Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Shot by Gunman at Townhall Event in Tucson — Progressives Blame Sarah Palin 'Hit List'

This is breaking. Conflicting reports.

Huffington Post's headline reported earlier that she was killed (now revised), although Crooks and Liars still has this as of 12:00pm (and check the comments there as well):

But Daily Caller has this, "CONGRESSWOMAN SHOT: U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head during a public event in Arizona, with conflicting reports as to her fate." (And some commenters there are applauding the shooting as evidence of the "evils of conservatism.")

I'm praying for everyone involved.

Expect updates.

12:18pm: Here's Representative Gifford's tweet from this morning: "My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now. Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later." Screencap added:

12:23pm: Crooks and Liars has amended its headline. And at New York Times, "Condition of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Remains Unclear."

12:45pm: TBogg Demon Seed blames Sarah Palin, "Fuck it, I'm going there":

12:50pm: Sarah Palin has released a statement:

My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona.

On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.

- Sarah Palin.

And Jane Hamsher's playing up the "hit list" angle, "Giffords Opponent, Jesse Kelly, Held June Event to “Shoot a Fully Automatic M16″ to “Get on Target” and “Remove Gabrielle Giffords”."

1:05pm: Daily Kos scrubbed this post, but here's the cached version:, "My CongressWOMAN Voted Against Nancy Pelosi And is Now Dead to Me!"

1:15pm: From Pat Dollard, "REPORTS CHANGING, SEE HISTORY BELOW: GIFFORDS IN SURGERY, “RESPONDING TO COMMANDS” - UPDATE: FEDERAL JUDGE CONFIRMED DEAD, STATE SENATOR LINDA LOPEZ SAYS “AFGHANISTAN VET” COMMITTED SHOOTING, BLAMES TEA PARTY."

Also, at The Other McCain, "ARIZONA OUTRAGE: Congresswoman, Several Others Shot in Tucson - UPDATE: Conflicting Reports on Giffords":

Regardless of who perpetrated this outrage or why, it’s terribly harmful to the political process.

While I was on Capitol Hill for swearing-in events Wednesday, I saw Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ-7) walk past on the sidewalk. He was walking alone, with no aides or anybody else with him. I said hello, smiled and waved.

1:33pm. Shooter is identified as 22 year-old Jared Loughner. Pamela Geller has more: "Arizona Shooter Jared Laughner: A Certified Nut." The Knoxville Daily Sun claims that Laughner was "inspired" by "Sara Palin" [sic].

2:10pm: Another progressive blog with a big roundup implicating Sarah Palin, "Sarah Palin’s Target List and the Assassination of Gabrielle Giffords."

Also, at Wizbang, "That Giant Flushing Sound You Hear ... is thousands of diaries at Daily Kos getting purged in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford (D-AZ)."

2:45pm: At WaPo, "Hospital: Rep. Giffords expected to recover from Tucson shooting that killed six including a child and federal judge."

And an update from the New York Times report cited above:

Ms. Giffords, 40, was described as being in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons. Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said that she had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

“I can tell you at this time, I am very optimistic about her recovery,” Dr. Rhee said in a news conference. “We cannot tell what kind of recovery but I’m as optimistic as it can get in this kind of situation.”

3:15pm: Here's Markos Moulitsas on Twitter:

3:28pm: At Fox News, "President Obama Offers Support to Arizona After Tragic Shooting."

5:38pm: At Politics Daily, "Sarah Palin Blamed by Bloggers for Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords," and NewsBusters, "Jane Fonda Blames Giffords Shooting on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party."

And at Time, "Is Violent Rhetoric Behind the Attack on Giffords?":

Sometimes, rumors of violence beget actual violence. Saturday's mass shooting at a Safeway on North Oracle Road in Tucson, which left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition and at least nine others wounded, may well be one of those occasions.

The author then goes on whine about the conservative backlash against illegal immigration, claiming that the threat of violence in Arizona, following the Krenz killing, has been completely overblown.

Nope. No trying to score political points there.

Plus, a roundup at Instapundit.

6:07pm: The shooter doesn't fit into any particular ideological frame, despite the best efforst of the progressive left. See the Arizona Daily Star, "Man linked to Giffords shooting called 'very disturbed'."

And at Fox News, "Giffords Likely Faces Long Road to Recovery."

Plus, at NYT, "2nd Suspect Sought in Arizona Shooting."

Birgitta Jónsdóttir

I saw this on Twitter last night, and no denying her updates are fascinating (here, for example). So is her homepage. She's a political radical and former WikiLeaks activist who co-produced the "Collateral Damage" propaganda video, and a Member of the Icelandic Parliament now in the spotlight during the latest turn in the ongoing WikiLeaks investigation See NYT, "U.S. Subpoenas Twitter Over WikiLeaks Supporters" (and Memeorandum):

The move to get the information from five prominent figures tied to the group was revealed late Friday when Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland’s Parliament, said she had received a notification of the subpoena from the social networking site Twitter.

The United States government, she said in a subsequent message, “wants to know about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?”

The subpoena, obtained by the Web site Salon.com, was issued by the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on Dec. 14 and asks for the complete account information of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the United States Army intelligence specialist awaiting a military court martial under suspicion of leaking materials to WikiLeaks, as well as Ms. Jonsdottir, Mr. Assange, and two computer programmers, Rop Gonggrijp and Jacob Appelbaum. That information includes addresses, screen names, telephone numbers, and credit card and bank account numbers. But the subpoena does not ask for the content of private messages sent using Twitter.

It was unsealed, allowing Twitter to inform those concerned, on Jan. 5.

RELATED: From Jónsdóttir last January, " A Call to the People of the World to Support Iceland Against the Financial Blackmail of the British and Dutch Governments and the IMF."

Why Do People Love Stieg Larsson's Novels?

A great piece from Joan Acocella, at The New Yorker, "Man of Mystery."

I'm getting up to speed on Stieg Larsson. Moe Tkacik's last essay at WCP cites the Lisbeth Salander novels, "Julian Assange, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the Swedish Approach to Sex Crimes." She was fired shortly thereafter for breaking from the extreme gender-feminist pack. (My Twitter exchange with her is here.)

Anyway, here's this from the Acocella essay:

It is clear what people like in these movies, but what accounts for the success of the novels, despite their almost comical faults? Larsson may have had a weakness for extraneous detail, but at the same time, paradoxically, he is a very good storyteller. (Mario Vargas Llosa, in an article on the trilogy, compared Larsson to Dumas père.) As for cheap thrills, there’s dirt aplenty and considerable mayhem.

