Because Progressives Are All About 'Robust Debate' - Ann Coulter Disinvited From Fordham Speaking Event

The universities are the centers of ideological hatred and progressive intolerance, so this is no surprise.

At The Blaze, "UNIVERSITY PRES. SCOLDS STUDENTS FOR INVITING ANN COULTER TO SPEAK: ‘DISAPPOINTED’ WOULD BE ‘TREMENDOUS UNDERSTATEMENT’."

And at the school's newspaper, The Fordham Observer, "UPDATED: McShane Responds to College Republicans’ Cancellation of Ann Coulter Event."

Here's the letter from President McShane:

The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public nor the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus.

To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement. There are many people who can speak to the conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms. Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and needlessly provocative — more heat than light — and her message is aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.

As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.

“Disgust” was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated Fordham.

Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni, parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully, and forcefully.

The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter’s (and the student organizers’) opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy — and one another — stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President

And from the College Republicans, who collapsed faster than a New Jersey roller coaster in a hurricane:

The College Republicans regret the controversy surrounding our planned lecture featuring Ann Coulter. The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by surprise and caused us to question our decision to welcome her to Rose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicans and are inconsistent with both our organization’s mission and the University’s. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her before announcing; that is our error and we do not excuse ourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with certain comments by Ms. Coulter, we have chosen to cancel the event and rescind Ms. Coulter’s invitation to speak at Fordham. We made this choice freely before Father McShane’s email was sent out and we became aware of his feelings – had the President simply reached out to us before releasing his statement, he would have learned that the event was being cancelled. We hope the University community will forgive the College Republicans for our error and continue to allow us to serve as its main voice of the sensible, compassionate, and conservative political movement that we strive to be. We fell short of that standard this time, and we offer our sincere apologies.

Ted Conrad, President Emily Harman, Vice President Joe Campagna, Treasurer John Mantia, Secretary

This is how the left wins. Coulter's routinely "disinvited" from universities, which serves no one but the progs themselves, who thump their chests in victory while sharpening knives for the next slash attack on vigorous debate. They simply can't stand their programs to be challenged, especially by someone as effective as Ann Coulter.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. Would Resign From Congress in Plea Deal on Corruption Charges

The Chicago way.

At The Conservatory, "Jesse Jackson, Jr. Reportedly Copping Plea Including Resignation from Congress."

And The Hill, "Report: Plea deal would end Rep. Jackson's career in Congress," and CBS News Chicago, "Former U.S. Prosecutor Negotiating Plea Deal For Jackson Jr."

Remember this guy was reelected while sitting on the inside of the Mayo Clinic. It's time for the f-ker to go.

John Podhoretz Parts Ways With Literary Commentary Writer D.G. Myers

Here's the story, "A Note."

And here's D.G. Myers' angry response, "Statement on my firing."

Myers claims that Podhoretz terminated their relationship because of the former's aggressive advocacy of same-sex marriage. Podhoretz in turn vehemently denies the allegation and frames the dispute as a matter of editorial purview. Myers was insubordinate to write about political topics on Commentary's exclusively literary blog.

Note that Commentary's main blog is heavily edited. All posts are discussed among writers and reviewed by at least two editors. On the other hand, Myers had a completely free hand at the literary blog, as long as he stayed within the topical parameters. Once he went off on an apparent diatribe against conservatives on gay marriage at the literary blog (a post he deleted at once when called out for insubordination), he'd abused the trust that was invested in him.

Read the whole thing, in any case. It's interesting to see the curtain back pulled back on the editorial process at the magazine, which is one of my very favorites.

EXTRA: I'll link straight to Myers' attack on conservatives at the main Commentary blog. Apparently a goofier version at Literary Commentary is what got the guy in trouble: "GOP Can’t Be the Party of Old White Men."

UPDATE: Linked at The Other McCain, "Podhoretz ‘Evolves’ on Gay Marriage; Editorial Insubordination, Not So Much."

