Mancow's Waterboarding a Hoax?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cornyn: Calling Sotomayor Racist is "Terrible"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's Kimberley Strassel on Sonia Sotomayor:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez.

O'Reilly Gets Hammered on Hypocrisy!

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

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

Here's Glenn Reynold's take:

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

And the video:

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

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

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

Reporter Carried Away From Air Force One

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

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

There's commentary on this at Memeorandum:

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

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

Child Executions in Iran

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

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

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

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

Agencies Suffer in Iran
View Slideshow

Newsha Tavakolian/Polaris for The Wall Street Journal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nouriel Roubini on the Economic Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Texting Teens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rule 5 Rescue: Lady GaGa Nude!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After additional testing, Lieberman concludes:

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

I'll update with more on this debate later.

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

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

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

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

L.A. Community Colleges Cut Summer Sessions

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

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

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

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

She Started to Hate Every Nigger and Jew...

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

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

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

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

Obama Wussies Out on Backing Prop 8 Challenge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy Pelosi: Safe Environment a "Basic Human Right"

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

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

Sotomayor's Abortion Stance

Leftists and the mainstream press are trying to portray Sonia Sotomayor as "iffy" on abortion. See the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Greg Sargent, "Sotomayor’s Thin Abortion Record Puts Dem Senators in a Bind."

And Daily Kos diarists are even launching a jihad against the nominee, "Sonia Sotomayor is a Stealth ANTI-CHOICE Supreme Court Pick."

An activist from the Faith and Action, an anti-abortion religious group, takes part in a prayer for Judge Sonia Sotomayor in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on May 26, 2009. US President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to take the place of Justice David Souter on the US Supreme Court. If confirmed, Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice in the nation's history.

But this is really a leftist smokescreen. There's no political "bind" here, and Sotomayor's hardly "anti-choice."

Check out Jill Stanek's post, "Plot Thickens Re: Sotomayor's Abortion Stance":

Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Sonia Sotomayor, spent 7 hours at the White House last Thursday and before that was vetted thoroughly by Obama's pro-abortion staff. Even if Obama did not ask Sotomayor directly about her opinion re: Roe v. Wade when they met, he knows. The key to Obama's statement when naming Sotomayor (interestingly while attempting to make her sound conservative) is highlighted below ...

"Precedent" is code for belief that Roe v. Wade should stand simply under the legal principle of stare decisis, a Latin phrase you'll be hearing a lot in the coming months, meaning "settled law."

Stanek also has the statements on Sotomayor endorsement at Planned Parenthoold and Emily's List. NARAL is taking a "wait-and-see" approach, but Stanek links to this essay from Terence Jeffrrey:

Sonia Sotomayor should be asked in her confirmation hearing whether she believes the Constitution guarantees a right to kill an unborn child.

If she says it does, it means she believes Supreme Court justices have the power to change the meaning of the Constitution itself, even to the point of depriving a whole class of human beings of their most fundamental right.

There can be no better reason for denying confirmation to a would-be justice.

Actually, even if Sotomayor agreed with the constitutional right to an abortion - and hence the right to kill an unborn child - she's not likely to comment truthfully in the question. She'll say what nominees always say, that "it wouldn't be appropriate for me to prejudge an issue before I become a member of the court," blah, blah.

The fact that President Infanticide appointed her and has trumpeted her "respect for precedent" is enough to give me the creeps.

See also, Hot Air: "Would Sotomayor Overturn Roe?"

Photo Credit: Getty Images.

Bill O'Reilly Slams Hot Air!

I like Bill O'Reilly. The guy is literally the only commentator in the mainstream media who routinely calls out left wing extremism.

Well, O'Reilly went after both left and right in last night's broadcast - and the Free Republic comment in the video is reprehensible. But check out Amanda Carpenter. She provides the response to O'Reilly's jab at Hot Air:

Allahpundit defends himself here: "Video: O’Reilly Smears Hot Air."

The Lonely Conservative says he's had it with O'Reilly. But I think Dan Riehl nails it, "Bill "Blowhard" O'Reilly":

I like that Bill O'Reilly stands up for traditional American culture in a great many ways. He's a bit too much of a self-promoter for me to do headstands over him. But on many levels, he's fighting the good fight. That's cool.