Early in the trilogy, we find out that when Lisbeth was a child her mother was regularly beaten senseless by her mate, Alexander Zalachenko, a Russian spy who had defected to Sweden, where a secret branch of the security police put him on the payroll, thinking that he could tell them useful secrets. Lisbeth told the police about Zalachenko’s assaults on her mother, only to be put away for two years in a sta

te psychiatric hospital. This is the main source of what, in the novel’s present, is Lisbeth’s utter distrust of any government institution, down to the local police. At the end of “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” she has a showdown with Zalachenko. This is a brilliantly orchestrated scene, if you can stand it. Zalachenko shoots Lisbeth in the head. (She runs her fingers over her skull. She finds the hole, feels her wet brain.) Zalachenko and his sidekick, Ronald Niedermann, bury her hastily, failing to notice—they’re in a dark wood—that she is still alive. Once they’re gone, she digs herself out, returns to Zalachenko’s hideout, and sinks an axe in his face.

Near the end of the last book, Niedermann holes up in a brickworks that Zalachenko once owned. When he arrives, he finds two Russian girls, a brunette and a blonde, who have been deposited there by sex traffickers. They are afraid to go outside, and are starving. Niedermann brings them some soup. Then he grabs the brunette and breaks her neck with a single twist. The other watches, and puts up no resistance when it is her turn. You don’t forget such episodes—the truly innocent at the mercy of the truly evil—and they lead directly into the absolutist morals of Larsson’s books, which may also be a powerful selling point. Lisbeth believes that people are responsible for what they do, no matter what was done to them, and plenty was done to her. The trilogy is, to some extent, a revenge story—a popular genre. (Think of “Death Wish” or “True Grit.”) Lisbeth not only cleaves Zalachenko’s skull; she beats up two large bikers simultaneously and, with a Taser, delivers fifty thousand volts to Niedermann’s crotch. The woman warrior has become a beloved feature of the movies, from Nikita to Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft, and beyond. It is also, reportedly, a sexual fantasy popular with men—something else that may have helped to sell the books.

According to certain researchers, another sexual fantasy common among men is rape. Larsson’s campaign against the abuse of power eventually became focussed on one victimized group: women. A friend of Larsson’s tells the story that, at the age of fifteen, Larsson watched as several boys he knew gang-raped a girl. Later, ashamed, he telephoned the girl and asked her to forgive him. She refused. He is said never to have forgotten this episode. In these three violent novels, no species of assault is more highly featured than the rape of women by men. Furthermore, you can’t go twelve pages without being almost screamed at on the subject of feminism. Larsson’s original title for his trilogy was “Men Who Hate Women.” (This remained the title of the first book in the Swedish edition. Gedin says that he absolutely insisted.) All the sections of the first book are prefaced with statistics on crimes against women. The epigraphs in the third book all have to do with female warriors—the Amazons, and so on.

Yet some critics have accused Larsson of having his feminism and eating it, too. They say that, under cover of condemning violence against women, he has supplied, for the reader’s enjoyment, quite a few riveting scenes of violence against women. There are indeed many such scenes, the most vile being the sex murders in the first book. It should be noted, however, that we never see those crimes. They are in the past—they are told to Mikael and Lisbeth, and hence to us. Other crimes against women get curiously brief coverage. Niedermann’s murder of the two Russian girls takes only four lines.

In terms of the plot, the most important crime in the novel’s present time is the rape of Lisbeth by her state-appointed guardian, Nils Bjurman, but, while we’re told that her clothes are torn off and that something is then rammed up her anus, we don’t hear much more. The episode occupies only one page. By contrast, when Lisbeth returns to Bjurman’s apartment to rape him, in the same way, this is given more than six pages, and the assault acquires significant embellishment. On Bjurman’s torso, from his nipples to just above his crotch, Lisbeth tattoos, in big letters, “I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.” Some of the people who accuse Larsson of double-dealing may be thinking more of the film “Dragon Tattoo,” where the two scenes are more equal in length, and where everything is more horrible just by virtue of being there, on the screen, for us to look at.

Another consideration that would seem to deflect charges of misogyny is simply the character of Lisbeth. She is a complicated person, alienating and poignant at the same time. Many critics have stressed her apparent coldness. In the scene of her revenge against Bjurman, her face never betrays hatred or fear. When the rape is over, she sits in a chair, smokes a cigarette, and stubs it out on his rug. (He is tied up.) Accordingly, some writers have called her a sociopath. Larsson, too, said that once, but elsewhere he described her as a grownup version of Pippi Longstocking, the badly behaved and happy nine-year-old heroine of a series of books, by Astrid Lindgren, beloved of Swedish children. Pippi, Lindgren wrote unsentimentally, “had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed.” Lisbeth wears leather and studs. She has a ring implanted in her left labium. She doesn’t particularly like to be around people. But she is not a sociopath. The primary diagnostic feature of sociopathy is callousness—lack of feeling—toward others. Lisbeth falls in love with Mikael. She brings gifts—cake and perfume—to her mother, who is in a home for the mentally impaired. (Zalachenko’s beatings finally caused brain damage.) She operates outside society but not outside morality. She is an outlaw, or a sprite—a punk fairy.

Sunset Over Catalina Island From Corona del Mar

New camera, first day out.

More on this later ...

Progressives Want to Read Slavery Back Into Constitution

A couple of sections of the Constitution were inadvertently omitted from yesterday's reading on the floor of the House of Representatives:

The U.S. Constitution has still never been read in its entirety and in order on the House floor.

During Thursday morning’s “historic reading,” one member apparently skipped Article 4 Section 4 and part of Article 5 Section 1 when he or she inadvertently turned two pages at once, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who was in charge of the reading, said on the House floor this afternoon.

Goodlatte returned to the House floor at 2:23 p.m., more than two hours after the error occurred, read the missing sections, and placed them officially in the congressional record.

But progressives are pissed that sections no longer part of the document were not read, for example, the three-fifths compromise, formerly of Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3, dealing with the compromises over slavery. It's obvious why that's important to lefties. Rather than celebrate and honor the history of this nation's founding, they seek to use sections no longer part of the document to hammer those with whom they disagree. See Rachel Maddow, for example, "Three-Fifths of a Reading." Perhaps even worse is listening to this discussion with Keith Olbermann and Yale political scientist Akhil Reed Amar. Here what progressives despise is limited government, a concept that never leaves the lips of either of these men. Clearly such a complicated thing as the founding can be interpreted even twisted to fit whatever framework the advocate wishes. But to make the Founders into modern-day progressives is preposterous. And I shudder to think of the students who set foot into this professor's classroom. What an agenda! Contrast that to the discussion by Peter Berkowitz, "What Would a Return to the Constitution Entail?" (via Instapundit).

