Fox News, Enhanced Interrogation, "The Question" - & Totally Missing The Issue

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Obama's former Dep. National Sec. Advisor Tom Donilon why shooting an unarmed man in the face is legal and proper while waterboarding is not? Donilon tapped dance all over the place. Watch and enjoy.



Since that played, I have heard it replayed endlessly on O'Reilly, Hannity, etc. The question and the response both miss the point, as do the talking heads on Fox who are playing it up.

Donilon blew an easy answer. There is a bright line between an enemy combatant, armed or unarmed, and a detainee.

Under the rules of war, we can kill any enemy combatant who has not surrendered. Whether he is armed or not is immaterial. Bin Laden hadn't attempted to surrender before the SEALS pulled the trigger. But once an enemy combatant attempts to surrender, a whole new set of rules apply. Unless it is believed a ploy (such as the individual is holding up his hands and walking forward while holding the detonator on a suicide vest), we are bound by the laws of war to accept the surrender. The question then becomes, how must we treat a detained person. Shooting them in the head would be murder, pure and simple. Equally unlawful would be actually torturing them - something which, in accord with the clear terms of the UN Convention on Torture and U.S. laws based thereon, waterboarding is not.

The real issue is whether it is moral to place the well being of these homicidal terrorists over the health and safety of Americans whom they threaten with slaughter on a massive scale. It is not, but that is precisely what the Obama administration has done in gutting our ability to interrogate, let alone effectively interrogate, high level al Qaeda detainees. Chris Wallace should have been focused on that. His "question," being endlessly replayed by Fox's talking heads, is simply a red herring.

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Perry v. Schwarzenegger: A Modern Roe v. Wade (Updated and Bumped)

Are judges required to simply interpret the Constitution, or do they have the inherent power to unilaterally amend it if they don't like portions of it? Unfortunately, there are today far too many judicial activists on the bench who seem to believe the latter. It is the very height of arrogance. And indeed, judicial activism has proven one of the most destructive forces in our society over the past century.

Prior to yesterday, the seminal example of this judicial activism run amok was Roe v. Wade, where Justice Harry Blackmun, pointing not to any right found in our Constitution, but rather to a "penumbra" surrounding those rights, declared abortion a Constitutional right. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized that decision. And indeed, it has proven a decision that has distorted our politics and political discourse for the past forty years. Now we have a decision equally ignominious.

That 137 page decision was rendered yesterday by a gay U.S. District Court judge, Vaughn R. Walker, in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. At issue was whether the federal Constitution protects the right of homosexuals to marry. In 2000, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, a law declaring that California would only recognize and sanction marriages between a man and a woman. Gay rights activists, having lost in the court of public opinion, turned to a sympathetic state court system in order to override the will of the people. In 2006, the California Supreme Court agreed with the activists and invalidated Prop 22 on state Constitutional grounds. In 2008, over 7,000,000 Californians went to the polls to vote for Proposition 8, overriding the Supreme Court and amending California's Constitution so as to provide for marriage only between a man and a woman. Yet again seeking to thwart the will of the people of California, gay activists brought the Perry case before the federal Court, arguing that the equal protection clause and the due process clause, both of the 14th Amendment, give gays a Constitutional right to marry.

Any contention that those clauses support a right of gays to marry is ludicrous. It is beyond any contention that the people who drafted our Bill of Rights and, close to a century later, the people who drafted our 14th Amendment, did not consider even homosexual relations to be a right of American citizens, let alone gay marriage. To the contrary, homosexuality was then subject to criminal sanction. As I have written previously:

The historical record clearly establishes that, at the time the Bill of Rights was approved and the near century later, when the 14th Amendment was approved, our government exercised unchallenged power to restrict homosexual conduct. The record shows "20 sodomy prosecutions and 4 executions during the colonial period" and numerous records of prosecutions for homosexual sodomy thereafter. To quote Justice White, writing regarding homosexual sodomy laws in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick:

Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots. See generally Survey on the Constitutional Right to Privacy in the Context of Homosexual Activity, 40 U. Miami L. Rev. 521, 525 (1986). Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. 5 In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was [478 U.S. 186, 193] ratified, all but 5 of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. 6 In fact, until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia [478 U.S. 186, 194] continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults. See Survey, U. Miami L. Rev., supra, at 524, n. 9. Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.