Professor Grover Furr Denies Stalin's Crimes Against Humanity

The guy's a Stalinist holocaust denier.

At The Other McCain, "The Stalinist at Montclair State."

The murderous brutality of Stalin is one of the best-established facts of 20th-century history, and whatever “research” Professor Furr claims as the basis for his bizarre revisionism is likely akin to the “research” of Holocaust deniers, 9/11 Truthers and other fringe crackpots.

The crime is that this guy is teaching at a public university. It's not surprising, though. Recall my post on Professor Robert Farley, who claims to be an expert on counterinsurgency, who showed "Che" for his students in class: "Patterson School of Diplomacy, University of Kentucky, Screens Steven Soderbergh's Che to Commemorate Fiftieth Anniversary of Bay of Pigs."

America's campuses are the training ground for the revolutionary cadres. For more on this, lots more, see Legal Insurrection, "“Shock the System” week at College Insurrection."

Permanent Part-Time Is the New Normal

At the Wall Street Journal, "Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers" (via Blue Collar Philosophy):

RT @mdrache: Dear Liberals, if you're upset about corps going to PT to avoid Obamacare, you should have read the law before you passed it.
— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) November 10, 2012

Some low-wage employers are moving toward hiring part-time workers instead of full-time ones to mitigate the health-care overhaul's requirement that large companies provide health insurance for full-time workers or pay a fee.

Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 for each worker.

The shift is one of the first significant steps by employers to avoid requirements under the health-care law, and whether the trend continues hinges on Tuesday's election results. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has pledged to overturn the Affordable Care Act, although he would face obstacles doing so.

President Barack Obama is set to push ahead with implementing the 2010 law if he is re-elected.

Pillar Hotels & Resorts this summer began to focus more on hiring part-time workers among its 5,500 employees, after the Supreme Court upheld the health-care overhaul, said Chief Executive Chris Russell. The company has 210 franchise hotels, under the Sheraton, Fairfield Inns, Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns brands.

"The tendency is to say, 'Let me fill this position with a 40-hour-a-week employee.' "Mr. Russell said. "I think we have to think differently."

Pillar offers health insurance to employees who work 32 hours a week or more, but only half take it, and Mr. Russell wants to limit his exposure to rising health-care costs. He said he planned to pursue new segments of the population, such as senior citizens, to find workers willing to accept part-time employment.

He described the shift as a "cultural change" toward hiring more part-timers and not a prohibition against hiring full-timers.

CKE Restaurants Inc., parent of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burger chains, began two months ago to hire part-time workers to replace full-time employees who left, said Andy Puzder, CEO of the Carpinteria, Calif., company. CKE, which is owned by private-equity firm Apollo Management LP, offers limited-benefit plans to all restaurant employees, but the federal government won't allow those policies to be sold starting in 2014 because of low caps on payouts. Mr. Puzder said he has advised Mr. Romney's campaign on economic issues in an unpaid capacity.

Home retailer Anna's Linens Inc. is considering cutting hours for some full-time employees to avoid the insurance mandate if the health-care law isn't repealed, said CEO Alan Gladstone.

Mr. Gladstone said the costs of providing coverage to all 1,100 sales associates who work at least 30 hours a week would be prohibitive, although he was weighing alternative options, such as raising prices.

Suck it, progs.

You voted for it. You're stuck with it ---- with a life of less prosperity and well-being.

Benghazi Will Unravel With the Sex Angle

Interesting comments from Charles Krauthammer, at the clip.

PREVIOUSLY: "Petraeus Mistress is Paula Broadwell," and "David Petraeus Resigns as Director of CIA."

'Wednesday'

From Mark Steyn, at National Review, "The Edge of the Abyss":

Amid the ruin and rubble of the grey morning after, it may seem in poor taste to do anything so vulgar as plug the new and stunningly topical paperback edition of my book, After America — or, as Dennis Miller retitled it on the radio the other day, Wednesday. But the business of America is business, as Calvin Coolidge said long ago in an alternative universe, and I certainly could use a little. So I’m going to be vulgar and plug away. The central question of Wednesday — I mean, After America — is whether the Brokest Nation in History is capable of meaningful course correction. On Tuesday, the American people answered that question. The rest of the world will make its dispositions accordingly...