But it's always been clear that when it comes to the Internet and blogs especially, he doesn't know his butt from his elbow. Besides that, Hussein is the freaking guys actual name. I realize it is often used against him as sort of a smear. But it's his name, ... too freaking bad. It should have been used more before the election, not after. But I fight to win. More on certain related naming conventions here.

Ah, there’s nothing like yanking a comment out of context and using it to smear the entire site, even though neither Ed nor I have ever referred to Obama as “Hussein.”

Grandma Bill, so intent on looking after his fans, should try to stick more to things he knows something about. But then, that's never stopped him before. And as for Amanda Carpenter, I give her a pass. She's an excellent Right-side journalist and has a sweet gig there that doesn't include challenging Mount Blovious.

Besides, I've met Amanda, and she's a freaking babe. How can you not like all that.

Sotomayor's Skeletons

Yesteday I noted that "we're starting to see the perils in Barack Obama's selection of Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States."

Boy, are we ever!

There's lots of blog-reporting on the Sotomayor nomination this morning.

For example, see Pamela Geller, "Sotomayor: Radical on the SCOTUS":

It seems to me this is a watershed moment. Every Republican must vote against this incompetent radical. No more pandering to the soft mushy middle. The Republicans better man up. The folks are fed up. There's more on the nomination of the pro-gun control judicial activist Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Also, The Blog Prof covers Sotomayor's La Raza member, "Sonia Sotomayor Is A Member Of Racist Group La Raza ("The Race")." See also, World Net Daily, "Sonia Sotomayor 'La Raza member'." (More at Memeorandum.)

And William Jacobson reports on the extreme secrecy surrounding Sotomayor's appointment, "Release The Sotomayor Memos":

Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of a new era of transparency. Obama used that theme as a justification for the release of four highly classified internal Justice Department memos detailing strategies for interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees, over the objections of Obama's own Director of the CIA.

It's time to bring that same level of transparency to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The New York Times is reporting that each of the candidates on Obama's short-list was the subject of an 60-70-page memo detailing the investigation into her background, including judicial writings and other information gleaned by the vetters. Obama should release the memos on Sotomayor, as well as any other documents used in the decision-making process.

The release of the memos will have a positive effect on the debate over Sotomayor. One of the problems in assessing the nomination, and why I have not opined on Sotomayor, is that the public really doesn't know who she is or where she stands on important legal issues. This is a concern mostly from the right, but also from pro-abortion activists on the left.

Sotomayor has few if any significant judicial decisions on many issues, which is not surprising since as a trial judge or appeals court judge she was bound by Supreme Court precedent. To the extent published judicial decisions are important, those decisions are being carefully analyzed, but do not tell the full story of who a nominee will be once confirmed.

And Sotomayor clearly was someone who protected her record. The most disturbing aspect to me of the 2005 Duke Law School video, in which Sotomayor stated that appeals court judges make policy, was not her words. Those words can be explained away, as I'm sure she will do at the confirmation hearings.

Read the whole thing, here.

Cartoon Credit: William Warren.

Borking Sotomayor?

In just a little over a day we're starting to see the perils in Barack Obama's selection of Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sotomayor practices an extremely race-conscious jurisprudence. And there's some debate today over allegations that she's in fact racist. Newt Gingrich has even called on the nominee to withdraw her name from consideration.

George Will pins down a key issue here, with respect to the politics of judicial confirmation. Prior to the 1980s - and especially before Ronald Reagan's appointment of Robert Bork to the High Court - nominees were rarely grilled over questions of ideology and judicial philosophy. The major criteria had been competence and ethics. And as Bork was an unimpeachable nominee in that respect, the Democratic-left launched the most ideologically unprincipled attack on a Supreme Court appointment in history. Here's Will's key line:

The 1987 fight over President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork interred the tradition that the Senate, in evaluating judicial nominees, would not delve deeply into the nominee's jurisprudential thinking. Bork's defeat was unjust, but the new approach to confirmations was overdue, given the court's increasingly central role in American governance.

Yes, the attack on Bork was "unjust," but that's the way it goes now, thanks to the smear-merchants of the Democratic Party. As Will indicates, Sotomayor is a hardline affirmative action activist (the 2nd Circuit's New Haven reverse discrimination case is currently on the docket at the John Roberts Supreme Court). As one of the New Haven judges, Sotomayer has shown a willingness to set aside merit-based criteria for bureaucratic hiring and promotion. She's frankly a quota queen in the classic sense of the term.

But it's not just her record on the appellate bench that's devastating. Her own statements are a virtual treasure trove for Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee. The best piece I've seen on this is Alexander Bolton's, "Critics focus on Sotomayor speech in La Raza journal." This passage is key:

Sotomayor delivered the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal published the lecture the following year.

Conservative critics have latched onto the speech as evidence that Sotomayor is an “activist judge,” who will rule on the basis of her personal beliefs instead of facts and law ....

In her 2001 speech, after citing legal thinkers who called on jurists to transcend personal biases, Sotomayor questioned whether judges could in fact escape such prejudices.

“While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law,” Sotomayor said.

“Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”

Some Republican critics say these statements raise concerns about whether Sotomayor, who was raised under modest circumstances in the Bronx, would serve as a neutral arbiter in a case pitting a wealthy white male against a less wealthy man or woman of color.

Read Bolton's piece in full. Sotomayor is also quoted as saying, "Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see ... My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

Confirming Sonia Sotomayor at the Supreme Court will provide the Democratic-left a smashing blow against color-blind justice and equality under the law. Racial identity politics will emerge as the guiding focus of Obama-era jurisprudence, and future retirements at the Court will give this administration an opportunity to seal a long-term reverse discrimination program in the American judicial system.

Yet, Sotomayor will not in fact be "borked." There's nothing scurrilous in lifting up the carpet on this race-monger's ideological program. Unlike in Robert Bork's time, ideological opposition to a nomineed is fair game. The Democrats brought it on. And now the American people deserve a full accounting of this woman's radical views.

Sotomayor has asked if a better judicial ruling might be found if a person of color makes that determination rather than "a white male who hasn’t lived that life."

If a conservative judge had made an equivalent statement a GOP president's nomination would have already been withdrawn.

Sotomayor is a poor choice for the nation's highest court. She deserves a level of ideological scrutiny as close as Judge Bork received in 1987. The difference now is that Sotomayor won't in fact be "borked."

Mark Levin on David Frum

There's a genuinely bitter partisan brawl going on between Mark Levin and some of his prominent faux-conservative antagonists.

You might have caught the initial attacks on Levin last week, from Conor Friedersdorf and then Rod Dreher. I first caught wind of all this in Dan Riehl's response to Friedersdorf, "In Defense of Mark Levin." Dan has a number of other posts covering various iterations of the debate. In an earlier post, Levin suggested that "I have to lower myself to deal with the undeveloped minds of kooks like Rod Dreher." Then Dreher returned fire, calling Levin a "bumptious vulgarian."

You might have also caught David Frum piling on to Conor Friedersdorf's attack: "No Wonder People Hate Us." I also read this last week. I didn't think much of it, since I see Frum as a marginal faux-conservative on the wrong side of the big issues of the day.

Now Levin has responded to Frum, at Riehl World View (and there's a thread at Memeorandum):

David Frum was never much of a thinker. Try as he might, he just can't seem to attract interest, let alone a following, even when stabbing his old boss, President George W. Bush, in the back with a rambling screed. Profiting from a confidential relationship with a president is about as low as it gets. But Frum, the ex-speech-writer turned self-hating blogger, isn't done descending. Now he spends his lonely days and nights at his keyboard trying to settle personal scores and demonizing those who dare to dismiss his ramblings as the work of an emotional wreck.

My interactions with Frum have been minimal, despite his past suggestions that they were something more. As best I recall, I met him first on an Amtrak train. He was sitting near the restroom feverishly working his lap top's keyboard. We exchanged pleasantries, and that was about it. I believe the next time I met him was at the Ledeen's home. He seemed harmless enough. The next thing I knew, he had a blog at NRO. I rarely read it, but when I did, I noticed he displayed a quirkiness and psuedo-intellectualism which suggested to me that something was a little off with the guy. But I didn't give it much thought. I became reacquainted with Frum after he viciously attacked Rush Limbaugh, after having attempted to spar with Rush over a period of months. And it was this unhinged, emotional outburst that caught my attention. I then realized, as did others, that Frum was a truly pathetic character subject to wild personality lurches and obsessed with drawing attention to himself.

In one truly bizarre incident, after I responded to another of Frum's hate-Rush outbursts, Frum had his own 15 year old son call my talk show. Realizing Frum had become emotionally uncontrollable, I told my producer to tell his son that it would not be appropriate for him to come on the air. If his father called in, I would put him on the show. Within minutes, Frum called, and he proceeded to make a fool of himself by interrupting, name-calling, etc. He could not gather his thoughts or make coherent, reasoned points. So, as the host, with a responsibility to my audience, I had to repeatedly lower the noise-level on his rantings. Frum made a fool of himself.

There's more at the link.

This is especially interesting to me, as I'm blog buddies with Dan Riehl.

But if you check over at Rod Dreher's blog, and click the "conservative" tag, you'll find that he's also been attacking Robert Stacy McCain (as a side skirmish in the debate). Dreher cites Freddie de Boer for support, which is even more interesting. Freddie's the resident left-wing extremist at Ordinary Gentlemen. That blog, as I've written many times, is the home of the net's Andrew Sullivan myrmidon project. A classic essay which encapsulates the ideological foundations of this project is "Twenty-First Century Conservativsm."

And therein lies why Levin's engagement in this debate is important. The attacks on Levin by Friedersdorf, Dreher, and Frum are like the wobbly swings of a late-round boxer on the ropes. The challenger's last-breath hope is that he might land a blow on the champ, securing a fleeting chance at taking the championship belt. But Levin's takedown today has knocked Frum off his feet, and the rest of his postmodern allies aren't far behind.

These people are kind of sick, actually. But that's where such "Meghan McCain Republicans" have been taking the debate over the future of the right. These "twenty-first century conservatives" have basically pitched their tent with the likes of Andrew Sullivan. It's thus no surprise that their attacks have taken on the unhinged likeness of "trig-trutherism."

There's a principled conservative movement currently making a comeback. Levin's #1 book is the right's manifesto for the fight back to power. As folks can see from the pushback against Levin, it's not just the Democrats who are standing in the way ...

Majority of Americans Continue to Oppose Gay Marriage

Well, I guess all of my blogging on gay rights hasn't been in vain!

Here's this from Gallup, "Majority of Americans Continue to Oppose Gay Marriage":

Americans' views on same-sex marriage have essentially stayed the same in the past year, with a majority of 57% opposed to granting such marriages legal status and 40% in favor of doing so ....

The lack of change in public opinion on same-sex marriage seen in the new USA Today/Gallup poll occurs in an environment in which an increasing number of states have taken steps to legalize such unions. Same-sex marriages are now legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and Iowa, and will be legal in Vermont in September.

On Tuesday, California's Supreme Court refused to add that state to the list, by upholding the Proposition 8 referendum, approved by voters, that banned same-sex marriage in the state. The referendum was put on the November 2008 ballot in response to an earlier court decision that allowed same-sex couples to legally marry in California.

Among major demographic or attitudinal subgroups, self-identified liberals show the greatest support for legal gay marriage at 75% in the May 7-10 poll. By contrast, only 19% of conservatives think same-sex marriages should be legally valid.

Check the link for the full report, and also Memeorandum.

There's been some tightening in the numbers, with support for same-sex marriage improving since the 1990s. But by now it's likely that there are few "undecideds" on the choice between gay marriage and civil unions. What we'll likely see in the coming months in an increasingly frantic campaign on the radical left to paint the great majority of Americans as "Christianists" and "gay-hating Dominionists."

It's just pure hysteria, really. But apocalyptic fearmongering is the last resort for leftists. Be prepared for more unhinged extremism as gay radicals try to cram homosexual licentiousness down the throats of the mainstream majority.

For my recent essay on this, see "Same-Sex Hate-Seekers."