Whether one supports or contests gay marriage is wholly immaterial to how this case should have been decided. As a matter of Constitutional law, the fact that protecting the right of gays to marry was unambiguously outside the original intent of those who drafted and the Bill of Rights and those who drafted the 14th Amendment should have been the alpha and omega of the federal court inquiry. If the Constitution is not held to the meaning of the original drafters, then it is a meaningless document, becoming mere cloth to wrap around whatever social policies an unelected judge wishes to foist upon America as the supreme law of the land. Indeed, it renders a nullity those provisions in the Constitution that specify the sole conditions under which the Constitution can be amended by a majority of the people of the United States. That said - and notwithstanding prior court rulings that comprise existing activist precedent on the issue - gay marriage is not an issue of Constitutional law for the Courts, but rather one of social policy for the people of the fifty states and their state legislatures to decide.

It matters not a wit the evidence that Judge Walker heard at trial, nor his credibility determinations, nor his copious findings of fact - almost all of which are so ridiculously one sided as to read like a polemic drafted by the Gay Activists Alliance. The Court never should have reached the rational basis test. The unvarnished truth is that this is judicial overreach and judicial activism on a scale at least equal to that of Roe v. Wade. And given that this is an issue that deeply divides the nation, the Judge's decision to take the matter out of the hands of America's electorate promises to be equally as destructive.

So how did Judge Walker choose to invalidate the will of the people of California and get around the reality that nothing in the Constitution supports gay marriage? This paragraph from his order provides a good exemplar of his reasoning:

The evidence shows that the movement of marriage away from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from state-mandated gender roles reflects an evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage. The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. . . . Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.

Let's parse that. ". . . [A]n evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage?" That is incoherent. Is he trying to argue that what he is announcing is not a new right? If so, it is an utter canard.

As to the evidence of historical purpose, this judge is deliberately ignoring - and by implication invalidating - the role of religion and the historical treatment of homosexuality as a matter of social policy not merely in our country, but throughout much of the world since the dawn of written history. That is blatant intellectual dishonesty.

As to the "artifact of time," that is simply the Judge's way of tactfully saying that he does not agree with the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution, that he could care less what Californians think as to what the appropriate social policy of their state should be, and that he, by fiat, is choosing to unilaterally amend our Constitution.

At any rate, after several more pages of similarly suspect reasoning coupled with yet more bald pronouncements, Judge Walker concluded that the people of California could not possibly have acted rationally when they decided that marriage should be just between a man and a woman. To put that in perspective, that means the score on whether California acted rationally was 1 unelected federal judge versus 7,001,084 California voters. When one unelected judge trumps the will of seven million plus voters, what does that say about how dysfuntional judicial activists have made our legal system?

This is judicial activism run amok. This man is a judge charged with interpreting the Constitution. He is not imbued with the power to amend our Constitution per his whim. At a minimum, this judge should be impeached and removed from the bench. Tarring and feathering is optional thereafter, though highly recommended as an object lesson for the rest of our judicial activists occupying the bench.

Update: I do not address in this post whether the Judge, being himself gay, should have recused himself from this case. That said, it has been clear from day one of this trial that the judge was wholly biased in favor of the gay plaintiffs. As summarised by Ed Whelan:

Walker’s entire course of conduct in the anti-Prop 8 case has reflected a manifest design to turn the lawsuit into a high-profile, culture-transforming, history-making, Scopes-style show trial of Prop 8’s sponsors. Walker’s actions, taken together, have only one sensible explanation: that Walker has been hellbent from the outset to use the case to advance the cause of same-sex marriage.

Go to the link for the specifics. If the defendants in the case do not figure out how to raise that issue on appeal, they are foolish indeed.

Update: Chris Wallace interviewed Ted Olson on Fox News Sunday this morning. Olson is the attorney for the plaintiffs in the Perry case. Wallace was clearly unprepared to argue the matter with Olson. You can see the entire interview here. Olson and Wallace had the following exchanges:

"Where is the right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution?" asked Wallace.

"Where is the right to interracial marriage in the Constitution, Chris?" replied Olson.