In 2009, the Democrats became the first government in the history of the planet to establish annual trillion-dollar deficits as a permanent feature of life. Before the end of Obama’s second term, the federal debt alone will hit $20 trillion. That ought to have been the central fact of this election — that Americans are the brokest brokey-broke losers who ever lived, and it’s time to do something about it.

Read it all.

Petraeus Mistress is Paula Broadwell

Ms. Broadwell is the author of a biography of the general, and she's reportedly under investigation.

From Fred Kaplan, at Slate, "Petraeus Resigns Over Affair With Biographer" (via Memeorandum):

The woman with whom Gen. David Petraeus was having an affair is Paula Broadwell, the author of a recent hagiographic book about him, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.

And then from NBC's Richard Engel, "Petraeus' biographer Paula Broadwell under FBI investigation over access to his email, law enforcement officials say." Engle does not mention Broadwell as the mistress, but has this:

Broadwell's Twitter account describes her as a national security analyst and Army veteran. A biography on her website, which went offline Friday evening, said she is married to a radiologist and has two children, both boys. The family lives in Charlotte, N.C. The biography said she is a West Point graduate and a research associate at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership and a doctoral candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

More at the Wall Street Journal, "CIA Chief Resigns Over Affair" (via Memeorandum).

Soviet-Style Snitching Right Here in Obama's America

Snitching wasn't just something that occurred historically in the Soviet Union, Orwell's 1984 makes a number of references to being "denounced" to the secret police for "thought crimes."

Well, history has a way of repeating itself sometimes, chillingly.

At iOWNTHEWORLD, "The Site Jezebel is Calling Schools to Make Trouble For Tweeters That Use the N Word When Referring to Obama – No Word On Whether They Do That to the Thousands of Students That Refer to Each Other as N***ers."

Even If the Historical American Order Is Finished, the World Hasn't Ended

From Lawrence Auster (via Saberpoint):

I just got a phone call from a long-time acquaintance I haven’t heard from in a long time. He said right off the bat: “America is finished and therefore you should shut down VFR.”

I hung up the phone. He called again. After saying that he hadn’t meant any disrespect, he explained that since America is finished, there is no point in conservative political activism, and therefore there’s no point in VFR. He said, “I have put my money where my mouth is,” since he had just resigned his job at a political activist organization, because there was no point in it any more, and is now going to focus only on his private life.

I explained to him, first, that VFR is obviously not a conservative political activist site (and having read VFR from the start how could he not know this?), but is primarily about understanding, and, through understanding, helping to cultivate a remnant.

Second, even if the historical American order is finished, which I believe it is and have said so repeatedly (which he also seemed to have missed), the world hasn’t ended, we are still living in it and have to try to make sense of it and figure out how we are going to live in it. Indeed, I continued, I and readers are at this moment trying to come to terms with the overwhelming disaster that has come upon us, and that’s part of what VFR is about.

He replied that he already understood my criticisms of liberalism, and others do too, and therefore there’s no point in my continuing to write such criticisms. He said it was “very strange” that I didn’t see that.

In other words, at the very moment that liberalism has gained a whole new level of power over the country, he believes we should stop paying attention to it and why people believe in it and how it operates and will continue to operate to harm us.

I told him that because he believes only in power, not in truth, the moment he sees no possibility of gaining power, he gives up...

Continue reading.

'The timing is just too perfect for the Obama administration...'

At RealClearPolitics, "Lt. Col. Ralph Peters On Petraeus: 'Timing Is Just Too Perfect'."

