Iran's Murderous Basiji Thugs Terrorize 72 Year-Old Opposition Cleric Mehdi Karroubi

C/O LAT:

Suicide at Virginia Quarterly Review

At LAT:

On July 30, Kevin Morrissey printed a note, gathered his identification and called the Charlottesville, Va., police to report a shooting at the coal tower, a local landmark. When they arrived, it was Morrissey they found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his papers laid out neatly beside him.

Morrissey was the 52-year-old managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, an award-winning literary journal published by the University of Virginia. He had worked at the journal since 2004, handling accounting, payments, contracts and other administrative details. "Kevin’s job was his life," said co-worker Waldo Jaquith.

Morrissey’s death might have affected only his small circle of friends and colleagues, but it has also had an unexpected impact, spurring the university to conduct an audit of the finances and management of the VQR. And now, a month after Morrissey’s death, the Virginia Quarterly Review is on indefinite hiatus.

The move follows a stream of reports and extended online discussion about Morrissey’s suicide. Those reports have focused on the VQR workplace and have been critical of the magazine’s editor, Ted Genoways. Genoways, who has been locked out of the office by university officials since Morrissey’s death, has been labeled a “workplace bully” in media reports with few actual details. The "Today" show reported that Genoways was “under investigation for allegedly driving one of his employees to suicide.”

But although contributing editors, writers and associates found Genoways “professional, tactful and respectful” -- as two dozen wrote in an August letter of support -- it is clear from comments after Morrissey’s death that most of his five-person staff was, to some degree, unhappy. It is their complaints that have dominated media accounts of Morrissey’s death and the subsequent cloud over the VQR.

RTWT.

Won't You Lay Me Down in the Tall Grass and Let Me Do My Stuff...

This live clip is pretty raw, but stay with it for a few seconds and it'll go visual. Some "Second Hand News" (from Rumours, 1976):

Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats

I mean, seriously, if this is some kind of sign of the times we might be in the midst of the most important de-realignment in the post-1964 party era. I'll have more on this later, but check NYT:

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama.

Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.

“Is the recession, which is hitting young people very hard, doing lasting or permanent damage to what looked like a good Democratic advantage with this age group?” asked Scott Keeter, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan group. “The jury is still out.”

How and whether millions of college students vote will help determine if Republicans win enough seats to retake the House or Senate, overturning the balance of power on Capitol Hill, and with it, Mr. Obama’s agenda. If students tune out and stay home it will also carry a profound message for American society about a generation that seemed so ready, so recently, to grab national politics by the lapels and shake.

All those questions are in play here in Larimer County, about an hour north of Denver, for the more than 25,000 students at Colorado State University.

Larimer, like much of Colorado, was once solidly Republican but went Democratic in the last few elections and is now contested by both sides. It is seen as a signal beacon for an increasingly unpredictable state.

Kristin Johnson, 23, like many other students interviewed here in recent days, said that a vote for Democrats in 2008, however passionate it was, did not a Democrat make. But she bristles just as much at the idea of being called a Republican.

“It’s like picking a team when you really don’t want to root for either team,” said Ms. Johnson, a communication studies major, who said she was undecided about parties and politics going into the general election campaign.

She is not the only one. Because the university draws about 80 percent of its enrollment from within Colorado — mostly from Denver and its suburbs — it is also a sort of mirror within a mirror for Colorado’s political culture. Moderate and conservative views are common; a campus monoculture of liberalism is not.

Leah Rosen, a history major from Denver, still vividly remembers witnessing a fistfight outside her dormitory room on election night in 2008 between Obama supporters and McCain supporters. National exit polls back then gave Mr. Obama a 66 percent edge among young people, to 32 percent for Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee.

Larimer is the focal point for a nationally watched House race in Colorado’s Fourth District, where Betsy Markey, a Democrat, is fighting for a second term in a traditionally Republican seat, against a Republican challenger, Cory Gardner.

Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat appointed last year to fill a vacant seat, is also in a toss-up contest against a Republican candidate, Ken Buck, who has local connections as the Weld County district attorney in Greeley, 20 miles southeast of Fort Collins.

Many students here, especially seniors nearing graduation, said that worries about the economy, and about getting a job after graduation, had filtered through the campus, dampening enthusiasm for Democrats in Congress and Mr. Obama.