Fortified by historic Republican electoral gains at the federal and state levels last November, Tea Party activists and the new generation of Republicans led by rising star freshman Senator Marco Rubio, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor have reaffirmed their intention to return to the Constitution. To underscore that intention, Republican representatives kicked off the 112th Congress with a piece of provocative and potentially instructive political theater by, for the first time in the nation’s history, reading aloud the 224 year old document on the House floor. But what does such a return entail?

Some hard-driving conservatives see it as an opportunity to restore simplicity and purity to democratic self-government. Meanwhile, many influential progressive politicians and pundits are determined to hear in talk of return a reckless and reactionary repudiation of the modern welfare state.

In fact, an informed and thoughtful return to the Constitution will take seriously the devotion to individual liberty and limited government shared by the original Federalist proponents of the Constitution and their Anti-Federalist opponents. It will learn from the intricately separated and blended political institutions that the Constitution established to impose restraint and allow for energy and efficiency. And it should culminate in the recovery of the spirit of political moderation that the Constitution embodies and on which its preservation depends.

My sense is this is the appropriate way to read both the Constitution and the goals of the tea party. Compare that to Professor Amar's elaboration of the number of times taxation is mentioned in Article 1, Sec. 8. The distinction between constitutionally enumerated powers and political sources of government expansion are completely ignored. Nothing there requires the erection of Leviathan. Again, I'm astounded how aggressive Professor Amar wants to tamp down discussion of the sources of liberty in federalism and the dispersion of power. I mean, to do so is practically --- wait for it --- RAAAAACIST!!

RELATED: "Time for Some Small-Government Optimism … and to Repeal ObamaCare," and "In U.S., 46% Favor, 40% Oppose Repealing Healthcare Law" (via Memeorandum).

Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change

I mentioned previously that one of the extreme gender feminists suggested on Twitter that the #MooreandMe protest was something akin to a new civil rights movement. No doubt there's quite a bit of self-congratulations there. And while the gender feminists did gain a lot of attention, the power of Twitter and other media is to mobilize social change through strengthening civil society. The new media gets people out in the streets, to the ballot box, raising money and distributing information. This is not to minimize the leveling effect we saw with this most recent feminist campaign, but large-scale political effects of social technology will vary across regime development, or at least that's one of the things I'm getting from Clay Shirky's article at Foreign Affairs, "The Political Power of Social Media." While Shirky discusses the new social media as a global phenomenon, the essay focuses on the potential for revolutionary change in authoritarian regimes. The established democracies aren't prone to regime change of this sort, although some of those in the U.S. and Europe are backing the WikiLeaks project with such hope in mind. That said, it's an informative discussion at the article. The key point is the contrast between "instrumental" and "environmental" approaches to Internet freedom. The former relates to U.S. efforts to pressure repressive regimes to open access to online information sources. The latter focuses on the more traditional theme of opening civil society in general, taking the long view to social and political change:

In January 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined how the United States would promote Internet freedom abroad. She emphasized several kinds of freedom, including the freedom to access information (such as the ability to use Wikipedia and Google inside Iran), the freedom of ordinary citizens to produce their own public media (such as the rights of Burmese activists to blog), and the freedom of citizens to converse with one another (such as the Chinese public's capacity to use instant messaging without interference).

Most notably, Clinton announced funding for the development of tools designed to reopen access to the Internet in countries that restrict it. This "instrumental" approach to Internet freedom concentrates on preventing states from censoring outside Web sites, such as Google, YouTube, or that of The New York Times. It focuses only secondarily on public speech by citizens and least of all on private or social uses of digital media. According to this vision, Washington can and should deliver rapid, directed responses to censorship by authoritarian regimes.

The instrumental view is politically appealing, action-oriented, and almost certainly wrong. It overestimates the value of broadcast media while underestimating the value of media that allow citizens to communicate privately among themselves. It overestimates the value of access to information, particularly information hosted in the West, while underestimating the value of tools for local coordination. And it overestimates the importance of computers while underestimating the importance of simpler tools, such as cell phones.

The instrumental approach can also be dangerous. Consider the debacle around the proposed censorship-circumvention software known as Haystack, which, according to its developer, was meant to be a "one-to-one match for how the [Iranian] regime implements censorship." The tool was widely praised in Washington; the U.S. government even granted it an export license. But the program was never carefully vetted, and when security experts examined it, it turned out that it not only failed at its goal of hiding messages from governments but also made it, in the words of one analyst, "possible for an adversary to specifically pinpoint individual users." In contrast, one of the most successful anti-censorship software programs, Freegate, has received little support from the United States, partly because of ordinary bureaucratic delays and partly because the U.S. government is wary of damaging U.S.-Chinese relations: the tool was originally created by Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that the Chinese government has called "an evil cult." The challenges of Freegate and Haystack demonstrate how difficult it is to weaponize social media to pursue country-specific and near-term policy goals.

New media conducive to fostering participation can indeed increase the freedoms Clinton outlined, just as the printing press, the postal service, the telegraph, and the telephone did before. One complaint about the idea of new media as a political force is that most people simply use these tools for commerce, social life, or self-distraction, but this is common to all forms of media. Far more people in the 1500s were reading erotic novels than Martin Luther's "Ninety-five Theses," and far more people before the American Revolution were reading Poor Richard's Almanack than the work of the Committees of Correspondence. But those political works still had an enormous political effect.

Just as Luther adopted the newly practical printing press to protest against the Catholic Church, and the American revolutionaries synchronized their beliefs using the postal service that Benjamin Franklin had designed, today's dissident movements will use any means possible to frame their views and coordinate their actions; it would be impossible to describe the Moldovan Communist Party's loss of Parliament after the 2009 elections without discussing the use of cell phones and online tools by its opponents to mobilize. Authoritarian governments stifle communication among their citizens because they fear, correctly, that a better-coordinated populace would constrain their ability to act without oversight.

Despite this basic truth -- that communicative freedom is good for political freedom -- the instrumental mode of Internet statecraft is still problematic. It is difficult for outsiders to understand the local conditions of dissent. External support runs the risk of tainting even peaceful opposition as being directed by foreign elements. Dissidents can be exposed by the unintended effects of novel tools. A government's demands for Internet freedom abroad can vary from country to country, depending on the importance of the relationship, leading to cynicism about its motives.

The more promising way to think about social media is as long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere. In contrast to the instrumental view of Internet freedom, this can be called the "environmental" view. According to this conception, positive changes in the life of a country, including pro-democratic regime change, follow, rather than precede, the development of a strong public sphere. This is not to say that popular movements will not successfully use these tools to discipline or even oust their governments, but rather that U.S. attempts to direct such uses are likely to do more harm than good. Considered in this light, Internet freedom is a long game, to be conceived of and supported not as a separate agenda but merely as an important input to the more fundamental political freedoms.

In any case, Charli Carpenter has more thoughts: "Information Doesn't Want to be Free, People Do."