Ralph Peters is one of the most independent analysts you'll ever have a chance to see. He spoke at the David Horowitz West Coast Retreat in 2011 and his comments diverged quite sharply from most of the other speakers (folks who're some of the hardest of the hardliners on Islamic jihad, Andy McCarthy, Robert Spencer, etc.). Peters is original and provocative. He's got an interesting theory on the Petraeus resignation at the link, and since this whole thing reeks to hell, I think it's important to note that Peters really doesn't give in to wild conspiracies. This time things just really are too convenient.

Obama's Mean and Vindictive Campaign

From Carolyn Glick, "A time for courage, and action":

Mitt Romney wasn't a bad candidate. He ran a fairly strong race. He made a few errors. And he made many good moves.

Certainly he was adequate. And he was probably the strongest Republican candidate among the primary field of contenders. That is, he was the best man available to run against Barack Obama.

And he did a pretty good job.

Obama, on the other hand, was a horrible candidate. He was mean and vindictive. He was contemptuous and superficial. He ran on irrelevancies like abortion and a fictitious Republican war against women. He didn't give his supporters any reason to feel good about themselves.

Instead, he used class warfare to stir them to hatred of their countrymen.

Yet Obama won. And Romney lost.

In retrospect it is possible that the race was over before it began. A strong case can be made that Obama secured his reelection in 2009 when he bailed out the US auto industry and so temporarily stanched the hemorrhage of jobs in Ohio and Michigan. And maybe, with the youth of the 1960s now the Medicare recipients of the 2010s and '20s, there are simply too many Americans dependent on government handouts to care about what happens in the future.

An equally strong case can be made that Romney lost the election before he secured the Republican nomination. He may have squandered his chances when he took a strong position against illegal immigration in one of the early Republican primary debates and so arguably made winning Florida, and perhaps Colorado, a mathematical impossibility.

Many have argued that demography is destiny.

And the American electorate has changed tremendously in the past decade. Government dependency among the white working class has grown. Government dependency among an aging population and a rising tide of single-parent families has grown. And the Latino share of the vote has grown. Today some are arguing that Republicans today simply cannot win the presidency, regardless of their candidate.

All of this is important because for the past four years, most Republicans, and most non-leftists throughout the world, had been hoping that the Obama years would be an aberration. They had hoped and trusted that he would be a one-term president. All the policies he enacted during that term, on domestic and foreign policy alike, would be reversed by his Republican successor, elected by voters who understood they had been taken in by a huckster in 2008. The US economy - the anchor of US power and the engine of the international financial system - would come roaring back.

Continue reading.

Progressives Chant 'Karl Marx, Karl Marx' at Obama Victory Celebration

At Weasel Zippers, "College Students Chant “Karl Marx” and “Socialism” In Front Of White House at Obama Victory Rally…"

Expose This Politically Correct Jihadi Coddling Administration

Michelle was on fire the other night, on Hannity's. Watch the whole thing:

And see, "What about the Camp Bastion attack?"

Obama's Long March

From Ron Radosh, at PJ Media, "It’s the Culture, Stupid: Facing the Long Road Ahead":

If we can turn away from the elections for a moment, and the future of the Republican Party, a more fundamental problem exists. It is nothing less than the nature of the American culture. By the term “culture,” I am not referring to the social issues that usually come up when one talks about culture wars; i.e., abortion, gay rights, religion, etc. Rather, I am talking about the perception and outlook that stand beneath the way our American public define the very nature of civic life in our democratic capitalist society.

That is why I regularly borrow from the Left, as some astute observers of my previous column noted in some comments, the works of the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci, and particularly his theory of cultural hegemony. As I wrote in my concluding paragraph, we have to “wage a war of position on the cultural front and to do all possible to challenge the ascension of a failed intellectual liberal ideology, whether it is in the form of Progressivism, liberalism or socialism.” I’m referring to the kind of work Fred Siegel carries out in a new book he has just finished writing, and which I had the pleasure of reading in manuscript form, on the nature of American liberalism. When it is eventually published, I believe it can have the kind of impact that great works of history like Richard Hofstadter’s books had in the 1940s and ’50s.