But they have ObamaCare, right?

Well, maybe not.

Clever Carpeting

At GIZMODO:

I have a friend who teaches at Cornell's famous School of Hotel Administration; she has a lot of casino designer contacts. According to her, the carpets are deliberately designed to obscure and camouflage gambling chips that have fallen onto the floor. The casinos sweep up a huge number of these every night. So the carpets are just another source of revenue.

Yet ... some are calling bull on that theory, at the link.

Hat Tip: Maggie's Farm, where beer is on the menu.

'I Give up. We’re F**ked. The Terrorists Won...'

That's racist demonologist TBogg's brilliant analysis of this clip, from New Left Media, which specializes in searching for Circle K, Dollar Store, and Wal Mart rejects to foist off as representative conservative activists in the tea party movement. Yeah, I know, lefties are spinning awful weird scenarios these days (considering the epic blowout they're facing), and searching high and low for stuff to cheer them up.

Queering Education

From Mary Grabar, at American Thinker:

The gay-positive lifestyle is being promoted aggressively in K-12 schools, often under the cover of anti-bullying efforts, under the leadership of Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools. Before his federal appointment, Jennings founded and ran GLSEN, (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network). Under Jennings' direction, GLSEN was involved in activities that affirmed homosexuality to children with explicit materials. Jennings also wrote the foreword to a book titled Queering Elementary Education.

GLSEN, which in the 2008-2009 year enjoyed a $157,500 contribution from the NEA, the largest teachers union in the country, pitches its materials and training services to schools. It targets not only high school students, but middle school students. For example, the video and teachers guide for Out of the Past, about a 17-year-old who begins a gay-straight alliance group in her public school, is targeted for grades 7 through 12.

But this spring, the Eagle Forum reported that the American College of Pediatricians urged all 14,800 U.S school district superintendents to avoid prematurely labeling children as homosexual. The College president cited studies showing that most adolescents who experience same-sex attraction no longer do so by age 25.

Such studies are ignored by the organizations that put out a brochure titled "Just the Facts about Sexual Development of Youth." These organizations include not only the two largest teachers' unions, but also the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association. Who else is on the list? Why the American Counseling Association, the very group that provides the "professional" standards for the public universities where Ward and Keeton studied.

Furthermore, "Just the Facts" is promoted aggressively on the (GLSEN) website.

In such a way, the peer reviewers, the accrediting organizations, and professors assert their power; they actively exclude not only opposing religious views, but also studies and professional opinions of those who disagree with them. It's a problem that plagues our entire educational system.

It happens certainly in the humanities, as I can attest from my experience over nearly twenty years in earning a Ph.D. in English and then living on the crumbs of part-time teaching. Sure, one can have an opinion. She can value the writing of a conservative, Christian writer like Walker Percy, but unless she does scholarship that deals with the presumed privileges of his gender, class, and race, she will not have a scholarly paper accepted at the prestigious conferences, nor have her job application considered seriously. In the meantime, my colleague, a full professor, can direct the Sexuality Studies program in the English department and display a pornographic line drawing of a homosexual act on his office door.

While undergraduates become acclimated to graphic displays of homosexual sex, they will not be exposed to the serious ideas of someone like Walker Percy.

Perhaps there has been no outcry during the last year the drawing has been posted because students are used to such displays. A look through MTV or Comedy Central will reveal how cool and edgy homosexuality has become among teenagers and young adults.

Such an attitude is nurtured by years of classroom exposure to the narrative of victimhood and tolerance. The troubled, confused, and abused young person, if he seeks counseling, will then have the benefit of someone sealed with the approval of the American Counseling Association and the radical gatekeepers at the university. This is what passes for "professional judgment" these days.

Such prevailing "professional judgment" must be exposed for what it is: an assertion of power that promotes an agenda of "queering" education. This is where the public with its good sense must invade the ivory towers and demand that its tax dollars no longer fund the academic frauds.

RTWT, at the link.

Feminazis Open Fire on Taylor Swift

From Cassy Fiano, at NewsReal Blog:

There is no limit to the amount of control that feminazis want to have over our lives. If women do not adhere to the unbelievably strict rules set down for us by the fascist feminist Left, then they are labeled anti-feminist and anti-woman. The latest example of the femisogynist litmus test is Taylor Swift, denounced as unfeminist… for writing about true love and having a wholesome image. The nerve!