RELATED: Evgeny Morozov, "Why Washington's support for online democracy is the worst thing ever to happen to the Internet."

Pentagon Faces the Knife

At WSJ, "Savings Ordered Up, Spurring First Troop Cuts in Decades; Salvo in Budget War":

In an early salvo in Washington's battle over the deficit, the White House ordered the Pentagon to rein in its budget, a move that will force a sizable cut in overall troop numbers for the first time in two decades.

The surprise decision, which is designed to cut a total of $78 billion from the military budget in the next five years, shows how even the military isn't immune from the political heat brought on by worsening U.S. fiscal woes. It also represents a setback for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who had fought to stave off such an outcome.

We are having to tighten our belts," Mr. Gates said Thursday.

The projected five-year budget outlined by Mr. Gates doesn't include an actual decrease in the military budget. But it will stop growing by 2015. With salaries, health-care and fuel costs climbing every year, the Pentagon needs a 2% to 3% annual budget increase to avoid making cuts in programs.

Under Mr. Gates's proposal, the Army and Marine Corps will shrink by up to 47,000 people, a reduction that comes on top of a 22,000 decrease already planned for the Army. Currently, the two services have about 772,000 members, with the last cuts to the Army and Marines coming after the 1991 Gulf War.

No new head-count cuts are planned for the Navy or Air Force, which recently underwent reductions.

By seeking long-term cuts in the Pentagon budget, the White House is taking on a Republican bastion and hoping to put the GOP on the defensive, especially tea-party-backed lawmakers who campaigned on slashing government spending.

RTWT.

Plus, Secretary Gates' interview is excellent, especially at 5:00 minutes, the discussion of the defense budget in perspective (as a percent of total federal spending and of GDP); and also the later discussion on the Chinese challenge and DADT repeal.

RELATED: Gordon Adams and Matthew Leatherman, at Foreign Affairs, "A Leaner and Meaner Defense: How to Cut the Pentagon's Budget While Improving Its Performance."

Few Writers Use 'Dear' in Emails and Text Messages

This is especially interesting, since the writer cites letters written by Abraham Lincoln. At WSJ, "Hey, Folks: Here's a Digital Requiem For a Dearly Departed Salutation":

When Abraham Lincoln wrote to Ulysses S. Grant in July 1863, after a key victory during the Civil War, he began his letter, "My dear General."

When Giselle Barry emailed a throng of reporters recently to tell them about an important development regarding her congressman boss, she started the message, "Hey, folks."

Like many modern communicators, Ms. Barry, a spokeswoman for Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has nixed the salutation "dear" in her emails.

"Dear is a bit too intimate and connotes a personal relationship," she said.

Ms. Barry said she wants to keep her business communications with the press at "the utmost and highest level of professionalism."

Across the Internet the use of dear is going the way of sealing wax. Email has come to be viewed as informal even when used as formal communication, leaving some etiquette experts appalled at the ways professional strangers address one another.

People who don't start communications with dear, says business-etiquette expert Lydia Ramsey, "lack polish."

"They come across as being abrupt," says Ms. Ramsey, who founded a Savannah, Ga., etiquette consultancy called Manners That Sell.

"It sets the tone for that business relationship, and it shows respect," she says. "Email is so impersonal it needs all the help it can get."

Be sure to click through. In another example President Lincoln addressed a letter to Mary Todd as "Dear Wife."

Golden Voice — Ted Williams Interviewed on 'Today Show'

If this clip gets removed the NBC video is at the link: "Ted Williams, the homeless man with the golden voice, does 'Today' show."

Also at Althouse.

Previously: "Golden Voice — UPDATED!! Ted Williams Lands Job With Cleveland Cavaliers!"

Related: "'Hi Mommy': The emotional reunion between 'Golden Voice' beggar and his 92-year-old mother after ten years."

Up in the Air

This is one of those spiffed up movie trailers with added commentary, but the young lady gets it all wrong. Watched "Up in the Air" yesterday afternoon. The corporate downsizing is a timely backdrop for a movie that's really about the meaning of life. And I'm not going to spoil anything for readers. I watched it on Cinemax. I can say that the big surprise of the movie is simply, absolutely devastating, and it's not a moment dealing with job loss. See the film. Think about those priorities --- those relationships Clooney's character Ryan Bingham mentions in his downsizing speeches at the clip. Manohla Dargis has the review, "Neither Here Nor There." Get it on Netflix if you're not plugged into cable movies.

Both Elvis Presley and Tom Jones Loathed John Lennon

At London's Daily Mail, "Girls, Guns and Why Tom Jones and Elvis BOTH Wanted to Beat Up John Lennon." (Via Dana Loesch.)

Read it all. Elvis couldn't stand Lennon's antiwar pacifism, and Jones was tempted to kick Lennon's but himself.

Salmaan Taseer's Assassin Had Told Others About Plans

At WSJ, "Pakistan Killer Had Revealed Plans: Assignment, Role of Other Guards Probed; Islamists Call Governor's Assassin a Hero":

The killing of a senior politician who spoke out against Pakistan's blasphemy laws was widely lauded by Islamist groups and sympathizers Wednesday and it emerged that the assassin, a member of an elite police force, had told others about the pending attack but had still been assigned to his victim's detail.

Malik Mumtaz Qadri pumped multiple rounds Tuesday into Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab province, at a shopping complex in an upscale part of Islamabad. He later told police he was angered by Mr. Taseer's efforts to abrogate the country's strict blasphemy laws.

Mr. Qadri had previously been removed from a branch of the police dealing with counterterrorism due to concerns about his Islamist leanings, and had himself come forward to ask to guard Mr. Taseer, a senior police official said.

Preliminary investigations also have revealed that Mr. Qadri informed other police officers of his plans, the official said. Police have detained a dozen other people, including six police officers who were also on guard duty and are suspected of abetting the crime after they failed to stop the shooting of Mr. Taseer.

Investigations are focusing on Mr. Qadri's links with Dawat-i-Islami, a radical Islamist group that has been at the forefront of protests in recent weeks against efforts to change the blasphemy laws, the police official said. Mr. Taseer's death has exposed a deep fissure in Pakistan society between liberal politicians with Western lifestyles and religious leaders who hew to an Islamist view of the world and are gaining influence.

More at the link.

John Edwards Engaged to Rielle Hunter!

At Politico and Politics Daily (via Memeorandum).

And Doug Mataconis has the spin, "The John Edwards/Rielle Hunter Story Takes One Last, Sick Turn":

The fact that this story is coming out one month to the day after Elizabeth Edwards died is perhaps fitting given how sordid this entire affair has been from the start ...

Maybe it's best for the little baby in the end. The Edwardses had been separated for about a year, since news of the love child first broke. And not only that, Elizabeth Edwards bequeathed her entire estate to her children: "John Left Out of Elizabeth Edwards' Will."