Siegel shows that from its very inception, liberalism was a flawed ideology whose adherents substituted its would-be virtues as a way of distancing themselves from most Americans and their workaday lives; an ideology based on a view whose believers saw themselves as superior to most Americans, including those who were merchants, workers, or regular folk, who could not be counted on to comprehend the backwardness of their beliefs.

Continuing on through the post-war decades, Siegel deals with liberalism’s failure to accurately confront the issue of race; its love affair with the New Left and its moral collapse in the face of its anarchism and nihilism; the effects of McGovernism on the political collapse of the Democratic Party, and the resulting politics of “rights-based interest groups” and the new power of public sector unionism, a far different breed than that of the old labor movement of Walter Reuther and George Meany. If we want a different kind of social polity than the one we have now — based on catering to the power of competing interest groups that compose the core strength of the Democratic party — we have to address first the essential question of the kind of social order that liberalism has built.

I’m also referring to the work the intellectuals who edit National Affairs and those who edit The Claremont Review of Books — solid theoretical and analytical work on social policy, education, and law, all of which challenges the intellectual foundations of contemporary liberalism.

If you doubt that this intellectual work is necessary, you might ponder the question of why college-educated Americans are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats or among those even much further to the political Left. An answer appears in this article by Richard Vedder, which appears today in Minding the Campus. Vedder shows that the majority of professors who teach our young people in the humanities are primarily on the Left, as he writes, “62.7 percent of faculty said that they were either ‘far left’ or ‘liberal,’ while only 11.9 percent said they were ‘far right’or ‘conservative.’ The notion that universities are hot beds for left-wing politics has a solid basis in fact. Moreover, the left-right imbalance is growing — a lot. The proportion of those on the left is rising, on the right declining.” The latest research reveals that there are 5.7 professors on the left for each one on the right!

The irony is that this occurs only in the academy, since studies also show that more and more Americans define themselves as basically conservative rather than liberal. So it should come as no surprise that the suburban middle-class and university-educated Americans, having learned their liberalism and leftism at college, vote the way that they do. One study shows that 41 percent of Americans call themselves conservative while only 21 percent call themselves liberal. Thus, as Vedder says, the university faculties are truly “out of sync” with the country at large....

Another realm of mis-education is that of the popular media. This week, I have written about this in an article published in The Weekly Standard, which fortunately the editors have not put behind their firewall. It is titled “A Story Told Before: Oliver Stone’s recycled leftist history of the United States.” Stone’s TV weekly series premiers Nov.12th on the CBS-owned network Showtime, and will eventually be used by leftist professors in their own history courses on our campuses. It is, I show, nothing less than a rehash of old Communist propaganda from the 1950s offered up as both something new and as the true hidden history of our country’s past.

Imagine how many television viewers, many of whom know virtually nothing about how we got to where we are, will learn from this expertly edited documentary how and why the United States is basically an evil nation, on the wrong course, and supported the wrong side in all foreign policy crises throughout its modern history. We cannot disregard the effect this kind of miseducation has on the knowledge of our fellow citizens. Do you wonder why the polls show that most Americans think Barack Obama’s foreign policy the past four years was successful? It is because they are a generation educated from “historians” like the late Howard Zinn, political theorists like the linguist Noam Chomsky, and now from filmmaker Stone and his historian co-author, Peter Kuznick.

Finally, I have a recommendation. For your left-leaning friends and associates, I highly recommend a new e-book written by my friend, the eminent historian Martin J. Sklar. It is called Letters on Obama (from the Left):The Global Revolution and the Obama Counter-Revolution. Sklar is sui generis. He calls himself a Marxist historian and a socialist. Yet the positions he takes — which he argues are those in defense of liberty — are positions regularly associated with conservatives and Republicans. You might consider this naiveté or an oxymoron. But any serious reader should take into consideration the insights he presents and the intellectual case that he musters...

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube, "October Revolution: This Time We Can Make It Work!"