Weekend Bikini Blogging — Brandy Robbins!

More preparation for Sunday's entry from the Linkmaster!

Oh, Give Me the Beat, Boys, and Free My Soul...

I've been inadvertently neglecting my good friend Anton over at PA Pundits International. He's got a great background piece on Dobie Gray, who I used to enjoy way back in about 5th grade. Here's "Drift Away" for some very late night soft jams:

Leftists Create False Controversy Involving '9/11 Families' Against Ground Zero Mosque Protest

We've got something of a protest against the protest of the Ground Zero Mosque on the anniversary of 9/11. And this guy leading the charge at the clip, David Paine, isn't actually a "9/11 family member." He's a left-wing organizer piggybacking off the loved ones, and he's long campaigned against conservative moral clarity on 9/11 (at the Huffington Post sleaze-hole, for example):

But check out the statement from the 9/11 Parents & Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims:

“While we respect the rights and opinions of others, we feel that no one should attempt to inhibit the expression of free speech for the large number of 9/11 family members who wish to participate in opposing the construction of this mosque and cultural center,” Riches and Regenhard wrote.

“This project represents a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and disrespects the memory of all those who were murdered at the WTC both in 1993 and 2001.”

“We affirm that the 9/11 Anniversary is a very special and precious commemoration for all of us. However, we feel that by attending and participating in this rally, families can endeavor to ensure that the sacred ground will continue to be respected for posterity.”

“Many of our family members feel that they have a moral obligation to their loved ones to raise their voices as the world looks upon us and sees our plight.”

Check the link for the list of signatories, including Debra Burlingame, who wrote last week against Mayor Bloomberg's crass pro-jihad grandstanding:

It is bad enough that Mr. Bloomberg covers himself in the memory of the heroes who died on 9/11 in order to silence legitimate criticism of the mosque project, it is even more shameless of him to do it while misrepresenting the position of their loved ones. Mr. Bloomberg cited that his chairmanship of the memorial board made him privy to what family members think. Mr. Bloomberg knows full well that family members on the memorial board have grave concerns about this project, and that some of us have publicly opposed it. If he really cared what we think, he would have come to us and asked. We’re still waiting for the call.

Mr. Bloomberg has now crossed the line from merely supporting the mosque to participating in a public campaign aimed at silencing its critics. He has improperly invoked private conversations of 9/11 family board members who, unfortunately, are all too aware of his power, both as chair of the foundation which will memorialize their loved ones and as mayor of a city where that memorial will be built. He is recklessly wreaking havoc among families, running from media event to radio interview to photo op to Comedy Central gagfest, shamelessly hawking this narrative that we, those whose family members were the true victims of religious intolerance, must also carry the burden of proving we’re not intolerant. He’s a disgrace.

See also, "FDI: 9/11 Families Support Ground Zero Mega-Mosque Rally of Remembrance on 9/11."

AND PREVIOUSLY: "New Yorkers Oppose Ground Zero Mosque by Two-Thirds Margin."

'God is Watching Over Me...'

Says Bethany Storro, who was attacked with a cup of acid in Vancouver on Monday. ABC News reports, "Woman Badly Burned in Acid Attack Still 'Happy': Bethany Storro Horrifically Burned in Seemingly Random Acid Attack, Glasses Purchase Saved Her Sight":

Bethany Storro doesn't normally wear sunglasses. She said she just doesn't like them.

But for some reason the 28-year-old had the impulse to buy some shades Monday. It was a decision that may have saved her eyesight.

Not 20 minutes after that spontaneous purchase a complete stranger attacked her with a cup of acid.

"A woman approached her and said, 'Hey pretty girl,' and she turned around and she asked if she wanted something to drink and my daughter said, 'No,'" Storro's mother, Nancy Neuwelt told reporters.

The attacker then threw a cup of liquid into Storro's face.

"Once it hit me, I could hear bubbling and sizzling in my skin," Storro said from the hospital, her face covered in bandages.

The seemingly random attack took place in broad daylight, just outside a coffee shop in Vancouver, Wash.

"When I first saw her, [the attacker] had this weirdness about her. Like jealousy, rage," Storro said.

