How Everyone Feels About Edward #Snowden

GIFs, at BuzzFeed.

Katie Pavlich on Fox News Channel's 'The Five'

I think this was her first time on the show, or at least I don't remember her being on before.

She's very smart, a promising star in conservative media.

Jess Davies for Zoo Magazine (VIDEO)

A good lady.

And from last month at Egotastic!, "Jess Davies Black Thong Only Goodness for Ta-Ta-Tuesdays."

Edward Snowden's Mysterious Flight to Cuba

Folks thought that dude boarded an Aeroflot jet to Havana, but there was no sign of him when the thing landed, making the media entourage look like a bunch of blithering idiots.

Here's WikiLeaks' statement:

And at Mother Jones, "WikiLeaks: We Know Where Snowden Is, But We're Not Telling You."

WikiLeaks statements on Snowden asylum | SBS http://t.co/2HjWAXCr6i

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 25, 2013

And at the New Yorker, "Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On?" (via Memeorandum).

Continued Debate Over U.S. Intervention in Syria

Well, we're intervening now, in a big way and without disguising anything about it.

And readers know I don't favor a U.S. escalation at this point. (I wouldn't have favored big U.S. involvement about 18 months ago, when clearly American intervention would have been ahead of the curve.)

But I'm my headline above is sticking with that of Ron Radosh, at Pajamas Media, "Should the U.S. Intervene in Syria? The Debate Continues":

Last week, I presented my own reasons for why I think it is futile to go into Syria. I respect the arguments and analysis of those who favor intervention. I understand their motivations and their frustrations, all the result of our president’s failed policies. I comprehend Elliott Abrams’ analysis, and his argument that “the central fact about the region today is Iran’s use of raw power in Syria, with Russian support.” To counter Iran and Russia, Abrams believes that necessitates arming the rebels and more, and the announcement of a coherent and strong U.S. policy on Iran and Hezbollah. Abrams cites the work of Frederic C. Hof, who believes that we are militarily capable of stepping in without “boots on the ground,” and that we can “destroy and degrade” Assad’s capability without our own forces getting involved. Hof writes: “Syrians are being slaughtered and U.S. friends and allies are suffering the consequences. A family regime supported by terrorists threatens to plunge the region into war as it systematically wrecks the Syrian state.” But he thinks the U.S. can act even without a no-fly zone, which others see as a necessary first step.

For laymen like most readers and me, we can only consider the judgment of the experts, and then try to sort out their arguments and to reach our own conclusions. For now, I still believe intervention is shortsighted and likely to bring even worse results. I agree with my PJM colleague Victor Davis Hanson, who argues the following at National Review Online:

There is no guarantee that American air support or close training might not end up in some sort of American ground presence — the only sure guarantee that so-called moderates might prevail should Assad fall. Of course, any costly intervention would eventually be orphaned by many in the present chorus of interventionists in a manner that we also know well from Iraq. We are told that dealing a blow to Iran and Hezbollah would be a good thing, and no doubt it would be. But in the callous calculus of realpolitik, both seem already to be suffering without U.S. intervention.

And I take serious notice of the admonition of Michael Rubin, who recently returned from a trip through Iraq, where he often goes. Rubin writes that “many Iraqi Shi’ites warned against any support for the Syrian opposition, claiming they were more radical than the Americans realized,” and that they were joined in this analysis by Iraqi Kurds, Christians, and Sunnis. Rubin thus advocates only the use of U.S. air power, which he thinks is sufficient to stop Assad. He argues: “Arming the Syrian rebels is wrong and would gravely undercut U.S. national security.”

RTWT.

Radosh has an excellent review of recent arguments over intervention.

PREVIOUSLY: "Should We Use Airpower to Attack Syria?"

Our Hapless, Powerless President Can't Do Jack About Edward Snowden's Global Jetsetting

I read this piece at Politico last night, and it's devastating, "On Edward Snowden's travel, no good options for President Obama":

Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong comes a day after a senior administration official warned that failure to extradite Snowden “will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong’s commitment to the rule of law.”

The Justice Department had been in continual contact with Hong Kong officials at senior levels since learning June 10 that Snowden had relocated there, the department said Sunday, including a call last week from Attorney General Eric Holder directly to Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen.

The State Department, the U.S. consulate and the FBI had also repeatedly engaged their Hong Kong counterparts during that two-week period.

While Hong Kong’s government said Sunday that Snowden’s departure was via “a lawful and normal channel,” the Justice Department expressed frustration with the decision.

“The request for the fugitive’s arrest for purposes of his extradition complied with all of the requirements of the U.S./Hong Kong Surrender Agreement,” a Justice Department representative said in a statement.

