Posts
A must read post from Doug Ross suggesting that the decision of which Chrysler and GM dealerships to close has been made on politics rather than economics. If true, this is a major scandal.
An exceptional post on Judge Sonia Sotomayor and reverse racism at No Oil For Pacifists. I don't know about you, but I've had about all the reverse racism that I am going to take from the left. It really is time to start treating it as every bit as unacceptable as any other form of racism.
Read Kevin Jackson's rant at the Blacksphere on Bill Clinton as special envoy to Haiti.
At Power and Control, Eric blogs on a Drew Thornley paper about Energy Myths, such as "Sixty-three percent of those surveyed believe that human activity is the greatest source of greenhouse gases. In fact, such emissions are significantly smaller than natural emissions. The burning of fossil fuels is responsible for just 3.27% of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere each year, while the biosphere and oceans account for 55.28% and 41.46%, respectively."
Soaking the rich isin't working out too well for my old, now very blue home state of Maryland. As Soccer Dad explains, cause, meet effect.
Epaminondas weighs in on Obama's claim, repeated ad infinitum, that "straying from our values" is what has caused hatred against us in the Islamic world and fueled terrorist recruitment. It is ridiculous. Read his take at Villagers With Torches.
At This Ain't Hell, it's an ACLU two-fer - they are attacking both Christianity and our veterans. These people are a clear and present danger to America. They do not protect civil liberties; they deconstuct the foundations of our society.
Effective communications on the internet is the subject of a post at The Whited Sepulchre. According to Mr. Seplchre, passion and polemics, spiced with a bit of off color language, seems to be the blueprint.
The American Elephant marks a distinct change at ABC. Are they actually prepping a show that mocks liberalism? Blasphemy.
The British Commonwealth
At the MoxArgon Group, Henry V has some choice commentary on the current state of the UK.
The boys at Crusader Rabbit are getting a mite testy about the penchant of socialists down under to tack on new and ever more far reaching regulations in order to combat every small evil. But that is what socialists do best. How else to build Utopia, one might ask?
In Ireland, Ted Leddy is counting down his top ten war movies. His number 7 pick is . . . well, you'll just have to see. His commentary on the backstory of each is fascinating.
Lebanon
According to Der Spiegel, the UN Commission investigating the assassination of Rafik Hariri has determined that the Iranian sponsored group Hezbollah carried it out.
Humor - and Insanity
At TNOY, Obama whips out his thesaurus to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea.
As Simply Jews, the insanity of an Islamic Cleric explaining the Zionist conspiracy that is Pepsi.
If you haven't seen it, do check out the movie poster for Brokeback Mountain II over at Ace of Spades from a week ago. Too risque for here but quite funny - or so thought I. Yes, yes, all men are pigs.
Links, and More Links
Maggies Farm has their own great set of links. Do visit them.
Art: Reliquary of Thomas a Becket, 1180
Showing posts with label ACLU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ACLU. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Interesting Stuff On The Web
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Obama Does A "Complete 180" On Releasing Detainee Abuse Photos To ACLU
Obama has, as ABC White House Correspondent Jack Tapper puts it, done a "complete 180" on the issue of whether to release 44 more detainee abuse photos pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU. The photos date to the Abu Ghraib time frame and come from DOD investigative files. The primary effect of their release is quite predictable - to provide the radical Muslim element with a propaganda windfall and to put our soldiers in greater danger. That is weighted against the ACLU claim that it would show how evil BushHitler was, or something like that.
Obama, three weeks ago, had stopped court proceedings on this issue, indicating that the U.S. would release the photos without any further defense. Sec. of Def. Gates, in the link above, indicated that he passed on the warning to Obama from Gen. Odierno - that such release of photos would "cost American lives." I can't imagine that alone would be a tipping point for Obama, given his prior positions on things such as genocide in Iraq. But Obama is under fire for his blatantly political decision to release the carefully redacted torture memos and the ramifications of that decision are clearly getting away from him. I would imagination that the tipping point lies in the latter rather than the former.
Update: It has been pointed out that Obama is supposed to give a major speech in Egypt very shortly after the May 28 release date set for the photos. Could that also have influenced his decision?
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Protect America Act & Obama
The intelligence community cannot go it alone. Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits. I share the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, after a year of study, concluded that “without retroactive immunity, the private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful government requests in the future,” . . . There is bi-partisan support in the Senate for the Protect America Act, including in it the grant of retroactive immunity. The bill, which has been under consideration for months, passed the Senate yesterday, with 17 Democrats joining with Republicans in a 68-29 vote. The Senate also voted down an amendment submitted by Senator Dodd and supported by Obama that would have stripped the immunity provision. Now and then sanity prevails, even in Washington. So it did yesterday as the Senate passed a warrantless wiretap bill for overseas terrorists while killing most of the Lilliputian attempts to tie down our war fighters. Read the entire article. The only possible motivations I can see to contest this legislation are to satisfy the hard left ACLU wing who seem to believe the war on terror is a figment of the imagination and the ABA who see a gold mine in suing the telecommunications companies for a vioation of privacy. Obama will probably not admit to those motivations, but he stands firmly in that camp. And once again, the actions of the man who would "reach across the divide" and "unite all Americans" speak far louder than his words.
A major piece of anti-terror legislation was passed by the Senate with large bi-partisan support. One of the people voting against it was Barack Obama.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is legislation before Congress to correct provisions in FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA, a law originally passed in 1978 in the era before modern communications, today produces the anomaly of requiring warrants for our intelligence personnel to spy on communications between two foreign parties, both on foreign soil. This anamoly was corrected with passage of the Protect America Act, but that had a sunset provision which ran out some time ago. The legislation before Congress would make permanent this correction to FISA and it includes a grant of immunity to those private companies that assissted in intelligence collection in the wake of 9-11 and at the request of the government.