After the attack, Storro was rushed to surgery at Legacy Emanuel Hospital and underwent surgery.

"Who wakes up in the morning and says, 'I'm going to burn somebody's face?'" Neuwelt said. "It is pretty bizarre, but hopefully they catch her because I don't want this to happen to anybody else."

Despite feeling what she described as the greatest pain of her life, Storro said she will eventually forgive her attacker.

"Because if I don't it's hard to move on," she said. "God is watching over me. … I believe in him. That his hands are on me and I can't live the rest of my life like that – in fear. I can't let what she did to me wreck me life.

"I have an amazing family and friends that love me and I'm blessed," she added.

Reforming Our Universities: The Campaign For An Academic Bill of Rights

At FrontPage Magazine, David Horowitz has some background on his new book, Reforming Our Universities:

The campaign we launched can only be understood in the context of previous developments in higher education. The modern research university was created in the second half of the 19^th Century during the era of America’s great industrial expansion, its curriculum shaped by two innovations: the adoption of scientific method as the professional standard for knowledge, and the extension of educational opportunity to a democratic public. Before these developments, America’s institutions of higher learning were “primarily religious and moral” schools of instruction. In the words of James Duderstadt, president of the University of Michigan, “colleges trained the ministers of each generation, passing on ‘high culture’ to a very small elite.” The avowed mission of these early collegiate institutions was to instill the doctrines of a particular religious denomination. It was not to foster the analytic skepticism associated with modern science but to pass on the literary and philosophical culture that supported a specific faith.

By contrast, “the core mission of the research university,” as recently summarized by one of its leaders, “is … expanding and deepening what we know.” In pursuit of this goal, “the research university relies on various attributes, the most important of which are the processes of rigorous inquiry and reasoned skepticism, which in turn are based on articulated norms that are not fixed and given, but are themselves subject to re-examination and revision. In the best of our universities faculty characteristically subject their own claims and the norms that govern their research to this process of critical reflection.” This has been the credo of American higher education throughout the modern era and is still the norm in the physical and biological sciences and most professional schools throughout the contemporary university.

Liberal arts colleges within the university are the divisions through which all undergraduates pass, and have been traditionally viewed as cornerstones of a democratic society, where students are taught how to think rather than told what to think. The curriculum of the modern research university supported these objectives. It was designed to inculcate pragmatic respect for the pluralism of ideas and the test of empirical evidence, and thus to support a society dependent on an informed citizenry.

All this began to change when a radical generation of university instructors matriculated onto liberal arts faculties in the 1970s and began altering curricula by creating new inter-disciplinary fields whose inspirations were ideological, and closely linked to political activism. Women’s Studies was one of the earliest of these new fields and remains the most influential, providing an academic model emulated by others. The curricula of Women’s Studies programs are not governed by the principles of disinterested inquiry about a subject but rather by a political mission: to teach students to be radical feminists. The formal Constitution of the Women’s Studies Association makes this political agenda clear:

Women’s Studies owes its existence to the movement for the liberation of women; the feminist movement exists because women are oppressed. Women’s studies, diverse as its components are, has at its best shared a vision of a world free not only from sexism but also from racism, class-bias, ageism, heterosexual bias–from all the ideologies and institutions that have consciously or unconsciously oppressed and exploited some for the advantage of others….Women’s Studies, then, is equipping women not only to enter the society as whole, as productive human beings, but to transform the world to one that will be free of all oppression.

Thirty years later, the academic landscape had undergone a sea change as a result of the political pressures from feminists, ethnic nationalists, and “anti-war” activists, and the curricular innovations they were able to institute. In 2006, state legislators in Pennsylvania gathered at Philadelphia’s Temple University to hold hearings on academic freedom. Among the witnesses was Stephen Zelnick, a former Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies and a member of the Temple faculty for 36 years. Zelnick told the legislators of his concern that Temple faculty had grown increasingly monolithic and politically partisan in the years he had been there: “The one-sidedness of the faculty in their ideological commitments and a growing intolerance of competing views [has] resulted in abuse of students, occasionally overt and reported, but most often hidden and normalized, and the degrading of the strong traditions of intellectual inquiry and free expression.”

