Spengler, Asia Times.com

 

Why should the president of the United States address the "Muslim world", as Barack Obama will do in Egypt this Thursday? What would happen if the leader of a big country addressed the "Christian world"? Half the world would giggle and the other half would sulk.

 

There is no such thing as a Christian world, of course; there hasn't been since the Great Schism of 1054, even less so since the Reformation. Europe's nations agreed at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to subordinate the confessional to political sovereignty. America, the new model of a nation, kept church separate from state. To utter the words "Christian world" would persuade the Muslim world that a foul conspiracy was afoot, perhaps a new Crusade.

 

There is no "Christian world" to address because Christianity has become a private religion of personal conscience. Few Christian denominations aspire to the status of state religion; the Catholic Church abandoned earthly power at the Second Vatican Council in 1965. No Christian denomination aspires to world power. A "Christian world," in short, is not even a fantasy, let alone a fact, and to pronounce the words would be an absurdity.

 

What does it mean, though, to address the "Muslim world"? Read article.

Leo Rennert, American Thinker.com

 

What do Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have in common?   Visits to a concentration camp to soothe Jewish sensibilities

 

Next week, after a stop in Cairo to address the Muslim world and another stop in Saudi Arabia to discuss Mideast conflicts with King Abdullah, President Obama will head to France to join in commemorative events in Normandy on the 65th anniversary of D-Day and to Germany for a visit to Buchenwald.

 

Why add a visit to a Nazi concentration camp? In part, because Obama startled many Jews for NOT adding Israel to his itinerary. After all, if you're in Cairo, how long does it take to get to Jerusalem?

 

And also in part, I suspect, to reassure his Jewish base in the U.S. (78 percent of American Jews voted for him -- more than any other minority group, except African-Americans) As the president and his secretary of state keep pounding Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on West Bank settlements and twisting his arm to accept Obama's vision of Palestinian statehood, the White House apparently felt that a visit to Buchenwald would be just the right ticket to allay Jewish and Israeli concerns. Read article.

Stanislav Mishin, Pravda.ru

 

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

 

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

 

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them? Read article.

 

David B.Rivkin, Jr. & Leee A. Casey, Online WSJ.com

 

President Barack Obama is retaining many important Bush administration antiterror policies, including the detention without trial of jihadist captives as well as military commissions. He is determined, however, to close the Guantanamo detention facility because he believes doing so will not cause many problems in the U.S., and will improve our image abroad and bolster international support for U.S. antiterror policies. He will be disappointed on all counts.

 

Guantanamo has always been a symbol, rather than the substance, of complaints against America's "war on terror." It's the military character of the U.S. response to 9/11 that foreign and domestic critics won't accept.

 

There are also longstanding ideological currents at work here. At least since the 1970s, "progressive" international activists have sought to level the playing field between nation states (especially the U.S. and Israel) and nonstate actors such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas. Although international humanitarian law is supposed to apply neutrally to all belligerents, international opinion now gives nonstate actors far more leeway to ignore fundamental norms such as the rule against deliberately targeting civilians. The underlying implication is that terrorist tactics, however regrettable, are justified as the only means of achieving laudable goals like national liberation.

 

This mindset will not change if Guantanamo closes. At the same time, closing the detention facilities will create numerous headaches quite beyond the security issues raised by dangerous detainees who might escape or serve as a magnet for terrorist attacks in U.S.-based facilities. Read article.

 

Director Blue.Blogspot.com

 

A tipster alerted me to an interesting assertion. A cursory review by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors. CLICK HERE to read analysis and view charts.

Human Events.com

 

1. Many legal experts say that the nominations process is a wholly political question and not a question that would ever come before the Supreme Court. Would you agree that a U.S. senator can vote for or against a nominee to the Supreme Court for any reason?

 

2. Nominees frequently come before the Senate Judiciary Committee and treat the committee questioning of a nominee as a test of how much the nominee knows about the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent. Would you agree that the nomination process should be more than the functional equivalent of a pass fail examination on constitutional law?

 

3. If a nominee refuses to answer the Senate’s questions about nominee’s philosophy, ideology, and record, then a U.S. senator has little basis to understand whether a nominee will be appropriate for a lifetime appointment to the bench. Do you agree that a senator should vote “nay” on any nominee who, outside of narrow legitimate legal ethics bases, refuses to answer questions about the nominee’s philosophy, ideology and record? Read article.