"The Supreme Court has looked at marriage and has said that the right to marry is a fundamental right for all citizens. So you call it interracial marriage and then you could prohibit it, no? The Supreme Court said no. The same thing here," explained Olson

Unfortunately, that response stymied Wallace. It was a disingenuous example. The entire legislative history of the 14th Amendment, passed by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, establishes that the drafters intended by that amendment that blacks and whites should be treated with complete equality and without regard to skin color. If they are equal, then it is completely in keeping with the intent of the drafters that intermarriage be allowed. Conversely, to dissallow interracial marriage would be discrimination based on skin color. The fact that it would discriminate equally against both whites and blacks does nothing to solve the fatal fact that it is discrimination based on skin color - a clear violation of the original intent of the drafters of the 14th Amendment. That is, as I pointed out above, the polar opposite of the situation with gay marriage.

(Update to the Update: At Legal Insurrection, Prof. William Jacobson also points out another obvious flaw in Olson's argument - that every case upon which the Supreme Court found that marriage is "fundamental relationship" involved traditional marriage between a man and a woman, as opposed to any sort of other marriage - i.e., polygymous, etc.)

Wallace then asked Olson how he defined "judicial activism." Wallace helpfully joined in with the asinine quip that it means that a judge has issued a ruling that you don't like. Olson then chimed in:

"The judge after hearing three weeks of testimony and full day of closing arguments and listening to experts from all over the world concluded that the denial of the right to marry to these individuals in California hurt them and did not advance the cause of opposite sex marriage," Olson continued.

"This is what judges are expected to do. It's not judicial activism. It's judicial responsibility in the classic sense."

What utter horse manure. This judge, at the urging of Olson, unilaterally amended our Constitution. To call that anything other than judicial activism "in the classic sense" is pure prevarication.

And finally, Olson finished the interview by calling gay marriage a "conservative value." What a supremely arrogant ass. Is Olson so full of himself that he now sees fit to define what all conservatives should think? I dare say that millions of conservatives don't like Olson declaring what their values are, nor having gay marriage jammed down their throat by a judiciary that is making of social policy whatever they want it to be as a matter of Constitutional law. Indeed, every American should be spitting blood over this.

Prior to this case, I was fairly neutral on gay marriage and quite willing to accept it should it have been subject to a state wide referendum. Not so today. The unbelievable arrogance of our Courts and the misuse of our legal system by the left to work fundamental changes to our society that they cannot get through the ballot box has gone too far by leaps and bounds. And the fact that this was done not on the basis of polls but rather a full election wherein seven million plus Californians voted to amend their Constitution makes this an outrage that dwarfs even the Roe v. Wade decision. If this stands, then we are no longer citizens of a United States governed voluntarily within the framework of a Constitutional covenant, but rather subjects ruled by the police power of a government every bit as imperious as the one we got rid of over two centuries ago.

Update: This issue has spawned many opinions. Here are links to some of them:

Anchoress: Not surprised. The judge's ruling makes sense "if one is peering through the narrowed prism of stringently secular law, and reducing marriage to a sort of contractual partnering."

Gay Patriot - A sloppy legal decision that may well "further divide the nation on gay marriage and embolden social conservatives." (Good legal analysis)

Powerline - "Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, . . ."

Newt Gingrich - "Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife."

Another Black Conservative - Gay marriage will ultimately be accepted by society. This attempt to push it down our throats today may well backfire for gay rights activists.

Left Coast Rebel - Why should I care?

Outside The Beltway - The Judge made the right decision.

DaTechGuy's Blog - "Once again a court discovers new obligations that never existed before…"

Sweetness & Light - "The will of the people as expressed by the votes be damned. We are now a nation ruled by black robed clerics."

Vox Popoli - "at the end of the day, it's little more than one more check in the societal collapse column."

Don Surber - "Once again, the people of the United States are viewed as ignorant bigots by a disdainful court of lifetime-appointed political hacks."

Ace of Spades - "Judge Walker -- Thanks for the extra 7% turnout in November!!!"

Barking Moonbat EWS - "Take this judge out and hang him before he allows transgendered bestiality and grants sheep and goats equal rights."

Joshuapundit - "From a political standpoint, this is yet another disaster for the Democrats, as there is very little actual voter support for same sex marriage, even in a Blue state like California."

Snapped Shot - "This is just another slap at the Christain religion that does nothing but discriminate against us and this nation."

Sister Toldja - Against gay marriage

The Foundry - "an example of extreme judicial activism."

Excitable Andy Sullivan - "The compelling logic of the case reaches what can only be called an apotheosis."