Speaker John Boehner Caves on Amnesty

Lame.

At the New York Times, "Speaker ‘Confident’ of Deal With White House on Immigration":

WASHINGTON — Fresh off an election in which Hispanic voters largely sided with Democrats, Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that he was “confident” Congress and the White House could come up with a comprehensive immigration solution.

Immigration reform is “an important issue that I think ought to be dealt with,” Mr. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in an interview with Diane Sawyer on “ABC World News.”

“This issue has been around far too long,” he said, “and while I believe it’s important for us to secure our borders and to enforce our laws, I think a comprehensive approach is long overdue, and I’m confident that the president, myself, others, can find the common ground to take care of this issue once and for all.”

The words conveyed a new sense of urgency from Mr. Boehner, who said earlier this year that he thought it would be politically impossible to tackle a Republican proposal on the Dream Act, which sought to open a path to citizenship for some students in the United States illegally.

According to exit polls by Edison Research, President Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote compared with Mitt Romney’s 27 percent, a gap greater than Mr. Obama’s 36-point advantage with those voters over John McCain in 2008.

Though Mr. Boehner did not elaborate on his ideas, nor give a time frame, many lawmakers want to tackle immigration legislation in the next session of Congress. The lame-duck session starting next week will be devoted to dealing with pressing tax and deficit issues.

Well, let's face it: Obama's got political capital and he's collecting dues from the opposition. But frankly, the political benefits of immigration reform (open borders amnesty) will accrue to the Democrats. No matter what Republicans do they'll still be attacked as racist. That's the way it is. We may get reform. But the Democrats will only pad their electoral constituencies.

See Jeff Goldstein for more on that, "'Why Hispanics Don’t Vote for Republicans'."

PHOTO: "'Phoenix Rising' for SB 1070 at Arizona State Capitol."

The Party of Victory

From Caroline Glick, at National Review:

Next to the American people themselves, Israel is no doubt the biggest immediate loser in the U.S. presidential election. President Obama’s foreign policy is predicated on the false notion that the U.S. and Israel themselves are the principal causes of the Islamic world’s antipathy toward them. Consequently, Obama has cultivated the anti-American, genocidally anti-Jewish Muslim Brotherhood and facilitated the Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt and Tunisia and its gains in strength throughout the Middle East. In addition, Obama has appeased Iran’s Islamist regime and has enabled it to reach the cusp of nuclear capability.

Obama’s policy of relying on the United Nations has placed Israel’s diplomatic viability at risk as the Palestinians and the international Left that supports and feeds on their cause use the U.N. to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. Finally, Obama’s animosity toward Israel has strengthened the hand of anti-Israel forces within the Democratic party. In the coming years, Israel will become an increasingly partisan issue in American politics.

While Obama’s reelection clearly places Israel in jeopardy, the plain truth is that the inevitable continuation of his foreign policies places the United States at risk as well. The jihadist assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi must be viewed as a sign of things to come, just as al-Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole were precursors of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. mainland. Obama is empowering the United States’ worst enemies in the Sunni and Shiite Muslim worlds alike. Thereby emboldened, they place America at increased risk.

Israel can and must take the actions necessary to mitigate the dangers that Obama’s reelection poses to its national security and indeed its very survival. It must embrace its advantages in economic growth, the domestic support it can count on from its deeply patriotic populace, and its demographic advantages — it is the only Western country with a high and growing fertility rate. It must boldly assert its national rights. In its relationship with the U.S., it must move from being a dependent to being an ally. It must take the military steps necessary to prevent Iran from making good its promise to annihilate the Jewish state. It must deter the Muslim Brotherhood–led Egyptian military from making war against it.

As for the U.S., Israel’s allies in the Republican party and the conservative movement must now take a serious look at their own foreign policy positions and reassess them in the light of the Republican defeat in Tuesday’s elections and in the face of the growing dangers to the country that are the inevitable consequence of Obama’s reelection. This is not merely a partisan interest. It is a matter of the United States’ own national security...