 

Monica Crowley, Political Mavens.com

 

Immediately after President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court this morning, you couldn’t escape references to her “great American story.” We have been (and will continue to be) regaled with stories of her humble beginnings: of poverty in the South Bronx, of a deceased father when she was young, of a young life on public assistance, of a poor but devoted mother who valued education. And then we’ve heard (and will be hearing) about how Sotomayor hyper-achieved: of scholarships to Princeton and Yale, of high-profile judicial appointments, of reaching the Supreme Court.

 

It’s a compelling life story, yes. But even radicals have compelling life stories. In fact, radicals have PARTICULARLY compelling life stories.

 

The White House, members of Congress like Chuck Schumer (charged with guiding her nomination), and the Left generally will repeat her “great American story” ad nauseam. In fact, today Schumer even dared Republicans to vote against someone with such an “American dream” narrative.

 

The last time we heard the “great American story” deal was when The Bama was running for president. Same theme: bi-racial guy, difficult childhood, raised by the grandparents, didn’t fit in anywhere, on to Columbia and Harvard. How could you possibly vote against such a grand manifestation of the American dream?

 

Sound familiar? Here we go again. Read article.

 

Dick Morris, The Hill.com 

 

Asked why he was naming some of his rivals to top administration jobs, President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best: “I’d rather have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.” President Obama seems to echo Johnson’s management style in his handling of Bill and Hillary Clinton. By bringing them into his inner circle, he has marginalized them both and sharply reduced their freedom of action.

 

It may appear odd to describe a secretary of State as marginalized, but Obama has surrounded Hillary with his people and carved up her jurisdiction geographically. Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) is in charge of Arab-Israeli relations. Dennis Ross has Iran. Former U.N. Ambassador Dick Holbrooke has Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Hillary has to share her foreign policy role on the National Security Council (NSC) with Vice President Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, CIA chief Leon Panetta, and NSC staffer Samantha Powers (who once called Hillary a “monster”). Read article.

 

Larry Elder, JWR.com

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA "misled" her about waterboarding.

 

What difference does it make, in the grand scheme of things, whether Pelosi is telling the truth? Maybe the CIA did; maybe the CIA did not. So what? Well, it makes a great deal of difference — and not only because if true, the CIA didn't just "mislead" Pelosi but also committed a crime.

 

People like Pelosi, who once supported waterboarding — just like the folks who once supported the war — now attempt to rewrite history.

 

The country turned against former President George W. Bush and Republicans because of the war in Iraq. Yes, many Americans reversed their previous support of the war because of its unexpectedly high human and monetary costs. Yes, many turned against the war because, in its early stages, Iraq seemed on the verge of civil war. To many, the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein backfired — and made America less, not more, safe.

 

But what turned growing unease over the war into outright disdain for Bush? As to the case for war — the assumption that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction — many Americans feel flat-out lied to.

 

This brings us to waterboarding. Read article.

 

Editorial, Washington Times.com

 

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor wants to give jailbirds the right to vote. It's her opinion that the federal Voting Rights Act can be used to force states to allow voting by currently imprisoned felons. Ms. Sotomayor's dissenting opinion in a 2006 felon-voting case should make senators extremely wary of confirming her for the high court.

 

In Hayden v. Pataki, a number of inmates in New York State filed suit claiming that because blacks and Latinos make up a disproportionate share of the prison population, the state's refusal to allow them ballot access amounts to an unlawful, race-based denial of their right to vote. Eight of 13 judges on the liberal-leaning Second Circuit dismissed their arguments, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled likewise in a similar case.

 

Yet, operating on a dubious and extremely broad reading of the Voting Rights Act, Ms. Sotomayor dissented from the decision. In a remarkably dismissive, four-paragraph opinion, she alleged that the "plain terms" of the Voting Rights Act would allow such race-based claims to go forward. Ms. Sotomayor is thus in the position of asserting that Congress can prohibit New York from doing something the Constitution itself specifically endorses. It's as if she thinks black and Hispanic felons are convicted in order to deny them the vote, rather than that they are denied the vote as a result of being duly convicted. Her position ignores the fact that it is the convicts' own actions, their crimes - not any state-based racial discrimination - that make those felons ineligible to vote.

 

Ms. Sotomayor is thus in the position of asserting that Congress can prohibit New York from doing something the Constitution itself specifically endorses. It's as if she thinks black and Hispanic felons are convicted in order to deny them the vote, rather than that they are denied the vote as a result of being duly convicted. Her position ignores the fact that it is the convicts' own actions, their crimes - not any state-based racial discrimination - that make those felons ineligible to vote. Read article.

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