On this latter issue, our nation's spy Chief, Mike McConnell, wrote in December:
The WSJ comments in an Op-Ed today:
"We lost every single battle we had on this bill," conceded Chris Dodd, which ought to tell the Connecticut Senator something about the logic of what he was proposing. His own amendment -- to deny immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies that cooperated with the government after 9/11 -- didn't even get a third of the Senate. It lost 67-31, though notably among the 31 was possible Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. (Hillary Clinton was absent, while John McCain voted in favor.)
It says something about his national security world view, or his callowness, that Mr. Obama would vote to punish private companies that even the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said had "acted in good faith." Had Senator Obama prevailed, a President Obama might well have been told "no way" when he asked private Americans to help his Administration fight terrorists. Mr. Obama also voted against the overall bill, putting him in MoveOn.org territory.
. . . This is a fight Senator McCain should want to have right up through Election Day, with Democrats having to explain why they want to hamstring the best weapon -- real-time surveillance -- we have against al Qaeda.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Larry Craig, the ACLU & Sex In Publc Restrooms
Its one thing to tell the state to stay the hell out of one's bedroom. Its a different matter entirely to argue one has a constitutional right to bring their bedroom to the public.
Its axiomatic that cases with bad facts make for bad law. And in that vein, there is the case of Senator Larry Craig (R-ID).
Craig, shown in the mug shot at left, continues to fight his conviction stemming from his solicitation of sex in an airport men's room. He pled guilty, then later tried to rescind his plea. The Court refused. But Craig hasn't given up - something for which only Leno and Letterman can possibly be thankful.
Now Craig has enlisted the ACLU to pursue his defense. Their argument is that, even accepting that Craig was soliciting sex from an undercover officer in the next stall, his acts were protected by a constitutional right to privacy.
Can you believe this inanity?
Craig was in a public restroom for God's sake. Even assuming he had a right to privacy when he sat down inside a stall and closed the stall door, the very essence of a right to privacy is that the person claiming the right acted reasonably to protect his privacy. When Craig acted with the intention that his sounds and acts would be witnessed outside his stall, he was clearly acting in a way that was not private.
Admittedly, the ACLU's argument is based on Minnesota Constitutional law and not the U.S. Constitution. I am not an expert in Minnesota law. That said, I cannot in the least imagine that there is a court in Minnesota or anywhere else in this nation that could conclude that their state Constitution would extend a right of privacy to sexual solicitations in a public place.
On more practical grounds, do we want to see something like this below when we enter a public restroom? Or far worse, do we want our young children exposed to it when we allow them to go into a public restroom?
Larry Craig is clearly willing to damage the fabric of our society in pursuit of his own ends. This is despicable. I could care less whether or not Larry Craig is gay - that has no bearing on his fitness to be in Congress. But his subterfuge, his poor judgment, and now his willingness to harm society do bear on that fitness. Larry Craig needs to end this travesty in the court system and resign his seat in the Senate.
As to the ACLU, for what little good they have done for society since their inception, the damage they have done to our nation in conjuction with activist judges is simply incalculable. This case is but one more example the ACLU's assault on American society.
You can find the article on the ACLU's defense of Senator Craig here.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Interesting News From Around the Web
In multicultural Britain, the Labour Party now wants to rewrite the British anthem, ‘God Save the Queen,’ to make it “more inclusive” and a little less unfriendly to its northern cousins. Specifically, the verse that calls for the “rebellious Scots” to be crushed seems to be problematic.
A fascinating post at Right Truth on the White Man’s Burden in the 21st Century
This is worrisome. Hillary Clinton seems to think Adam Smith no longer has application to our economy.
CAIR and the canard of rampant Islamaphobia at Q&O
CAIR has picked the dhimmi candidate for President. No surprises. Its John Edwards
The ACLU has a real problem with Marines praying on duty. The Marines have some suggestions for the ACLU
Remember the days when a person could figure out how to build a nuclear weapon from open sources in a library . . . . . Cheatseeking Missles has the modern Michael Crichtonesque equivalent.
From the No Good Seed Goes Unpunished category . . .
Christian Arabs are being cleansed from Palestinian controlled areas
Carl in Jerusalem tells us that Israel looking askance at the NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Iraq the Model discusses how to eat an elephant in Iraq
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Interesting News From Around The Web
Amir Taheri takes a detailed look at the good and bad in Iraq beyond the security situation itself. He has harsh words for the government of Iraq.
Iran is hosting its own Middle East peace summit with all of the attendees being those whose invites to Annapolis were apparently lost in the mail. The participants are expected to unanimously agree to a final solution.
Iraqis are returning to Baghdad in large numbers.
Don Surber is celebrating V-I Day. It is a bit early for that – there still seems to be a lot of fighting to do, and Iran is going to be something between a significant and a huge problem until the Khomeinist theocracy is no longer.
There is the Stop the ACLU Roundup at Miss Beth’s Victory Dance. I am not reflexively anti-ACLU at least to the extent that I will listen to what they have to say before making my decision that its bad for America. Its just happens to be that decision is the one at which I invariably arrive.
We knew that President Bush welcomed the Goracle to the White House to honor his Nobel Prize, but did anyone realize that it was a low carbon event in Gore’s honor?
A 17th century book believed to be bound in the skin of a priest hung, drawn and quartered for treason as part of the famous Gunpowder Plot is up for auction in the UK.
Posterizing Democrats over at TNOY. Hilarious.
Hate America bias amongst our friends at Der Spiegel? I do hope they enjoy the good life they are going to have in the EU.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