Lea Michele Joins PETA Campaign Against Horse-Drawn Carriages in New York

At NYT, "‘Glee’ Star Joins PETA Cause." Here's the clips with the "Glee" star, in any case. Young and idealistic. Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Lea Michele joins forces with PETA to campaign against New York's horse-drawn carriages." The conditions don't look so great, actually.

RELATED: "The New York Times ran a story on this a few weeks back, "Group Calls Attention to Treatment of Carriage Horses."

Reporting From Capitol Hill...

...Is Robert Stacy McCain. And it's interesting to listen to his brief interview with Renee Ellmers. Gotta love the dueling Southern accents:

And speaking of ObamaCare repeal, there's a huge buzz on this right now at Memeorandum. And especially, "Democrats Plan Attack on Republican Repeal Effort." Also, "Republicans Shouldn't Go Soft on Obamacare Repeal."

Woman Disrupts Congress During Reading of Constitution

At the "natural born" passage, a heckler apparently yelled: "Except Obama, except Obama. Help us Jesus."

See ABC News, "Constitution Reading on House Floor Mired by Yelling, Objections." (And more at Memeorandum.)

Birthright Citizenship Looms as Next Immigration Battle

At NYT:

NOGALES, Ariz. — Of the 50 or so women bused to this border town on a recent morning to be deported back to Mexico, Inez Vasquez stood out. Eight months pregnant, she had tried to trudge north in her fragile state, even carrying scissors with her in case she gave birth in the desert and had to cut the umbilical cord.

“All I want is a better life,” she said after the Border Patrol found her hiding in bushes on the Arizona side of the border with her husband, her young son and her very pronounced abdomen.

The next big immigration battle centers on illegal immigrants’ offspring, who are granted automatic citizenship like all other babies born on American soil. Arguing for an end to the policy, which is rooted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, immigration hard-liners describe a wave of migrants like Ms. Vasquez stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to have what are dismissively called “anchor babies.”

The reality at this stretch of the border is more complex, with hospitals reporting some immigrants arriving to give birth in the United States but many of them frequent border crossers with valid visas who have crossed the border legally to take advantage of better medical care. Some are even attracted by an electronic billboard on the Mexican side that advertises the services of an American doctor and says bluntly, “Do you want to have your baby in the U.S.?”

Women like Ms. Vasquez, who was preparing for a desert delivery, are rare.

That's an amazing introduction (and more at the link).

There was more on this with Megyn Kelly this morning, and I'll update with that video later if it becomes available.

Gender Feminists Throw The Nation's Greg Mitchell Under the Bus

The Nation's Greg Mitchell retweeted Daniel Ellsberg defense of Julian Assange, and that was enough to get him excommunicated by the extreme gender feminists:

PREVIOUSLY: "The Gender Feminist 'Rape Card'."

The Gender Feminist 'Rape Card'

William Jacobson runs a weekly series on the progressive left's use of the race card. I don't know if I'll do weekly write-ups, but no doubt there's a good comparison to be made with the feminist left's use of the "rape card" for political gain. It's been noted here in the comments that allegations of rape are essentially the new racism. To even analyze claims of rape is to be attacked as "misogynist." Or one's dismissed as a "troglodyte mansplainer." I wrote last night on Naomi Wolf's argument for disclosure of rape accusers' identities. The reaction among extreme gender feminists has been absolutely feral. For example, here's Andrea Grimes at the photo announcing that Naomi Wolf can kiss her feminist creds goodbye. And below that is Jaclyn Friedman's tweet indicating that the word "feminist" should never again be associated with Naomi Wolf's name:

The anti-Wolf tweets are pure demonology and ridicule, although there have also been a few essays in rebuttal. Here's Melissa McEwan, for example:

I'll simply note that her premise is intrinsically flawed as it's based on the erroneous assumption that we shield accusers because of some antiquated notion that rape is shameful. We do not. We shield accusers because survivors are routinely revictimized by rape apologists.

If Wolf's got a problem with the fact that we need to protect the anonymity of people (not just women, by the way) who allege sexual violence, then she needs to take it up with the jackbooted enforcers of the rape culture who pour out of the woodwork to try to silence rape victims every time one of them has the temerity to speak.

That's not so much a rebuttal as a reminder that today's gender feminists accrue power through perpetual victimhood. In my reading of Wolf's article, I saw advocacy for a bold moral agency unashamed at fighting for what's right. But with Melissa McEwan the rape culture is so all-prevailing (penetrating, one might say) that it's impossible for women to speak out without being "revictimized." If Martin Luther King, Jr., had adopted that approach we might still be fighting for integration and voting rights today. Seriously. Extreme gender feminists are setting back the cause of women's rights. It's not only embarrassing. It's depressing.

See also, the inaccurately titled Shameless Magazine: "On the Anonymity of Sex-Crime Accusers and Naomi Wolf." And also, ShoutOut! JMU, "On Assange, Naomi Wolf, and Progressive Rape Apologism," and Strangely Blogged, "Naomi Wolf - Just Stop This, Okay?"

It's Not My Thing So Let It Go, Now...

Some REM overnight, on a tip from Christian Lorentzen. "Bang and Blame" is supposed to have some kinda extreme gender feminist message, or something.

The mass-market video is here.

If you could see yourself now, baby
It's not my fault
You used to be so in control
You're going to roll right over this one
Just roll me over, let me go
You're laying blame
Take this as no, no, no

You bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
Blame, blame, blame
You bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
It's not my thing so let it go

If you could see yourself now baby,
The tables have turned
The whole world hinges on your swings
Your secret life of indiscreet discretions
I'd turn the screw and leave the screen,
Don't point your finger,
You know that's not my thing

You came to bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
Blame, blame, blame
You bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
It's not my thing so let it go, now

You've got a little worry,
I know it all too well,
I've got your number,
But so does every kiss-and-tell
Who dares to cross your threshold,
Or happens on your way,
Stop laying blame
You know that's not my thing

You know that's not my thing,
You came to bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
Blame, blame, blame
You bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
It's not my thing so let it go
You bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
Blame, blame, blame
You bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
It's not my thing so let it go

You kiss on me, tug on me, rub on me, jump on me,
You bang on me, beat on me, hit on me, let go on me,
You let go on me

April Glaspie Memo Leaked

By Wikileaks, and leftist historian Juan Cole was all over it: "Glaspie Memo Vindicates Her, Shows Saddam’s Thinking."

She wasn't "vindicated," actually.

And Cole takes heat in the comments, and this one's representative:

I generally enjoy your blog posts, and read your blog regularly, however every once in a while you’ll write something that I just can’t understand coming from you. Usually it’s something supportive about Obama (which really from your position on middle eastern affairs makes absolutely no sense whatsoever – think Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, etc…).

