.

The process of preparing for the Games is tailor-made to display China's greatest political and economic strengths: the top-down mobilization of resources, the development and execution of grand-scale campaigns to reform public behavior, and the ability to attract foreign interest and investment to one of the world's brightest new centers of culture and business. Mobilizing massive resources for large infrastructure projects comes easily to China. Throughout history, China's leaders have drawn on the ingenuity of China's massive population to realize some of the world's most spectacular construction projects, the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and the Three Gorges Dam among them. The Olympic construction spree has been no different. Beijing has built 19 new venues for the events, doubled the capacity of the subway, and added a new terminal to the airport. Neighborhoods throughout the city have been either spruced up to prepare for Olympic visitors or simply cleared out to make room for new Olympic sites. Official government spending for the construction bonanza is nearing $40 billion. In anticipation of the Olympics, the government has also embarked on a series of efforts to transform individual behavior and modernize the capital city. It has launched etiquette campaigns forbidding spitting, smoking, littering, and cutting in lines and introduced programs to teach English to cab drivers, police officers, hotel workers, and waiters. City officials have used Olympic projects as a means to refurbish decaying buildings and reduce air pollution, water shortages, and traffic jams.

Yet even as Beijing has worked tirelessly to ensure the most impressive of Olympic spectacles, it is clear that the Games have come to highlight not only the awesome achievements of the country but also the grave shortcomings of the current regime. Few in the central leadership seem to have anticipated the extent to which the Olympic Games would stoke the persistent political challenges to the legitimacy of the Communist Party and the stability of the country. Demands for political liberalization, greater autonomy for Tibet, increased pressure on Sudan, better environmental protection, and an improved product-safety record now threaten to put a damper on the country's coming-out party. As the Olympic torch circled the globe with legions of protesters in tow, Beijing's Olympic dream quickly turned into a public-relations nightmare.

Although the Chinese government excels when it comes to infrastructure projects, its record is poor when it comes to transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law. It has responded clumsily to internal and external political challenges -- by initially ignoring the international community's desire for China to play a more active role in resolving the human rights crisis in Darfur, arresting prominent Chinese political activists, and cracking down violently on demonstrators. Although there is no organized opposition unified around this set of demands, the cacophony of voices pressuring China to change its policies has taken much of the luster off of the Beijing Games. Moreover, although the Communist Party has gained domestic support from the nationalist backlash that has arisen in response to the Tibetan protesters and their supporters in the West, it also worries that this public anger will spin out of control, further damaging the country's international reputation. Already, China's coveted image as a responsible rising power has been tarnished.

For many in the international community, it has now become impossible to separate the competing narratives of China's awe-inspiring development and its poor record on human rights and the environment. It is no longer possible to discuss China's future without taking its internal fault lines seriously. For the Chinese government, the stakes are huge. China's credibility as a global leader, its potential as a model for the developing world, and its position as an emerging center of global business and culture are all at risk if these political challenges cannot be peacefully and successfully addressed.

Read the whole thing. Squat toilets are the least of the regime's problems.

See also, American Interests, "China Now Leading Emitter of Climate Change ..."

The Crisis in Zimbabwe

This story from the Washington Post discusses the latest calls by Zimbabwe's opposition forces for international action to stem the nation's crisis:

Zimbabwe's battered opposition called Wednesday for the deployment of thousands of African Union peacekeeping troops to bring order to a nation ravaged by months of political violence as President Robert Mugabe clings to power after 28 years.

The plea came as African leaders increasingly condemned Mugabe's ruthless campaign of retribution against the opposition that has left 86 party members dead and thousands wounded. A key group of southern African leaders urged Mugabe to cancel Friday's presidential runoff election.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela, speaking in London, complained about "the tragic failure of leadership in our neighboring Zimbabwe." Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga, warned that Zimbabwe "right now is a disaster in the making."

In Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, Jose Marcos Barrica, an Angolan minister heading an election observer mission for the Southern African Development Community, said, "When a brother beats a brother, that is a crisis."