...today and in the coming months and years, there will be a lot of soul-searching in the Republican party and the conservative movement over what went wrong in the 2012 elections. And with that soul-searching will come the inevitable temptation to adopt the Democrats’ policy of appeasement in a bid to woo various constituencies — suburban mothers, for example, and perhaps Muslim communities in Michigan, Tennessee, Minnesota, and other states. But Republicans must understand that, while this is tempting, it is a recipe for repeated electoral defeats. Democrats will always and forever be able to out-appease Republicans. And so constituencies that want the American government to appease our enemies will always and forever vote for them. If the Republicans wish to return to power in the foreseeable future, they must boldly draw a distinction between themselves as the party of victory and the Democrats as the party of defeat.

More at the link.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama Supporters Celebrate: 'No More Israel...'"

Revenge: Obama Says We Must Raise Taxes on the 'Rich'

Those making $200,000 annually are not "rich," nor are couples who're making $250,000 a year. And we don't have enough people at those income levels to fund the progressive grab bag for Obama's second term. Folks across the middle class are going to get soaked, even those at incomes of $100,000 or less.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Door Open to Compromise on Tax Breaks in 'Cliff' Talks":

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama invited congressional leaders to the White House next Friday to begin talks to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, opening the door to a possible compromise on taxes.

Mr. Obama said any deal would have to result in wealthy Americans paying more in taxes, but he notably did not repeat his campaign call to let the top tax rate rise on household incomes above $200,000 for individuals and above $250,000 for couples. That left open the possibility of raising tax revenue by limiting or eliminating tax deductions or other tax breaks for families above those thresholds.

Continue reading.

David Petraeus Resigns as Director of CIA

CNN is reporting.

Petraeus is said to have had an "extramarital affair."

Updates forthcoming...

12:07pm PST: At CNN, "BREAKING: CIA Director Petraeus resigning."

12:30pm PST: At London's Daily Mail, "David Petraeus resigns as head of CIA and apologises for 'unacceptable behaviour' after admitting to extra-marital affair."

12:38pm PST: There's lots of speculation at CNN. The administration's Benghazi debacle's coming in for major investigations in the weeks ahead, and the CIA will be in the crosshairs. More later. Meanwhile, check this poll at Theo Spark's, "Sorry but extra-marital affair is not enough to resign over! However it is enough to force him to resign when put under pressure by an administration desperate to hide the facts over Benghazi."

1:09pm PST: There's a huge Memeorandum thread building.

Charles Krauthammer Calls for Immigration Amnesty: 'Everything Short of Citizenship'

There's video at RCP, "Krauthammer Gives Election Post-Mortem: GOP Needs to Be Open to Amnesty." The key segment:

I think Republicans can change their position, be a lot more open to actual amnesty with enforcement. Amnesty, everything short of citizenship. And to make a bold change in their policy. Enforcement and then immediately after, a guarantee of amnesty. That would change everything. If you had a Rubio arguing that it would completely up-end all the ethnic alignments.

I can see the attraction politically, but amnesty's such a loathsome thing, a complete capitulation to progressivism, it's repulsive. But see Krauthammer's Friday column, FWIW, at WaPo, "The way forward":

They lose and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.

The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).

The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.

More at the link.

Mark Krikorian is having none of it, "Amnesty Is the Best Revenge":

The Chicken Little amnesty panic is underway among the Republican establishment. Boehner, Hannity, the Wall Street Journal, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Norquist, Krauthammer, et al. are announcing that in the wake of Romney’s loss the GOP can’t survive unless it revisits the failed Bush/Kennedy amnesty.

Read it all.

Frankly, I'm not looking forward to four years of conservative infighting over facilitating the left's open borders agenda. But I doubt this issue is going away anytime soon. The soul searching's going to be deep on the right, and with the demographic shifts seen in the data, conservatives will keep coming back to the question of how to win the Hispanic vote. I'll have more on this topic, no doubt.