“At no point, in all of our discussions through Friday, did the authorities in Hong Kong raise any issues regarding the sufficiency of the U.S.’s provisional arrest request. In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling.”

Earlier Sunday, the Justice Department had said it would continue to discuss the matter with Hong Kong and to “pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to allow Snowden to change planes at Moscow’s airport on the first leg of his j0urney comes just a week after an icy bilateral G-8 appearance with Obama, where the Russian leader noted bluntly that on Syria, the positions of the United States and Russia “do not coincide.”

One reason Putin isn’t likely to cooperate now, Talbott said, is that the United States would almost certainly take in a Russian operative who admitted to leaking information about that country’s secret surveillance programs.

“If the shoe were on the other foot, if there was somebody who was wanted in Russia for leaking classified material would we feel obliged to turn them over?” Talbott said. “I don’t know, I kinda doubt it.”

In fact, there is little the United States could do now to secure Snowden’s return that wouldn’t chance creating more problems than it solves.

“I don’t see from my limited knowledge of how the world operates that there is any prospect of getting him back unless we were to interdict one of these flights,” said Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “It’s in the realm of the possible, but not the likely. It would have serious consequences for relations with countries that I don’t think we are interested in poking right now.”

RTWT.

Charles Krauthammer drove the point home on this afternoon's Special Report All Stars.

#HeadDesk Tweets From Student Power NC

I thought this was a parody tweet for a second, but no.

The students' Twitter feed is here.

At Twitchy, "Morons untie! Lefty NC students triumph over forces that tried to ‘concor’ them."

For realz? RT @mkhammer Is are chilldrin lurning? RT @studentpowernc: They tried to divide and concor but they only untied us. #moralmonday
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 24, 2013

Dana Loesch has another one here.

10 Problems With the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill

The Senate's voting right now on the "Border Surge" amendment, and it's getting significant GOP backing, the damned amnesty shills.

I'll have updates. Meanwhile, see the Heritage Foundation's report.

Angelina Jolie Blasts United Nations for Inaction on Wartime Sex Crimes

At WaPo, "Angelina Jolie makes debut before UN’s most powerful body to urge an end to rape in war."

ADDED: From London's Daily Mail, "'This horror must end': Defiant Angelina Jolie suits up as she urges world leaders to combat warzone rape during impassioned appeal before U.N. Security Council."

Some Afternoon Heidi Klum

She keeps in shape, via Twitter:

I'm back running! #HKNB pic.twitter.com/ICUMlgsLnm

— Heidi Klum (@heidiklum) June 23, 2013

And at Egotastic!, "Heidi Klum Braless in the Park."

Supreme Court Punts in Fisher v. University of Texas

Recent analyses of the Court have stressed Chief Justice John Roberts' efforts to position the Court as a restrained judicial institution, and not an activist political one.

That said, this ruling may be more significant than meets the eye.

Background at the New York Times, "Justices Send Affirmative Action Case to Lower Court":

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered lower courts to take a fresh look, under a more demanding standard, at the race-conscious admissions policy used to admit students to the University of Texas. The 7-to-1 decision was simultaneously modest and significant, and its recalibration of how courts review the constitutionality of affirmative action programs is likely to give rise to a wave of challenges to admissions programs at colleges and universities nationwide.

The brief decision, issued eight months after the case was argued, was almost surely the product of intense negotation among the justices. The compromise they reached was at least a reprieve for affirmative action in higher education, and civil rights groups that had feared for the future of race-conscious admission programs breathed a sigh of relief.

For now, the Texas program and other affirmative action programs can continue without changes.

The decision did not disturb the Supreme Court’s general approach to affirmative action in admissions decisions, saying that educational diversity is a government interest sufficient to overcome the general ban on racial classifications by the government. But the court added that public institutions must have good reasons to use the particular means they use to achieve that goal.

That requirement could endanger the Texas program when it is reconsidered by the federal appeals court in New Orleans. The program admits most students under race-neutral criteria, accepting all students in the state who graduate near the top of their high school classes. But the university also uses a race-conscious system as a supplement.

“Strict scrutiny,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “does not permit a court to accept a school’s assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without closely examining how the process works in practice.”

Courts reviewing affirmative action programs must, he wrote, “verify that it is necessary for a university to use race to achieve the educational benefits of diversity.” That requires, he said, “a careful judicial inquiry into whether a university could achieve sufficient diversity without using racial classifications.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who announced her lone dissent from the bench, said the race-neutral part of the Texas program worked only because of “de facto racial segregation in Texas’s neighborhoods and schools.” She said she would have upheld the appeals court decision endorsing the entire admissions program.

The remaining justices, including ones friendly and hostile to affirmative action, agreed on a middle ground, though Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each issued dissents indicating that they would vote to strike down race-conscious admission plans in a future case.