Reports of assaults by youth militias have not eased since opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the runoff on Sunday. With attacks widespread -- and Tsvangirai spending most of his time in the safe haven of the Dutch Embassy -- opposition officials say that only outside powers can bring peace to Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai's spokesman, George Sibotshiwe, said the party already has tentative commitments from several regional powers, including Tanzania and Angola, for a peacekeeping force. He estimated that a total of 4,000 armed and unarmed troops are needed.

After briefly emerging from the Dutch Embassy, Tsvangirai told reporters gathered at his home that the African Union and southern African regional powers needed to lead a mediation effort in Zimbabwe.

"The time for actions is now," Tsvangirai said at a news conference. "The people and the country can wait no longer."

In response to a question, Tsvangirai said he "didn't ask for military intervention, just armed peacekeepers."

Leaders of the Southern African Development Community, meeting Wednesday near Swaziland's capital, Mbabane, adopted a four-page statement in which they called for a postponement of the election and negotiations between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

"The political and security situation in Zimbabwe appears not to be permissive for holding the runoff election in a manner that would be deemed free and fair," the statement said. "Holding the election under the current circumstances may undermine the credibility and legitimacy of its outcome."

Though the statement was far stronger than any previously issued by the 14-member regional body, officials at the summit, including Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, declined to name any actions they might take against Mugabe if the election goes ahead....

Zimbabwe has been locked in political stalemate since the March 29 election in which the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, won control of parliament and Tsvangirai outpolled Mugabe. Electoral officials, after withholding results for a month, said Tsvangirai narrowly missed an absolute majority, setting up the runoff vote scheduled for Friday.

Even as the crisis has captured the world's attention, conditions within the country continue to deteriorate. The world's worst inflation strains the government's ability to measure it. Ruling party youths patrol many towns and cities. Torture, beatings, arson and false arrests are common. Many of Tsvangirai's key party officials are in jail, in exile or dead.

With global criticism building, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain -- Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler -- stripped Mugabe of ceremonial knighthood, a title he received in 1994 when he was still perceived as a symbol of African liberation. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called on Mugabe to resign and likened him in an interview to "a kind of Frankenstein."

See also, "Zimbabweans Make Plea for Help as Runoff Nears."

Cartoon Credit: Tom Toles

Obama 12-Point Lead, in L.A. Times Poll, Draws Controversy

The new Los Angeles Times poll, which finds Barack Obama with a 12-point lead over John McCain, has drawn fire from analysts suggesting an oversample of Democratic respondents.

Don Frederick has the details:

A well-known Republican research firm argues that the voter pool tapped for the new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll was too skewed toward Democrats - a challenge that causes the GOP strategists to question the double-digit lead the survey gave Barack Obama over John McCain.

The case against the poll, laid out in a memo sent out today by Public Opinion Strategies, in turn sparked a response from survey director Susan Pinkus, who stood by its methodology and findings.

Part of the dispute reflects a long-standing disagreement between independent pollsters and partisan operatives (something The Times wrote about four years ago) -- whether or not to tinker with a poll to make sure its respondents reflect the nation's political composition at some fixed point, such as the most recent election.

Pinkus, like most nonpartisan pollsters, rejects that notion. Discussing the current survey, she says, "The poll was weighted slightly, where necessary, to conform to the Census Bureau’s proportions of sex, race, ethnicity, age and national region. The poll was NOT weighted for party identification since party ID is a moving variable that changes from one election to another, or when one party may be favored more than the other."

As a result, the survey simply asked respondents their party affiliation or inclination, and came up with this breakdown: 39% Democratic, 22% Republican, 8% something else, 4% refused to say.

There's the rub, insists the memo from Bill McInturff, Liz Harrington and David Kanevsky. They write that these figures, and the 17 percentage-point gap between the two parties, are "greatly out of line with what most other surveys are reporting."

The memo cites several other recent polls in which the party ID gap ranged as low as plus 6 percentage points for the Democrats to as high as plus 14.

It then asserts: "McCain’s double-digit deficit is not a reflection of reality, simply a result of an unusual party identification result in this survey.... If party identification on the L.A. Times survey is recalculated to ... 29% GOP / 39% Dem / 27% Ind / 5% Don’t Know/Refused, the ballot would be 40% McCain – 47% Obama."