Now, though, you write this. As another has said, this information has been out in the open for years. You write an article claiming that this old information purportedly “exonerates [Glaspie] from the charges by her political enemies in the US Congress that she inadvertently gave Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait.”

Yet the case against Glaspie has NEVER been that she gave an EXPLICIT “green light” to Saddam to invade Kuwait, but rather that her indifference on the matter was interpreted by Saddam as “good enough”. Nobody has accused Glaspie of giving Saddam “permission” to invade Kuwait. This entire article, based on years old information, is completely misguided.

I’m no defender of Saddam, but I am a defender of accurate and factual reporting on historical events. Your assertion that Saddam was “paranoid and desperate” and your implication that Iraq WASN’T in financial crisis is absurd. It is a fact that at the conclusion of the war Iraq had around $130 billion in international debt excluding interest. To portray that as simply an assertion of Saddam’s is dishonest.

I’m so sick of people painting this as such a black-and-white issue, and you should know better, Juan. The disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were not solely the fault of Iraq, even less so the fault of Saddam’s “paranoia”.

At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq WAS in serious financial trouble. Kuwait WAS exploiting the situation by over-producing oil in order to hold down Iraq’s economy. There WAS a legitimate border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait regarding slant drilling to be investigated. These disputes between the two states were exploited by the Ba’ath administration as a pretext for invasion, probably due to the economic pressure it was under (NOT “Saddam’s paranoia”). This was done following consultation with Glaspie, who never offered a concrete position on the matter. BOTH states are responsible for exploiting the situation to their benefit, which culminated in the invasion of Kuwait.

Kuwait isn’t simply the helpless victim as it was portrayed when the US exploited the situation in the exact same way, leading to the Gulf War. Its actions towards Iraq contributed to the lead up to the invasion.

A responsible historian would portray this event in its totality, including the actions of both sides which led up to the invasion. A responsible historian would identify where both legitimate grievences lie and where states are exploiting the situation to further their own interests. A responsible historian wouldn’t paint this in such a storybook manner, as you have here, with Saddam being the evil, “paranoid” mustache-twirling villain and Kuwait the helpless damsel in distress.

I would obviously be interested in hearing your response, or your justification for either this article or for your portrayal of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in general. I’m not trying to attack you but it’s just really disappointing when someone I hold in such high regard writes something as inaccurate and low quality as this. As I said before, I just can’t understand it.

Naomi Wolf Feminist Concern Troll — 'If One Makes a Serious Criminal Accusation, One Must Be Treated As a Moral Adult'

I'm getting that partial title off this awful hate-Naomi Twitter feed.

Turn's out there's a huge uproar on the extreme gender-left over Naomi Wolf's latest piece at The Guardian, "Julian Assange's Sex-Crime Accusers Deserve to Be Named" (at Memeorandum).

And in an unusual twist, Ms. Naomi enters the comments section to defend herself, for example:

Well, I have now read all comments. Obviously and understandably very strong feelings and opinions stirred by my piece. To my fellow feminists, I wish to be completely clear about my experience that led me to this position: it derives from working WITH rape and sexual abuse victims IN the United Kingdom. Again and again I saw how the secrecy that surrounds this issue and their identities was used by police, defendants, and society in general -- and especially the media -- to inflame rape stereotypes and most of all to ensure that women who were raped or sexually assaulted had an ice cube's chance in hell of getting any serious justice. I also reported on my own experience with sexual harassment at Yale and reported out two decades of serious sex crime at Yale that was similarly swept under the rug -- to the point that an accused rapist (professor) had gotten several other positions where similar accusations arose -- and the practice of dealing with these accusations anonymously guaranteed that there was NO accountability institutionally and that future victims could not be protected. I also do believe strongly that rape should be treated, as we used to say in the second wave, like any other crime and that if we really want to communicate to our daughters that it is not a woman's stigma (if she is the victim) or a woman's fault then shielding her identity conveys the opposite. If it is his crime why should she have to hide? Of course rape is terribly traumatic. My mother was raped when she was twelve and she agrees with my position on this and gave me her permission to say so and to disclose her experience. The practice of secrecy is presented as a support for victims but in practice simply serves impunity for rapists and impunity for organizations in which rape and sexual assault are endemic. I am sorry it seems that many readers cast this position as anti-feminist and assume I have no familiarity with this issue; had I not seen rapists treated with impunity in your nation's system, and seen so many victims vilified in the media and denied justice systematically, I too would have believed the canard that anonymity serves women. I say again, it serves rapists.

And here's Ian B.'s take:

Naomi Wolf is an icon of feminism. In making this argument she has broken ranks with other feminists. Schadenfreude at the the sight of them rending each other is never far away, but schadenfreude does not actually give me an answer as to whether anonymity in rape cases is a good or a bad thing. I have bitterly criticised feminists and anti-rape activists in the past for their wilful denial of the possibility of false accusations of rape. I sneer at Naomi Wolf's late discovery of this type of possible injustice. Yet she makes a strong argument:

"Though children's identities should, of course, be shielded, women are not children. If one makes a serious criminal accusation, one must be treated as a moral adult."

Against that is a more nebulous pressure, but one with deep roots in the human psyche: rape is different from other forms of assault. The trauma of a rape victim, male or female, does not arise only from the physical injuries received. Harm is done to them by having the fact that they have suffered such a violation made public. Some victims would feel unable to come forward if it were to be made public.

Yet other rape victims argue that this reluctance merely reinforces the barbaric idea that there is something shameful in being raped. We use the word shame to mean too many things.

John Boehner Takes Gavel as GOP Takes Over Majority in House of Representatives

Kathryn Jean Lopez has the transript, "A Short Speech About Humility & Principle, Getting to Work."

And at New York Times, "Boehner Takes Gavel in House With Pledge to Bring Change."

The new speaker of the House, John Boehner, promised a new era of transparency in lawmaking on Wednesday, but he also pledged to aggressively push forward the conservative agenda that swept his party into power.

A roll-call vote of the chamber’s 435 members ended the way the results of November’s election determined that it would: with more votes for Mr. Boehner than for the Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, making him speaker.

In remarks after taking the gavel from Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Boehner described himself as humbled, and said that the changes he envisions would restore trust to “the people’s House.”

“We will honor our Pledge to America, built through a process of listening to the people, and we will stand firm on our Constitutional principles that built our party, and built a great nation,” said Mr. Boehner, now second in line of succession to the presidency. “We will do these things, however, in a manner that restores and respects the time-honored right of the minority to an honest debate — a fair and open process” ....

Despite a general atmosphere of bipartisanship on the opening day of the 112th Congress, Mr. Boehner made no effort in his remarks to disguise his disgust with the way Ms. Pelosi and her Democratic majority ran the House over the past four years.

He said the rules of the House under Ms. Pelosi and previous speakers were “misconceptions” that served as the “basis for the rituals of modern Washington” — and he pledged to change them.

“There were no open rules in the House in the last Congress. In this one, there will be many,” Mr. Boehner said. “With this restored openness, however, comes a restored responsibility. You will not have the right to willfully disrupt the proceedings of the people’s House. But you will always have the right to a robust debate in open process that allows you to represent your constituents, to make your case, offer alternatives and be heard.”

Mr. Boehner referred to the complaints of his fellow Republicans that the Democrats used omnibus legislation and restricted amendments as a way of moving President Obama’s legislative agenda through the House over the wishes of the minority. Mr. Boehner said in his remarks that the House’s new rules would fix those problems — a claim that Democratic lawmakers have already challenged.

More at the link.

Also, at ABC News earlier, "John Boehner Poised to be Speaker With His Entire Extended Family Watching." (Via Memeorandum.)

And this is what you'll be hearing about from the left for the next couple of days: "John Boehner Cries Again and Again During Swear In."

Video Hat Tip: Legal Insurrection.

ADDED: At Gay Patriot, "Ms. Nancy’s Classless Exit." And especially Michelle's, "It’s official: Speaker Boehner, Weaker Pelosi; Update: Boehner cries, Pelosi lies; Pelosi’s bitter, clinging send-off."

Religion of Peace, Australian Integration Edition: KFC Employee in Sydney Goes Jihad Over Bacon Request, Threatens Attack on Customer

Via Channel 9 News, "KFC Employee Screams Insults at Customer":

A worker at a KFC restaurant in Sydney has been suspended after he was filmed screaming vicious insults and threatening to attack a customer.

The violent outburst happened at a Halal-friendly KFC in Punchbowl on December 26, allegedly after a customer became angry after being refused bacon on their burger.

The Punchbowl restaurant does not serve bacon or pork in accordance with Islamic law, and one employee can be heard saying "we don't have bacon" before the other begins yelling.

"Don't record me bitch!" he screams as he approaches the counter. "Don't f---ing record me!"

The employee continues to yell and smacks the cash register display on its side, before other workers grab him and lead him outside.

"I'm gonna f---in break your head bro," he says to the person filming as he is led around the corner out of sight.

And Andrew Bolt comments, "I suspect the KFC man was provoked by a customer who knew well that the restaurant was halal, but I’m still not convinced this integration thing is working all that well if a request for bacon is in invitation to have your head broken, bro’."

VIDEO HAT TIP: Jawa Report.

Christian Caryl, Contributing Editor at Foreign Policy and Newsweek, Slams Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

And Caryl's currently a Senior Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies (CIS). And he's got a refreshing take on the WikiLeaks phenomenon, at New York Review, "Why WikiLeaks Changes Everything":

Among the cables released so far are revelations that have prompted headlines around the world, but there are also dispatches on Bavarian election results and Argentine maritime law. If the aim is to strike a blow against American imperial designs—as Assange has suggested in some of his statements—I don’t see how these particular cables support it. Assange has claimed to Time magazine that he wants to “make the world more civil” by making secretive organizations like the US State Department and Department of Defense accountable for their actions; he also told Time that, as an alternative, he wants to force them “to lock down internally and to balkanize,” protecting themselves by becoming more opaque and thereby more “closed, conspiratorial and inefficient.” This is, to say the least, a patently contradictory agenda; I’m not sure how we’re supposed to make sense of it. In practical terms it seems to boil down to a policy of disclosure for disclosure’s sake. This is what the technology allows, and Assange has merely followed its lead. I don’t see coherently articulated morality, or immorality, at work here at all; what I see is an amoral, technocratic void.

As Alan Cowell has written in The New York Times, the careers of some foreign officials—and not necessarily high-level ones—have already been destroyed or threatened by these revelations.

In at least one case the person’s name had been redacted, but his identity was clear enough from the context. One is justified in asking: Will deaths occur as these and other statements are published? We do not know, and we may not hear about them if they do. But damage of various kinds is sure to result. (For his part, Assange seems remarkably unable to discuss these very real dangers; in the Time interview he claims that “this sort of nonsense about lives being put into jeopardy” is simply an excuse.) Can WikiLeaks at least tell us why this was necessary?

In the old days, journalists would have done what WikiLeaks’s print media partners, like The Guardian and Der Spiegel, are attempting to do now: make judgments about which documents to release and whether or not to redact the names mentioned in them based on the larger public interest and the risk of inflicting harm on innocent bystanders. Yet one cannot escape the feeling that the entire exercise is rendered tragicomically moot by the mountain of raw material looming, soon to be equally accessible, in the background. Khatchadourian contends that WikiLeaks is evolving into something more like a conventional journalistic organization, one that will make value judgments about what it’s doing rather than simply dumping documents into cyberspace willy-nilly. But the sheer scale of what the group does suggests that this is something of a fool’s errand. Assange says the organization has been releasing the cables at the rate of about eighty a day. (By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that means that we have three thousand days of revelations to go as this article goes to press.)

The comparison some people have been making between the WikiLeaks document dumps and the Pentagon Papers affair back in the 1970s is illuminating precisely because it shows how little the two stories have in common. As pointed out by Max Frankel, an ex–New York Times editor who was one of those overseeing publication of the papers, the leaker in that case, Daniel Ellsberg,

was not breaching secrecy for its own sake, unlike the WikiLeakers of today; he was looking to defeat a specific government policy. Moreover, he was acutely conscious of the risks of disclosure and did not distribute documents betraying live diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting. And it took him years to find a credible medium of distribution, which is now available at the push of a button.

I’m fully aware that Daniel Ellsberg has lent his support to Julian Assange. That’s his right. But I think he might be overlooking a few vital points.

One of the most obvious is that WikiLeaks is posting these raw documents on the Web, the most permissive information medium we have yet to invent. As a result we are now experiencing yet another jump from the ploddingly analog to the explosively digital. Just as the concept of “privacy” fades into obscurity when sixteen-year-olds can present their innermost thoughts to an audience of billions, so, too, the Internet distribution of official secrets changes the rules of the game. Once all the documents are online they will be subjected not only to the often clumsy ministrations of journalists and historians but also to the far more efficient data-mining programs and pattern- analysis software of foreign governments and private companies (the extent of which, in the case of China’s handling of Google, the cables themselves make clear). The implications for the conduct of government policy (not to mention individual lives) are monumental. I wish I could predict what they might be, but I can’t. I’m not sure anyone can.

There's more at the link.

I noted Caryl's credentials at the title above because he seems so unusual --- and incredibly lucid. Continuing the essay he unfolds the logic of the argument, which is to say that the enormity of the latest WikiLeaks data dump is greater than any one individual or institution to manage. And the consequences --- collateral damage for the information leakers, who are less interested in changing policies than they are in bringing down governments --- are the untold and potentially catastrophic risks to the lives and careers of honest people carrying out their jobs in government, military institutions, humanitarian organizations, and so forth. These are questions ultimately of tremendous power, and Caryl in fact indicates his support for much of what WikiLeaks is supposedly all about --- greater transparency and accountability of governments. But in the end, Julian Assange comes out looking both quite poor and insignificant in this account. And Caryl perhaps might have continued a bit more by delving into the motivations of Assange, and especially his more enthusiastic adherents on the anarcho- and neo-communist left. If there was ever an equalizing force for anti-establishment actors to take down the state sources of world hegemonic power, WikiLeaks is it. Its utility lies not so much in exposure of government duplicity, corruption, or realpolitik, but in radicalizing the radicals, and enabling their growing revolutionary program. And recall there's an almost perfect ideological correlation betwen those who favor and those who oppose the WikiLeaks project. Even purportedly moderate leftists are gung ho on this transformationalist agenda, while either naive or in conscious denial to the nihilist destruction that's essential to the anarcho- and neo-communist program. Caryl does yoeman's work in getting the alternative meme out in leftist outlets like New York Review. It's an interesting development that will hopefully gain traction.

I'll have more later, in any case ...

Kate Ausburn Enters #MooreandMe Feminist Minefield

Kate Ausburn, out of Sydney, Australia, has offered the latest pushback against the #MooreandMe ayatollahs, "Why Feminists and the Left Must Defend Julian Assange":

The key demands in the campaign to support Assange are that he be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, that he receive a fair and just trial, and included in that, the recognition of the case as being one against allegations of sexual misconduct by Assange and not a case against Wikileaks and its role in publishing leaked documents.

Well, extreme gender feminists have called Assange a liar, so I doubt the assumption of innocence is really in play here. But Ausburn continues:

It is important that the left continues to defend Assange’s right to a fair trial. It is not up to the media, politicians, or water-cooler conversations to condemn Assange or decide his fate, or that of Wikileaks. As Glenn Greenwald told CNN on Monday 27 December 2010: “People should go to jail when they are charged with a crime, and they are convicted of that crime, in a court of law.”

Some facts of which are certain: Assange remained in Sweden for more than a month after the initial allegations were made, he complied fully with police questioning at the time. The current arrest warrant was issued “in relation to questions the prosecutors’ office wishes him to answer regarding the accusations” (Sydney Morning Herald on 24 December 2o10).

Assange has at no time been charged with any crime and neither he or his lawyers have received evidence from Sweden of the crimes he is accused of having committed. Assange will next appear in court on 11 January for a case management session and again on 7 and 8 February for his extradition hearing.

It is up to us to ensure the process involved in prosecuting any charges brought against Assange in this case be fair and just, and that a sexual misconduct case does not instead become a case to stifle freedom of information or publishing rights.

Expect updates.

Transfer of Power: New Congress, Familiar Fights

Expect more partisanship, via National Journal:

American elections have consequences, and today, lawmakers of both parties on Capitol Hill and the Democrat in the White House must begin living with the seismic changes ushered in by the midterm elections of 2010, which put Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and Democrats, particularly President Obama, on the defensive.

A new Congress convenes in Washington today with prayer events, real and ceremonial swearing-in ceremonies, and a formal transfer of the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner, reflecting the change in party control over the House. The day will be a stream of pomp and pageantry along with hopeful, optimistic speeches about the future of the country and the decency and diligence of the American people.

According to advance remarks released by his office, Boehner will say, “The people voted to end business as usual. And today we begin carrying out their instructions.” He'll promise to lead a Congress that “respects individual liberty, honors our heritage, and bows before the public it serves.” But in all likelihood, the ceremony will simply serve as another escalation point in the intense political skirmishing that has been the hallmark of our national politics for more than a generation.

Republicans have pledged to use their new leverage to roll back Democratic advances made over the last two years, particularly on health care, and to do whatever they can to make sure that Obama is not reelected in 2012.

For their part, Democrats are gearing up to vigorously defend their achievements.

Yes, and outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi got a head-start on that last night:

RELATED: "As Boehner Ascends, His Power Comes With Caveats" (via Memeorandum).

Daniel Ellsberg Responds

Daniel Ellsberg responded last night to critics of his defense of Julian Assange: "Your critiques and skepticism are all understandable and reasonable; I will respond soon on my blog." I'll bring that to readers when it's available. At the clip is Ellsberg in mid-December:

Arab Children Sing Hamas Martyr Song in East Jerusalem School

Chilling.

Via Blazing Cat Fur, NewsReal, and PMW Bulletins (at Memeorandum):

New Video of Attack on Royal Couple

Previously: "Students Attack Royal Couple in Violent London Protests."

RELATED: At Instapundit, "Anarchy is Back."

Clashes Grow as Egyptians Remain Angry After Attack

At NYT:

CAIRO — Thousands of angry rioters broke through police lines, pelting officers with rocks and bottles and beating them with makeshift wooden crosses in a third day of unrest set off by a bomb blast outside a church after a New Year’s Mass, which killed 21 and wounded about 100.

The fighting broke out late Monday in the densely packed neighborhood of Shoubra, home to many of Cairo’s Christians, when a crowd of hundreds of angry protesters suddenly swelled into the thousands and surged through the winding streets. Eventually, the throng — chanting “Where were you when they attacked Alex?” and “Oh Mubarak, you villain, Coptic blood is not cheap,” referring to President Hosni Mubarak — began battling with the police, who dropped their batons and shields to throw rocks and bottles back at the protesters.

It was the second time in two nights that the police in Cairo, outnumbered and overwhelmed by protesters, broke ranks and attacked the crowd. Even before the outbreak on Monday night, at least 39 riot police officers, including four high-ranking officers, had been injured trying to contain the protests.

Egyptian authorities seemed uncertain at every level of how to contain the civil unrest unleashed by the bombing, outside Saints Church in Alexandria. They focused on the forensics, identifying 18 of the victims — 10 women and 8 men — and were examining a decapitated head thought to be that of a suicide bomber. The authorities also said they had detained suspects they believed could lead them to those responsible for the bombing.

By nightfall, church officials announced that every church in the country — including Saints Church — would go ahead and hold a Coptic Christmas Mass on Thursday night, but that holiday celebrations would be canceled, according to an official Egyptian news service.

RTWT.

Gerry Rafferty, 1947-2011

At NYT, "Gerry Rafferty, Songwriter, Dies at 63."

And Proof Positive has more (via Memeorandum).