RTWT.

Sandra Day O'Connor and John Paul Stephens were in the courtroom today. Interesting.

More at Memeorandum.

And William Jacobson has a roundup, "Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision," and Ilya Somin, at Volokh, "Competing Interpretations of Fisher." (That's a must read.)

Also, Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog, "Finally! The Fisher decision in Plain English."

Plus lots at Althouse, "'It offends me that the court failed to exert any kind of leadership with this decision'," and "'There is disagreement about whether Grutter was consistent with the principles of equal protection.... But the parties here do not ask the Court to revisit that aspect of Grutter’s holding'."

More from Althouse, "The worst forms of racial discrimination in this Nation have always been accompanied by straight-faced representations that discrimination helped minorities'," and "'If you think that you can think about a thing inextricably attached to something else without thinking of the thing which it is attached to, then you have a legal mind'."

Here's a whiny piece, from S. Mitra Kalita analysis at Quartz, "The Supreme Court sent the Fisher case back, but make no mistake: Affirmative action is dead." And from Richard Kahlenberg, at Slate, "The Next Affirmative Action?"

Shop Amazon

Consider Deneen Borelli, Blacklash: How Obama and the Left Are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation.

Or click on the banner to shop around.

MSNBC Broadcasts F-Bombs During Zimmerman Trial Coverage

This is funny.

At Twitchy, "‘F’ is for flub: MSNBC apologizes after airing Zimmerman trial F-bombs; Returns viewers to another F-bomb."

The f-bombs were flying even after Chuck Todd announced the network would go with a 7-second delay.

Child Chained Up and Forced to Watch Parents Murdered by Obama-Backed Syrian Rebels

At Atlas Shrugs, "SYRIAN CHILD TIED UP IN CHAINS AND FORCED TO WATCH THE MURDER OF HER PARENTS BY OBAMA BACKED JIHADISTS":

According to Syrian Truth’s Facebook page, the above photo is of a toddler living in the Deir ez-Zor Governate in eastern Syria, bordering Iraq. She was tied up by members of the U.S.-supported “Free Syrian Army” — which is dominated by foreign, Sunni jihadis — and made to watch as her mother and father were killed for being Shia. Here is how the Obama administration is using your tax dollars — mockingly in the name of “freedom.”

Snowden Flees to Moscow, Asks Ecuador for Asylum

At the Wall Street Journal, "Snowden on the Run: Leaker Flees Hong Kong for Moscow, Asks Ecuador for Asylum."

! "In part, Mr. Snowden's determination to leave Hong Kong was based on the fear of losing access to the Internet" http://t.co/eBdqUMD1HX
— Emily Parker (@emilydparker) June 24, 2013

Taliban Kill 10 Tourists in Pakistan

They were mountaineers.

At USA Today, "Taliban kill 10 foreign climbers, Pakistani guide."

There's going to be a lot more of these killings as the U.S. heads for the exits in Afghanistan.

South Texas Sees Increase in Illegal Immigrant Deaths

Now this is a bit more realistic for the Los Angeles Times, "Border crossers face high risk in South Texas":

FALFURRIAS, Texas — The South Texas sun had scorched the woman's face. Flies swarmed over her lips. Under a nearby mesquite plant, a plastic water jug lay empty.

Brooks County Chief Deputy Sheriff Urbino Martinez picked it up and walked back to a group of officials gathered around the sprawled body of the dead migrant.

"She got left behind for some reason," he said. "Either she got ill or she just got tired and they left her, knowing very well she wasn't going to get out of this area."

Justice of the Peace Roel Villarreal noticed that the woman's pants were pulled down around her hips, and her shirt was wrapped over her shoulders — signs of the woman's desperate struggle to cool down, he said.

"When it's damn hot, that's what you do before you die," Villarreal said.

Across the desert expanses of California and Arizona, thousands have perished over the years while attempting to cross illegally into the United States. Now another region, this one in Texas, has become a lethal magnet for increasing numbers of migrants.

Many of these deaths occur as they try to make it through the vast ranch lands that surround a Border Patrol checkpoint on U.S. Highway 281, some 70 miles north of the border. It is the last obstacle for migrants trying to get to Houston, so they attempt to go around it by the hundreds every night.

The Rio Grande Valley recently surpassed the Tucson sector as the area with the most migrant arrests. The surging traffic has besieged border agents at the once-relatively tranquil checkpoint near the small town of Falfurrias. It also illuminates one of the major obstacles to a comprehensive immigration overhaul being debated in the Senate.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who visited the region in May, has expressed reluctance to support any bill that would not guarantee a 90% arrest rate of all illegal crossers, including a proposal unveiled Thursday that would double the size of the Border Patrol. He has cited the growing death count as evidence that the border remains out of control at the southern tip of Texas.