Pinkus responds, at the link. She suggests that the statistic of 39 percent Democrats was generated from a random sample of "1,115 registered voters (which includes listed, unlisted and cell phone users)."

These numbers look like outliers to me. For example, today's Gallup survey finds Obama and McCain Tied at 45 percent:

The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update on the presidential election finds John McCain and Barack Obama exactly tied at 45% among registered voters nationwide.

Voter preferences had been fairly evenly divided for the past week, with Obama generally holding a slight advantage of two or three percentage points. This is the first time since Gallup's May 31-June 4 rolling average that Obama does not have at least a slim advantage over McCain. Obama's largest lead to date has been seven points. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

Since the changes from Tuesday's results are well within the margin of sampling error, it is unclear at this point if today's results represent a further tightening of the race. The last two individual nights of polling have, however, been more favorable to McCain that what Gallup has shown for most of June.

That sounds much more accurate, but see also Andrew Romano, "Does Obama Really Have a Double-Digit Lead?", and Marc Ambinder, "McCain Campaign Pushes Back On LA Times/BB Poll."

Supreme Court Spares Child Rapists From Execution

A divided Supreme Court today ruled against the death penalty for convicted child rapists, in what is certainly a decision raising the most disturbing moral and legal issues of the day.

Allahpundit has a long analysis, and I was struck by the question of relative depravity, raised in Samuel Alito's dissent:

With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?

The Court’s decision here stands in stark contrast to Atkins and Roper, in which the Court concluded that characteristics of the affected defendants—mental retardation in Atkins and youth in Roper—diminished their culpability. Nor is this case comparable to Enmund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782 (1982), in which the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty where the defendant participated in a robbery during which a murder was committed but did not personally intend for lethal force to be used. I have no doubt that, under the prevailing standards of our society, robbery, the crime that the petitioner in Enmund intended to commit, does not evidence the same degree of moral depravity as the brutal rape of a young child. Indeed, I have little doubt that, in the eyes of ordinary Americans, the very worst child rapists—predators who seek out and inflict serious physical and emotional injury on defenseless young children—are the epitome of moral depravity.

The Court's ruling stays with previous case history holding capital punishment as available only for the crime of murder. But this issue of ultimate moral depravity becomes even more clear when we look at the background Patrick Kennedy, the child rapist who was to be executed in Lousiana for one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Here's some of the descriptive background on the crime from Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana:

...Petitioner’s crime was one that cannot be recounted in these pages in a way sufficient to capture in full the hurt and horror inflicted on his victim or to convey the revulsion society, and the jury that represents it, sought to express by sentencing petitioner to death. At 9:18 a.m. on March 2, 1998, petitioner called 911 to report that his stepdaughter, referred to here as L. H., had been raped....

He told the 911 operator that L. H. had been in the garage while he readied his son for school. Upon hearing loud screaming, petitioner said, he ran outside and found L. H. in the side yard. Two neighborhood boys, petitioner told the operator, had dragged L. H. from the garage to the yard, pushed her down, and raped her. Petitioner claimed he saw one of the boys riding away on a blue 10-speed bicycle.

When police arrived at petitioner’s home between 9:20 and 9:30 a.m., they found L. H. on her bed, wearing a T-shirt and wrapped in a bloody blanket. She was bleeding profusely from the vaginal area. Petitioner told police he had carried her from the yard to the bathtub and then to the bed. Consistent with this explanation, police found a thin line of blood drops in the garage on the way to the house and then up the stairs. Once in the bedroom, petitioner had used a basin of water and a cloth to wipe blood from the victim. This later prevented medical personnel from collecting a reliable DNA sample.

L. H. was transported to the Children’s Hospital. An expert in pediatric forensic medicine testified that L. H.’s injuries were the most severe he had seen from a sexual assault in his four years of practice. A laceration to the left wall of the vagina had separated her cervix from the back of her vagina, causing her rectum to protrude into the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn from the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required emergency surgery.

There's a bit of moral depravity there, I'd say.

Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin