The Rhetorican adds this:
This overtures from the administration to the Iranian regime put Obama’s apathy towards the Iranian protesters in perspective. Seems Obama was playing it cool towards the uprising in the hope he could still score a date with the regime, like a wary suitor waiting for a cue from a skeptical beloved.More at Memeorandum.
Are you proud to be hosting a bunch of murderous, lying thugs on our national holiday of freedom and liberty? Are you proud of Obama's simpering, fawning behavior when it comes to the Iranian "Supreme" Leader? Maybe all we needed to do with Saddam was to invite him for coffee and donuts at the White House to seduce him into change his genocidal ways? ...
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Also, from the Washingotn Post, "Iran Vows To Make Example of Arrestees":The Iranian government stepped up pressure Tuesday on opponents challenging the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, setting up a special court to try detained protesters, carrying out new arrests and launching a campaign to publicly vilify those calling for a new vote.
Authorities also formally rejected the opposition's demands to annul the disputed June 12 presidential election on grounds of massive fraud and set a deadline of mid-August for Ahmadinejad's inauguration and the confirmation of his new cabinet.
But in an apparent effort to assuage the opposition, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, agreed to give a powerful supervisory body an additional five days to review the complaints of fraud.
President Obama's remarks Tuesday on the tumult seemed to strike a chord with at least some opposition supporters in Iran.
In an affluent North Tehran neighborhood, where people watched Obama's White House news conference on a big-screen satellite television, one woman commented: "He is following the right line. He should not give the regime an excuse to blame the U.S. for the protests."
Reporters "should grill him on human rights," a man said of Obama, while trying to work around censored Web sites on his computer.
On a day of relative calm after security forces broke up protests Monday, the government vowed to make an example of detained "rioters" and teach them a lesson. Hundreds of Iranians have been arrested in the past 10 days since the Interior Ministry declared that Ahmadinejad outpolled his nearest rival, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, by nearly 2 to 1. Mousavi has vowed to continue protesting despite a government ban on demonstrations and a public warning from Khamenei.
Truckloads of police in riot gear deployed at Tehran's main squares Tuesday to prevent a recurrence of the protests, and there were no signs of significant opposition gatherings.
A senior official of Iran's judiciary, which is controlled by the ruling Shiite Muslim clerics, said Tuesday that a special court would try detained protesters, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.
"Those arrested in recent events will be dealt with in a way that will teach them a lesson," the official, Ibrahim Raisi, was quoted as saying. "The rioters should be dealt with in an exemplary way, and the judiciary will do that." Raisi did not elaborate.
Discrimination against transmen and transwomen is just wrong, and it's pervasive. Transitioning to a different gender is a tough enough process without worrying about whether you're going to lose your job as a result. And people can be pretty antediluvian about these things: they freak out about who gets to use what bathroom, etc., etc., ad nauseam.You think?
OBAMA IS PUTTING US ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE. (YES: NORMALIZING DEVIANCY IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE!)Hat Tip: Memeorandum.
IMMORAL AND AMORAL LEADERS USUALLY DO.
UNTIL TODAY. OBAMA HAD HARSHER THINGS TO SAY ABOUT WATER-BOARDING THAN ABOUT IRAN'S MURDERING UNARMED DEMONSTRATORS.
OBAMA DEMANDS ISRAEL STOPS ALL BUILDING IN ALL SETTLEMENTS, BUT MERELY POLITELY ASKS ABBAS TO TONE DOWN THE ANTISEMITIC RHETORIC IN THE PALI PRESS AND SCHOOLS.
THESE AREN'T "DOUBLE STANDARDS"; THEY'RE "NO STANDARDS" OR "BAD STANDARDS" OR "UPSIDE-DOWN STANDARDS".
A demonstrator heads towards Azadi Square during a rally in support of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in western Tehran June 15, 2009.See also, Fox News, "Obama: 'Not Too Late' for Iranian Government to Peacefully Resolve Unrest":
Though some analysts see the protests on the streets of Iran as a potential tipping point that could eventually lead to the toppling of the regime, the U.S. president made clear that he's still interested in reviving diplomatic ties with the hard-line Islamic government.For contrast, see Gateway Pundit. He's got tweets from Iran denouncing the administration appeasement:
Mr Obama how many more have to die for you to be hard and firm on dictator khamanei #IranElection #Neda #gr88 #Iran iran iran ...Finally, don't miss Michael Ledeen, "Lessons Learned From Ten Days of the Iranian Uprising":
– Fifth, that there are cracks in the regime’s edifice, ranging from declarations of small groups of Revolutionary Guards calling on their brothers to defect to “the people,” to a phenomenon that is just beginning to be discussed here and there, mostly on the Net but originally in an Arab newspaper. Steve Schippert posted on it and did a first-class analysis. Steve starts with a report from al Arabiya that says senior ayatollahs have been meeting secretly in Qom to discuss significant changes in the structure of the Iranian state. In addition to the Iranian clerics, there was a foreigner: Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq.Photo Credit: The Boston Globe.
If this is true, it is, as Steve says, huge. Because it means that senior religious leaders in Iran are talking to the representative of an Iraqi Imam who believes, as most Shi’ites did before Khomeini’s heresy, that the proper role of religious leaders is to guide their people from the mosque, not from the political capital. In other words, they are talking about the most serious form of regime change ...
It desperately needs more links than the two now up at a Memeorandum, Patterico's Pontifications and RedState. A third I found while searching for the author, Christopher Badeaux.
Oh bravo. This is priceless, a must read.
I've been following the Iran story on Sullivan's blog, which otherwise makes me nervous - and couldn't help but encounter his piece on Froomkin and other references to "neocons".
I love the paragraphs in the linked story about his disdain for Bush, The Big Spender, juxtaposed with his admiration for President Obama, the Even Bigger Spender.
Great stuff.
Yes, great stuff, magisterial even.
I've noted lately that I'm in the middle of two of Sullivan's books, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality and The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right.
Yet, I'm still figuring out Andrew Sullivan. The woman's comment above offers an excuse to excerpt the a hefty portion of the passage in question. The key is Sullivan's anti-Semitism. I've blogged on this a couple of times recently. Only only Ace of Spades HQ has offered as comprehense an explication of Sullivan's Jew-hating as Badeaux here:
More than his fascination with the delivery of Trig Palin, more than his quixotic quest to convince anyone other than himself that the Catholic Church is a Protestant denomination, perhaps the largest image for which Andrew Sullivan has been known these last fifteen years is a political wanderer. A Brit unable to vote in this country, its governance ranks up there with his obsession with the Pet Shop Boys (in fairness, topics of roughly equal gravity) in the volume and intensity of his writings. Long-time readers of Sullivan – those who do not speak seriously of the Elder Gods – note that he was an iconoclastic supporter of Bill Clinton, who was disgusted by the Clintons by the time they left office; then an iconoclastic supporter of George W. Bush, who was disgusted with Bush by the time he left office; and is now a fairly open, unabashed, gushing admirer of President Obama. What’s interesting, though, is how his politics have changed in just four years.
Here he is discussing George W. Bush’s 2004 Convention speech:
THE END OF CONSERVATISM: But conservatism as we have known it is now over. People like me who became conservatives because of the appeal of smaller government and more domestic freedom are now marginalized in a big-government party, bent on using the power of the state to direct people’s lives, give them meaning and protect them from all dangers. Just remember all that Bush promised last night: an astonishingly expensive bid to spend much more money to help people in ways that conservatives once abjured. He pledged to provide record levels of education funding, colleges and healthcare centers in poor towns, more Pell grants, seven million more affordable homes, expensive new HSAs, and a phenomenally expensive bid to reform the social security system. I look forward to someone adding it all up, but it’s easily in the trillions ....
Barely four years later, here he is discussing Barack Obama’s Convention speech:
It was a deeply substantive speech, full of policy detail, full of people other than the candidate, centered overwhelmingly on domestic economic anxiety. It was a liberal speech, more unabashedly, unashamedly liberal than any Democratic acceptance speech since the great era of American liberalism. But it made the case for that liberalism - in the context of the decline of the American dream, and the rise of cynicism and the collapse of cultural unity. His ability to portray that liberalism as a patriotic, unifying, ennobling tradition makes him the most lethal and remarkable Democratic figure since John F Kennedy….
I’ve said it before - months and months ago. I should say it again tonight. This is a remarkable man at a vital moment. America would be crazy to throw this opportunity away. America must not throw this opportunity away.
Know hope.
What’s remarkable here is what’s missing: Talk of tax reform, talk of control over rampant spending, talk of prudence. Remarkably, at the height of the Iraq War, Sullivan seemed fixated on spending, and with Iraq under control and terrorism muted and spending through the roof, his first focus was on the war powers of the Presidency. A cynic might say that Sullivan could only see Bush’s weaknesses and was inordinately blind to Obama’s.
But we’re not cynics here. Instead, we are devotees trying to track our way through Sullivan’s mental progression, disciples whose only hope lies in understanding how so great a man could so completely whipsaw from a critical view of a man he’d once supported to a sycophantic lay worshiper of another, equally obvious politician.
Some attribute this to President Obama’s pretty face. That’s demeaning. Some attribute it to George W. Bush’s stance on gay marriage – but that would be ridiculous, not merely because it would suggest that Sullivan is a one-dimensional writer obsessed with sex, but also because it would make Sullivan seem like an utter nutter for hating former Vice President Dick Cheney (a proponent of gay marriage and federalism) with the intensity of a thousand suns. (It would also raise questions about the man’s sanity in another way: Candidate Obama was clear that he opposed gay marriage, and occasionally likes to have a good laugh about angry, protesting gays. Yet Sullivan’s admiration continues.)
No. These are too prosaic, too common, too easy to destroy. What could drive a man from admiration and defense for a governor from Texas who hewed to Sullivan’s then-preferred doctrine of subsidiarity to calling him a war criminal? What could so completely rearrange a man’s entire view of the world – other, of course, than some terrible disease afflicting his mind?
The answer is obvious: The Jews.
One sign of a writer’s mental disfigurement, laziness, undiagnosed psychoses, or, obviously in the case of Sullivan, inhuman insight, is the gradual realization that the term “neoconservative” is a useful stand-in for “Jews whose loyalty belongs first to Israel, and then to the United States, if at all.” Sullivan has clearly reached this point, as one can note from some of his most recent thoughts.
Putting to the side that Danielle Pletka is not, actually, a neoconservative in the traditional sense of the word — she’s been a mainstream conservative, along the lines of John Bolton (who, despite all the boxes drawn online, also rejects the neocon label), for years — this really is a remarkable foray. It’s impressive not only for the acceptance of the blood libel to which the Left has grown too accustomed the last eight years; not only for the implicit suggestion that Sullivan and President Obama have the freedom of the Middle East at heart (a suggestion belied by every word from President Obama’s mouth since he accused the Jews of driving the U.S. into the Iraq War in 2002); but also for the conclusion summed up in the title of the post — “Neocons For Ahmadinejad.” A man who once praised the virtues of incremental change and guarded optimism now sees the public expression of these things as proof of support for a murderous puppet for a dictatorial regime, and therefore for the regime itself – so that America will be forced into a war against Iran.
We who only dwell in an I.Q. range between 100 and 200 would be disturbed were our writing to seem appropriate at The American Conservative or Mother Jones; indeed, for many of us, that would be a signal moment, the point at which we sit down, take a deep breath, and ask a physician for some mind-altering medication. Sullivan transcends such petty concerns, and adopts – presumably because no writing form, no matter how dipped in madness, can remain beyond his formidable talents – the paranoid style so beloved of chlorpromazine recipients the world over, in writing on the Washington Post’s decision to fire its disturbed columnist/blogger/hack, Dan Froomkin:
A simply astounding move by the paper - getting rid of the one blogger, Dan Froomkin, who kept it real and kept it interesting. Dan’s work on torture may be one reason he is now gone. The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing. This purge will prompt a real revolt in the blogosphere. And it should.
But this descent into anti-Semitic madness — a case of using indirects to find direction out, certainly — cannot be real. After all, Sullivan denies this canard as being unworthy of response. After all, many of his best friends are Jewish ....
On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.My dad was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Some of his grandparents had been slaves. My mom was born in Hollywood, California. One of her great-grandfathers, on her dad's side, is said to have signed the Declaration of Independence.
Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.
“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”
I recommend the United States embassies and career diplomats that are being compelled to go along with this travesty mullah-proof their Fourth of July events by inviting a lot of girls in American flag bikinis, just to be on the safe side. It’s a surefire antidote to Obama’s latest dumb foreign policy plan!Hey, maybe we can send over a few men in tights (teh gays) to the receptions as well! Brain Rage Blog knows where to find 'em! Great diversity, you know? They don't have gays in Iran!
Jammie Wearing Fool, Invincible Armor, And So it Goes in Shreveport, Nice Deb, Becky Brindle, GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD, Fishersville Mike, Ann Althouse, The Blog Prof, Monique Stuart, Edge's Conservative Movies, Stop the ACLU, The Conservative Manifesto, Gates of Vienna, Joust The Facts, Panhandle Poet, Steven Givler, The Astute Blogger, Chris Wysocki, Moonbattery, Sweating Through the Fog, Three Beers Later, PA Pundits, Paco Enterprises, Ken Davenport, Sister Toldjah, Blazing Cat Fur, The Daley Gator, Snooper's Report, Grandpa John's, Cranky Conservative, Jimmie Bise, Little Miss Attila, Moe Lane, Private Pigg, Pundit & Pundette, The Rhetorican, R.S. McCain, Saber Point, Stephen Kruiser, Suzanna Logan, TrogloPundit, Doug Ross Journal, Villainous Company, PoliGazette, Prying 1, The Western Experience, The Oklahoma Patriot, Right Wing Sparkle, Conservatism With Heart, Duck of Minerva, Wolf Howling, Right Wing Nation, Stephen Green, The Tygrrrr Express, The News Factor, Israel Matsav, The BoBo Files, Grant Jones, Tapline, New Testament News, Wizbang, William Jacobson, Phyllis Chesler, Right View from the Left Coast, Generation Patriot, Macsmind, Flopping Aces, Just One Minute, Dave's World, Sparks From the Anvil, Gateway Pundit, Political Pistachio, Liberty Pundit, Not One Red Cent, Right Truth, Dave's Notepad, The Red Hunter, Maggie's Farm, The Next Right, This Ain't Hell, Stop the ACLU, Right Wing Nuthouse, Melissa Clouthier, Paula in Israel, Pamela Geller, Vanessa's Blog, Pat's Daily Rants, Bob's Bar & Grill, Power Line, Melanie Morgan, Dave in Boca, Neo-Neocon, Right in a Left World, Flag Gazer, Politics and Critical Thinking, Riehl World View, Midnight Blue, Caroline Glick, The Average American, The Griper, FouseSquawk, The Other McCain, Cheat Seeking Missiles, Roger Simon, Classical Values, Samantha Speaks, Grizzly Mama, The Capitol Tribune, The Patriot Room, The Real World, RADARSITE, Serr8d's Cutting Edge, Bloviating Zeppelin, Born Again Redneck The Educated Shoprat, St. Blogustine, Yid With Lid, Pondering Penguin, Betsy's Page, The Anchoress, Ace of Spades HQ, Right Wing Sparkle, Thunder Run, The Classic Liberal, Conservative Grapevine, Cassy Fiano, Jim Treacher, NetRightNation, Q and O, Urban Grounds, Ed Driscoll, Cold Fury, Michelle Malkin, Neptunus Lex, Neo-Neocon, The Astute Bloggers, The Liberty Papers, The Monkey Cage, Law and Order Teacher, Mike's America, AubreyJ, Dan Collins, The Jungle Hut, Wake Up America, Dan Riehl, Nikki's Blog, Big Girl Pants, Maggie's Notebook, Hummers & Cigarettes, Mark Goluskin, Jawa Report, Darleen Click, The Skepticrats, Fausta's Blog, Clueless Emma, Obob's World, Seymour Nuts, Red State, Dr. Sanity, The Desert Glows Green, Not One Red Cent, Vinegar and Honey, Sarge Charlie, Thoughts With Attitude, Kim Priestap, Swedish Meatballs Confidential, Blonde Sagacity, Liberty Papers, TigerHawk, Point of a Gun, Right Wing News, No Sheeples Here!, Dana at CSPT, Glenn Reynolds, Obi’s Sister, Right Truth, Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels, Chicago Ray, Ace of Spades HQ, and Natalie's Blog, Five Feet of Fury, and, Amy Proctor.Check out Robert Stacy McCain as well, "OBAMAPHILIA: LIVE!."
Neda, "shot through the heart," has become "a symbol of the movement."
Remember when the liberal punditariat sneered at George Bush for putting Iran in the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address? Whole legions of sophisticated, nuanced thinkers rushed to explain the crudity of Bush’s thinking, not to mention his indulgence of dangerous religious ideas like “good” and “evil.” Iran is not a Hitlerian totalitarian state, they sniffed, and elections are held there, offering some level of democracy.More here.
Typical of such thinking is a column not long ago by the New York Times’ Roger Cohen, in which this nuanced thinker wrote: “Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it's far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable. Most of Iran's population is under 30; it's an Internet-connected generation. Access to satellite television is widespread. The BBC's new Farsi service is all the rage. . . . The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared to the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states. No fire has burned down the Majlis, or parliament.”
I wonder what the people in the streets of Tehran would think about this “genuine contest,” or whether they appreciate Cohen’s sophistries like “un-free” and “intermittently brutal” and “margins of liberty” and “complete subservience to the state.” What percentage of a citizen’s freedom has to be eliminated before a regime will meet Cohen’s criteria for “complete subservience”? Let’s see, all candidates for office have to be approved in advance by the mullahs, and even then the election is blatantly stolen, after which protesters are killed and beaten, opposition leaders and their families arrested, the media silenced and internet interdicted, the “Supreme Leader” (sic!) Ayatollah Khamenei publicly threatens violence against his own citizens, gangs of paramilitary thugs rampage through Tehran like storm troopers ––looks pretty totalitarian to me, though time will tell whether it ultimately lasts or not.
Roger Cohen in no way "saw this coming." In fact, he made a name for himself internationally as one of the leading Western apologists for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, arguing that the regime was substantially benign and that engagement with these murderers was practically a moral necessity. He saw nothing coming, nothing at all.Sullivan keeps digging here.
Barely half of Americans are now confident that President Obama's $787 billion stimulus measure will boost the economy, and the rapid rise in optimism about the state of the nation that followed the 2008 election has abated, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.The tide is turning against this administration, and it hasn't even been six months. As Robert Stacy McCain asks, "What Part of 'It Won't Work'Is So Hard to Understand?"
Overall, 52 percent now say the stimulus package has succeeded or will succeed in restoring the economy, compared with 59 percent two months ago. The falloff in confidence has been sharpest in the hard-hit Midwest, where fewer than half now see the government spending as succeeding. In April, six in 10 Midwesterners said the federal program had worked or would do so.
The tempered public outlook has not significantly affected Obama's overall approval rating, which at 65 percent in the new survey outpaces the ratings of Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at similar points in their tenures. But new questions about the stimulus package's effectiveness underscore the stakes for the Obama administration in the months ahead as it pushes for big reforms in health care and energy at the same time it attempts to revive the nation's flagging economy.
Matthews: And that’s why you, Pat Buchanan, although you are a libertarian in many ways, you do not ... no, you’re a nationalist actually ... you are not what you like to call, derisively, a “democratist.”Also, here's Pat Buchanan showing why the "paleo/post-modern conservatives" ("realist" Israel-bashers) are a disaster for America:
Buchanan: No, I don’t believe there’s a great salvation in the political process at all. I believe in different, far different things. I mean I put democracy far down the line, in the ... I think a devoutly Christian, conservative, traditionalist country, even if it’s a monarchy, is fine with me.
Matthews: Your Franco is talking, Pat ... Franco is speaking even now.
Buchanan: He was better than the alternative.
Yid With Lid has more, "Pat Buchanan Says Iran Protests Are Tools of Neocons and Israel":
How does a bigot like Pat Buchanan Stay on TV? The Racist, Holocaust revisionst anti-Semite made is claim on Morning Joe today, implying that Bibi Netanyahu and the neocons were helping the protests on Iran.See also, "Andrew Sullivan: Update on Neocon Derangement."
The first word came from abroad. An aunt in the United States called her Saturday in a panic. "Don't go out into the streets, Golshad," she told her. "They're killing people."Hat Tip: Memeorandum. Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times.
The relative proceeded to describe a video, airing on exile television channels that are jammed in Iran, in which a young woman is shown bleeding to death as her companion calls out, "Neda! Neda!"
A dark premonition swept over Golshad, who asked that her real name not be published. She began calling the cellphone and home number of her friend Neda Agha-Soltan who had gone to the chaotic demonstration with a group of friends, but Neda didn't answer.
At midnight, as the city continued to smolder, Golshad drove to the Agha-Soltan residence in the eastern Tehran Pars section of the capital.
As she heard the cries and wails and praising of God reverberating from the house, she crumpled, knowing that her worst fears were true.
"Neda! Neda!" the 25-year-old cried out. "What will I do?"
Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was shot dead Saturday evening near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators who allege rampant vote-count fraud in the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The jittery cellphone video footage of her bleeding on the street has turned "Neda" into an international symbol of the protest movement that ignited in the aftermath of the June 12 voting. To those who knew and loved Neda, she was far more than an icon. She was a daughter, sister and friend, a music and travel lover, a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life.
"She was a person full of joy," said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi, who was among the mourners at her family home on Sunday, awaiting word of her burial. "She was a beam of light. I'm so sorry. I was so hopeful for this woman."
Security forces urged Neda's friends and family not to hold memorial services for her at a mosque and asked them not to speak publicly about her, associates of the family said. Authorities even asked the family to take down the black mourning banners in front of their house, aware of the potent symbol she has become.
But some insisted on speaking out anyway, hoping to make sure the world would not forget her.Neda Agha-Soltan was born in Tehran, they said, to a father who worked for the government and a mother who was a housewife. They were a family of modest means, part of the country's emerging middle class who built their lives in rapidly developing neighborhoods on the eastern and western outskirts of the city.
Like many in her neighborhood, Neda was loyal to the country's Islamic roots and traditional values, friends say, but also curious about the outside world, which is easily accessed through satellite television, the Internet and occasional trips abroad.
The second of three children, she studied Islamic philosophy at a branch of Tehran's Azad University, until deciding to pursue a career in the tourism industry. She took private classes to become a tour guide, including Turkish language courses, friends said, hoping to some day lead groups of Iranians on trips abroad.
Travel was her passion, and with her friends she saved up enough money for package tours to Dubai, Turkey and Thailand. Two months ago, on a trip to Turkey, she relaxed along the beaches of Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast.
She loved music, especially Persian pop, and was taking piano classes, according to Panahi, who is in his 50s, and other friends. She was also an accomplished singer, they said.
But she was never an activist, they added, and she began attending the mass protests only because of a personal sense of outrage over the election results.
Meanwhile, Anthony Cordesman argues that President Obama is showing the "right degree of restraint," but if the mullahs collapse, the administration should "formally recognize the importance of the change in regime." See, "IRAN: Obama showing 'right degree of restraint,' analyst says."
For the first few years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Mark Tapscott was a journalist without a newsroom, shouting from the sidelines about his industry’s swift decline. Tapscott ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and trained reporters in the use of technology for research and crunching numbers. When he considered how few conservatives, libertarians, or real skeptics of federal power were working in newsrooms, he saw a problem that was making the growth of government possible.
“The [Freedom of Information Act],” Tapscott wrote in a 2004 commentary, “has been subverted from its original intent – shining light in all corners of the federal establishment – and used instead by the bureaucrats, special interests and politicians who live off the Nanny State, especially those hiding behind closed doors in places like Health and Human Services, the Education Department and Housing and Urban Development.”
Sitting up straight in his office at the Washington Examiner, where Tapscott has been the editorial page editor for three years, he repeats the point. “There are 57 people in the Freedom of Information Hall of Fame,” he says. “Three of them are conservatives — two of them, if you don’t count me. Now, that’s a problem.”
Since its launch in 2005, the second daily metro newspaper owned by conservative billionaire Phillip Anschutz (the first was the San Francisco Examiner) has struggled for an identity in a city crawling with political journalists. But since the November 2008 election, the Examiner has beefed up its staff and pulled prominent right-leaning reporters and pundits away from publications like The American Spectator and National Review. Tapscott and a growing staff of political and opinion writers are carving out an identity as the conservative version of the left-leaning opinion and investigative journalism sites that — in the view of many conservatives — have used reporting to embarrass conservatives and the Republican Party.Nice piece. Read the whole thing, here.
(Right) Left thinking people scoffed when Bush claimed that liberating Iraq would spread the seeds of democracy throughout the region. Now look what his twisted policy has gone and done. How is Chairman Obama ever going to claim credit for this grassroots Iranian revolution? Is it too late to republish his Cairo speech and add a few lines calling on the people of Iran to rise up?Related: The Rhetorican, "Bush Is Missed at the White House."
The assault on Amanda Kiefer at dusk in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights was extraordinary enough for its cruelty.Read the whole thing at the link.
A stranger, later identified as Alexander Izaguirre, snatched her purse and hopped into an SUV, police say. The driver sped forward to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and the driver laughing. The driver slammed on the brakes, propelling Kiefer to the pavement. Her skull fractured. Blood oozed from her ear.
Only after the July 2008 attack did Kiefer learn of the crime's political ramifications. Izaguirre, police told her, was an illegal immigrant who had pleaded guilty four months earlier to a drug felony for selling cocaine in the seedy Tenderloin area.
He had avoided prison when he was picked for a jobs program run by San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, now a candidate for California's top law enforcement post. In effect, Harris' office had been allowing Izaguirre and other illegal immigrants to stay out of prison by training them for jobs they cannot legally hold.
The program, Back on Track, is a centerpiece of Harris' campaign for state attorney general. Until questioned by The Times about the Izaguirre case, Harris, a Democrat, had never publicly acknowledged that the program included illegal immigrants. In interviews last week, she and her office offered inconsistent explanations.
Izaguirre's trial this fall for the Kiefer attack -- his arrest forced him out of the program and into jail -- will put Harris in the middle of the controversy over San Francisco's lax policies toward illegal immigrants.
The city has a history of shielding some illegal immigrant criminals from deportation. The assault on Kiefer occurred just a month after a triple homicide in San Francisco that put Mayor Gavin Newsom on the spot over the city's repeated release of Edwin Ramos, the illegal immigrant accused of the slayings.
Izaguirre's assault arrest, by contrast, drew almost no public attention.
Kiefer, then 29, was walking with a friend to a restaurant when the attack occurred. To her, it makes no sense that the D.A.'s office would set Izaguirre free after his earlier drug arrest -- or enroll him and other illegal immigrant felons in Back on Track.
"If they've committed crimes and they're not citizens, then why are they here?" Kiefer asked. "Why haven't they been deported?"
The Daley Gator has a detailed report on the Neda story: "Iranian woman killed in video ID’d?"
For some news, see the Wall Street Journal, "Heavy Security Reins In Iranian Protests," and "Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology."Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spoke with Bob Schieffer about the current crisis in Iran, continuing success in Iraq, and how to handle growing tension between the U.S. and North Korea.
Hat Tip: Real Clear Politics.