Zelnick then spelled out what this meant in terms of the instruction he had personally reviewed: “As director of two undergraduate programs, I have had many opportunities to sit in and watch instructors. I have sat in on more than a hundred different teachers’ classes and seen excellent, indifferent, and miserable teaching… In these visits, I have rarely heard a kind word for the United States, for the riches of our marketplace, for the vast economic and creative opportunities made available for energetic and creative people (that is, for our students); for family life, for marriage, for love, or for religion.”

I think I was lucky, especially as an undergraduate, but in graduate school as well, to have taken courses with very few of the radical, anti-Americanists that Horowitz's discusses. In fact, I'd be perfectly willing to confess that I wasn't much affected by hard-left activism in college, only inasmuch as I was a registered Democrat myself, sympathetic to civil rights, anti-poverty and other issues often central to the progressive agenda. It's when I became a professor, and especially my experience at my college since the Iraq war in 2003, that I've come to fully appreciate how institutionalized is the radical left's program of anti-Americanism and indoctrination. As some readers might recall, I've recently adopted a new textbook, American Government and Politics: Deliberation, Democracy, and Citizenship, and I'm thrilled that the text offers an uncommonly robust cultural approach while remaining objectively respectful of other nations and their unique historical and political trajectories. And in shifting my approach along with the book, I'm more frequently having students attempt to defend their more anti-American positions during discussions, and there's been a couple of highly critical students who've been unable to acquit themselves when faced with some Socratic questioning. (And that's interesting from a learning perspective, if it's the case that ideology is crowding out critical thinking, which sounds obvious upon reflection.) And I know that my college has some hardline historians and sociologists pushing basically a neo-communist, post-materialist curriculum --- heavy on the antiwar and racist/sexist oppression junk --- although my political science colleagues are pretty balanced overall. I've had my run-ins with leftists over a lot of these issues, for example when I covered the campus screening of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story," which excoriated the U.S. market system as "evil." My experience --- and my recommendations --- at the institutional level is to stand firm against the leftist backlash, which will include allegations of "hate speech" and so forth, while upholding values of rigorous engagement with the facts over ideology; and of course professionalism in interactions with others. And I'm happy to report that I've beat back attempts at censorship, and of course outside attacks --- from folks like E.D. Kain and The Swashzone communists --- that have been dismissed as gratuitous attempts at harassment.

In any case, I encourage folks to read Restoring Our Universities, and also check in regularly at FrontPage Magazine and NewsReal Blog, where I'm now a contributing writer.

New Yorkers Oppose Ground Zero Mosque by Two-Thirds Margin

Astute Bloggers has the scoop, and it is big. See New York Times, "New York Poll Finds Wariness About Muslim Center." (And click the image for the full survey.)

The most amazing thing here to me is that a full 69 percent of those polled approve of President Barack Obama's job performance, but an almost equal number disapprove of the Victory Mosque at Ground Zero. Seriously. Is there possibly a more powerful statement on how far outside the mainstream are the netroots terror-enablers and the al Qaeda apologists in the elite ranks of the Democratic Party? New Yorkers obviously know WTF is going on. They even give Mayor Bloomberg strong majority approval, but clearly, liberal New York thinks Imam Rauf's Mosque Monstrosity is an abomination. Even more pathetic, but no surprise, is how the editors at New York Times diss their city's own residents. See, "Mistrust and the Mosque." According to the Solons of the editorial suite, "it is appalling to see New Yorkers who could lead us all away from mosque madness, who should know better, playing to people’s worst instincts." Appalling? Who, really, has the superior instincts here? Shoot. It's just common sense NOT to erect a Conquest Mosque at the site of the worst attack on the continental U.S. And it's not like the reputations of the Wayward Imam and Lying Miss Daisy have improved throughout the increasing uproar. I mean c'mon, critics are beneath anti-Semitic eliminationism? Well no, obviously (and sick for the suggestion). Folks are simply asking mosque backers to think again, to be considerate. The Times poll even finds 72 percent agreeing that backers indeed have the right to build. So who really in all of this is outside the mainstream of American tolerance? This is why Americans hate the leftist elite, in the media, the party system, the universities, and in the diversity shakedown industry of the corporate world. Common sense is demonized in America today. But folks can see November from their kitchen windows, and things do look promising on the political horizon.

'It Was the Longest 16 Seconds of My Life'

Painful to watch is putting it mildly. Gov. Jan Brewer told KTAR radio in Phoenix that her debate blackout was "not the finest hour. It was the longest 16 seconds of my life."

Tammy Bruce comments on it: "AZ Gov. Brewer’s Moment of Silence." Personally, we all freeze sometimes. Brewer screwed up, sure. Maybe she wasn't feeling well. Maybe she was just overcome by the moment, but these things count in politics, and that makes thorough preparation and readiness all the more important. She'll no doubt be seeing her 16-second freeze in attack ads, but she can hold herself high nevertheless for having a brief episode of human frailty. It's how we learn.

Slow Start to Middle East 'Peace Talks'

At LAT:

Reporting from Washington - Israeli and Palestinian leaders formally reopened peace talks Thursday by setting a work plan for the next year, but adjourned without progress on their conflict over Israeli housing construction in disputed areas, an issue that threatens to quickly undermine the negotiations.

Meeting at the State Department, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to meet again on Sept. 15 and to work out an outline as the first step to reaching a final peace deal by next September. The two leaders, whose last face-to-face session was 20 months ago, plan to hold discussions every two weeks.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hosted the four hours of talks, praised the two leaders.

"The decision to sit at this table was not easy," she said. "We've been here before and we know how difficult the road ahead will be."

But diplomats said officials on both sides as well as their American colleagues remain deeply anxious over the settlement construction dispute. A partial Israeli moratorium on new settlements in the occupied West Bank ends on Sept. 26 and Jewish leaders are reluctant to extend it. At the same time, Palestinians have threatened to walk out on the talks if construction resumes.

U.S. officials have urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to stop publicly declaring their positions, in hopes that it will be easier for each to give ground in coming weeks, according to diplomats who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

U.S. officials are hoping that if the talks gain momentum in the coming weeks, it will give officials on both sides the political cover to make compromises that, at the moment, only are likely to inflame their constituencies.

As talks continue, it also will become more difficult for the leaders to break off their participation, diplomats noted.

I don't expect any progress frankly, and I don't support the "peace process" while this administration is in power. No doubt Netanyahu is hoping to retain a decent relationship with the U.S., despite the fact of having already been dissed, and dissed badly.

Besides, most Democrats are likely to see the situation from the vantage point of Robert Malley and Peter Harling at Foreign Affairs, "How Obama Can Chart a New Course in the Middle East." Basically, the piece is one long screed blaming all the problems in the region on the Bush administration. Seriously. It's that bad:

The George W. Bush administration's approach to the Middle East and its response to the 9/11 attacks fundamentally altered the region's security architecture. By ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and Iraq of Saddam Hussein, Washington unwittingly eliminated Tehran's two overriding strategic challenges, thus removing key impediments to Tehran's ability to project power and influence across the region. At the same time, after the breakdown in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, the Bush administration redefined the core principles underpinning the peace process. It made meaningful advances dependent on preconditions, such as changes in the Palestinian leadership, the establishment of statelike institutions in the occupied territories, and the waging of a nebulous fight against an ill-defined terrorist menace. The end result was polarization of the region in general and of the Palestinian polity in particular. This approach also heightened the costs of the U.S.-Israeli alliance in the eyes of the Arab public. Finally, the United States overreached when -- not content with having secured Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon -- it pursued the unrealistic three-part goal of isolating Damascus, disarming Hezbollah, and bringing Lebanon into the pro-Western camp.

Although U.S. policy at the time helped put an end to the impasses that had long plagued Iraq and Lebanon, this came at a heavy human and political cost. More broadly, the resumption of crises in the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, and between the Israelis and the Palestinians prompted an ongoing, persistently vicious, and periodically violent renegotiation in the balance of power among nations (involving Egypt, Iran, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey) and within nations (in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories). Suddenly, everything seemed up for grabs.

This proliferation of conflicts and emergence of new threats to U.S. interests occurred just as U.S. power was eroding and regional rivals were gaining strength. Serious limitations to the United States' military capabilities were exposed directly (in the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq) and indirectly (when Washington's ally, Israel, suffered setbacks in the Lebanon and Gaza wars).