"As a policymaker, I have a responsibility to find real solutions to these issues that are all too familiar to Texans," Cornyn wrote in an op-ed published by Fox News. "Anything less only perpetuates this grotesque human tragedy playing out every day on American soil."

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "L.A. Times Pooh-Poohs Border Security."

Bush Official Defends Obama on #NSA Scandal

That would be Marc Thiessen, who is interviewed by Lee Stranahan at Big Government:

Theissen has been a passionate defender of the NSA and the programs exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden. He believes that conservative critics of the NSA need to pause and reconsider their attacks. He points out the PRISM program that's been the subject of much controversy was put into place by the Bush Administration and has been widely mis-characterized.

In an exclusive interview, he told Breitbart News "Programs like this are the only thing we have to protect us from terror. There are three ways to stop terrorists from carrying out an attack: interrogation, infiltration and interception. We've stopped interrogations. Infiltration has proven incredibly hard with these groups. So we're left with interception; using information to try and keep the worst from happening."

Theissen's assessment of the importance of PRISM is blunt: "If we lose this, we're blind."

RTWT.

I agree with him completely.

PREVIOUSLY: "Yes, Publishing #NSA Secrets Is a Crime."

Sen. Mike Lee Slams 1,200 Page Immigration Reform Clusterf-k

At Fox News, "Senators tout 70 votes for immigration reform as Paul predicts bill already 'dead' in House."

Lee remains steadfast that passing the roughly 1,200-page bill is a mistake. He continues to argue that Congress should take a more step-by-step approach, starting with further securing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It could take years to implement the border-security measures,” he said.

Lee said the lawmakers crafted the bill with the “best intentions” but failed.

“They said it is tough and fair, but it’s neither,” he said.

The bill would provide a years-long path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S.

Lee was joined on Fox by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican member of the Gang of Eight. “We are very, very close,” Graham said. “The amendment gets us over the top.”

The West's Capitulation in Afghanistan

An analysis by Christoph Sydow, at Der Spiegel, "U.S.-Taliban Talks in Doha":

After 12 years of war and thousands of deaths on both sides, the US and the Taliban are finally ready to talk peace. While the West hopes to smooth its withdrawal, human rights organizations forecast the return of dark times for women and minorities.

In April 2007, Kurt Beck, then the head of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), suggested that there should be a peace conference for Afghanistan that would include all of the relevant groups, including the Taliban. The idea earned him nothing but scorn. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives vented their ire, and Rangin Spanta, Afghanistan's foreign minister at the time, went so far as to brand Beck clueless.

But now, six years later, Beck's idea is actually being implemented. On Tuesday, the Taliban held an opening celebration for its new office in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The Islamists want to host peace negotiations there with the Afghan government and the White House. Afghan President Hamid Karzai remains coy on the issue, but talks between the Taliban and the US government are supposed to kick off within the next few days.

The parties to the conflict have already been holding secret talks for some years, and representatives have also met in Germany on several occasions. But now, for the first time since the beginning of international military intervention in the Hindu Kush in 2001, the Taliban will take an official seat at the negotiation table. The extremists had refused to participate in any of the previous Afghanistan conferences, which have been held at irregular intervals.

Can There Be a 'Moderate Taliban'?

But now things have changed. The United States and its allies are planning a semi-orderly withdraw of combat troops from the troubled country. At the same time that the Taliban opened its office in Doha, Karzai announced that the Afghan army had officially taken over responsibility for security in the entire country from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan. By the end of 2014, almost 100,000 foreign soldiers are supposed to have pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving only military trainers behind.

NATO countries hope that they can at least leave behind a country that isn't steeped in chaos. In 2001, the West set lofty goals for Afghanistan, including implementing democracy, safeguarding human rights and fostering responsible governance. But the states contributing forces to ISAF gave up on achieving such goals long ago. The United States has signalled that the Taliban will be allowed to do what it wants as long as it refrains from allowing international terrorists to seek refuge in the areas it controls.

The oft-expressed distinction between "moderate" and "radical" Taliban elements straddles precisely this border. On the one side, there are the Taliban members who want to usher in a global Islamic empire with the help of al-Qaida. On the other are those who would be satisfied with ruling in Kabul.

What unites both groups is their disregard for the rights of women and minorities. Human Rights Watch is already painting a grim picture of the future of women's rights in the country, and Amnesty International is complaining about extensive violations of human rights. In its annual report, the latter said that women and girls are already being subjected to particular and repeated violence.

No, there's no "moderate" Taliban. Things are going to turn out badly.

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Afghanistan: Obama Surrenders."