Meanwhile, Washington made the promotion of liberal values a pillar of its Middle East policy, putting forth a profoundly moralistic vision of its role, precisely at a time when it was trampling the very principles underlying that vision. A president whose foreign policy was predicated on an ability to inspire Arabs with the rhetoric of democratic values undercut any such inspiration by occupying Iraq, rejecting the results of the Palestinian elections in January 2006, showing excessive deference to Israeli policies, and permitting human rights violations to take place, most notably at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The "with us or against us" philosophy underpinning the U.S. war on terrorism placed Washington's Arab allies in a relationship that was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and politically costly as animosity toward the United States became widespread. Meanwhile, Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah benefited from renewed popular sympathy and were driven together despite their often ambiguous relations and competing interests.

Washington's enemies were finding that the impediments to their geographic expansion and political ascent had disappeared: with the collapse of the Iraqi state, Iran was free to spread its influence beyond its borders toward the Arab world; Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon unshackled Hezbollah, helping transform it into a more autonomous and powerful actor; and the bankruptcy of the peace process boosted Hamas' fortunes and deflated Fatah's.

Right.

No mention of the extreme Jew-hatred roiling all of these states, who were obviously "increasingly uncomfortable" that the GOP regime in Washington circa 2001-2009 wouldn't kowtow to terror.

So, let the Democratic interregnum pass, I say. Start the "peace process" again when the party in power not only respects Israel, but actually knows WTF is going on.

Terror-Appeasing White House Yet to Announce Plans for Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks

Figures.

See Politico, "Few Options for Barack Obama on 9/11":

Every year it’s a challenge for the White House: how to commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. This year is especially awkward, given the controversy around President Barack Obama’s remarks in support of an Islamic cultural center and mosque planned for a neighborhood near ground zero in lower Manhattan.

The White House has not yet announced the president’s plans for next week, though a source familiar with the matter was doubtful Obama would travel to New York.

But the president’s options are otherwise limited: Last year, he marked the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks at the Pentagon, and a return appearance there seems unlikely. This year, first lady Michelle Obama and former first lady Laura Bush will travel together to Shanksville, Pa., to honor the 40 passengers and crew members who died in the crash of United Airlines Flight 93.

That leaves the former World Trade Center site in New York, where Obama hasn’t been since the 2008 presidential campaign. But a presidential appearance at ground zero on Sept. 11 — where an activist group plans to protest the Islamic center project that day — will almost certainly reignite the political firestorm.

Yeah, I'll say. There's going to be lots of activity in New York on September 11. I doubt too many families want Barack Hussein Obama on hand to help leftists spit on the remains of the fallen.

RELATED: "A special message for all 9/11 Family members - from fellow 9/11 Families Regarding the September 11 Rally against the Ground Zero."

Rep. Frank Kratovil: Not So Independent

Via Freedom's Lighthouse. (And a response to this, sorta: "In first ad, Kratovil stresses independence.")

Man it's rough out there. James Pethokoukis asks: "Will Democrats lose 100 House seats?"

RELATED: Jim Geraghty, "After November."

No Time for Losers

Be awed at the sea of humanity swaying at about 2:15 minutes:

Revving Up Weekend Rule 5 — Wendy Combattente!

The Washington Rebel's been posting all kinds of good stuff, and not just babes. See, "Eight-Twenty-Eight: Too Big To Ignore."

Plus, American Perspectives will be good for another Rule 5 entry. And keep your eyes peeled for Sir Smitty's Sunday roundup.

**********

And be sure to visit some of other friends of American Power:

* Another Black Conservative.

* American Perspective.

* Astute Bloggers (Honorary).

* Blazing Cat Fur.

* Bob Belvedere.

* Cold Fury.

* Classical Liberal.

* Daley Gator.

* Fausta.

* Hall of Record (Honorary).

* Left Coast Rebel.

* Mind Numbed Robot.

* Not a Sheep.

* Paco Enterprises.

* Panhandle Perspective.

* Political Byline.

* POWIP.

* Proof Positive.

* The Other McCain.

* Reaganite Republican (Honorary).

* Right Klik (Honorary).

* Saberpoint (Honorary).

* Serr8d (Honorary).

* Snooper's Report (Honorary).

* Stormbringer.

* Theo Spark.

* TrogloPundit.

* Washington Rebel.

* WyBlog.

* Yid With Lid (Honorary).

BONUS: Don't forget Instapundit.

And drop your link in the comments to be added to the weekly roundups!