The Other McCain - "These silly Conservatives need to refrain from restraining the Progressive Golden Age right now!"

Rhymes With Right - This "ought to make your blood boil."

The Colossus of Rhodey - Based on the judges reasoning, "what is to prevent some judge from claiming "The number involved in a relationship no longer forms an essential part of marriage"? Or some other manifestion thereof?"

The Volokh Conspiracy - This is 'maximalist' decision that invites a sweeping reversal that could well set back the gay rights movement.

Hot Air - So, Justice Kennedy, what is your decision?

Stop The ACLU - "Being openly homosexual, Walker would have recused himself had he any respect for the proper role of the judiciary. But under a regime of liberals, the judiciary has a new role: to ram through obscenities so monstrous that not even Nasty Pelousy’s Congress could pass them."

NRO - "From his decision to have a “trial” of the “facts” in the case rather than proceed straightaway to legal arguments about the constitutional issues (a choice that surprised even the plaintiffs’ attorneys) to his attempt to stage a nationally televised extravaganza (brought to a halt by the Supreme Court) to his unconcealed bias in favor of the plaintiffs in virtually every aspect of the proceedings (ably summarized by NRO’s Ed Whelan here), Judge Walker has been preparing us for a baldfaced usurpation of political power for quite a while."

Legal Insurrection - "There is a certain lack of reality to Judge Walker's fact finding, in that it deconstructed a traditional marriage to nothing more than its parts, ignoring thousands of years of history and its role in society."

Dean's World - "In our system of government, policy questions belong to legislators and voters, and judges are supposed to be limited to legal questions. Based on what I’ve read so far of today’s ruling, Judge Walker . . . appears to be ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional because he disagrees with the correctness of the state’s reasons for thinking Prop 8 was a good idea. I disagree with those reasons, too, but it appears the court is trespassing on turf rightly reserved for the democratic process."

Bluegrass Pundit - "Some things, such as new technology, may not have been envisioned by our founding fathers and could need interpretation by the courts. Gay marriage isn't one of them."

John Fund at WSJ - Based on Justice Kennedy's activist decisions in Romer and in Lawrence, it is likely he will be the deciding vote to uphold the district Court decision. And while Kennedy has long been a swing vote, he seems to embrace activism on numerous social issues.

Instapundit - has a roll-up

(H/T Instapundit & Memorandum)

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Perry v. Schwarzenegger: A Modern Roe v. Wade (Updated)

Are judges required to simply interpret the Constitution, or do they have the inherent power to unilaterally amend it if they don't like portions of it? Unfortunately, there are today far too many judicial activists on the bench who seem to believe the latter. It is the very height of arrogance. And indeed, judicial activism has proven one of the most destructive forces in our society over the past century.

Prior to yesterday, the seminal example of this judicial activism run amok was Roe v. Wade, where Justice Harry Blackmun, pointing not to any right found in our Constitution, but rather to a "penumbra" surrounding those rights, declared abortion a Constitutional right. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized that decision. And indeed, it has proven a decision that has distorted our politics and political discourse for the past forty years. Now we have a decision equally ignominious.

That 137 page decision was rendered yesterday by a gay U.S. District Court judge, Vaughn R. Walker, in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. At issue was whether the federal Constitution protects the right of homosexuals to marry. In 2000, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, a law declaring that California would only recognize and sanction marriages between a man and a woman. Gay rights activists, having lost in the court of public opinion, turned to a sympathetic state court system in order to override the will of the people. In 2006, the California Supreme Court agreed with the activists and invalidated Prop 22 on state Constitutional grounds. In 2008, over 7,000,000 Californians went to the polls to vote for Proposition 8, overriding the Supreme Court and amending California's Constitution so as to provide for marriage only between a man and a woman. Yet again seeking to thwart the will of the people of California, gay activists brought the Perry case before the federal Court, arguing that the equal protection clause and the due process clause, both of the 14th Amendment, give gays a Constitutional right to marry.

Any contention that those clauses support a right of gays to marry is ludicrous. It is beyond any contention that the people who drafted our Bill of Rights and, close to a century later, the people who drafted our 14th Amendment, did not consider even homosexual relations to be a right of American citizens, let alone gay marriage. To the contrary, homosexuality was then subject to criminal sanction. As I have written previously:

The historical record clearly establishes that, at the time the Bill of Rights was approved and the near century later, when the 14th Amendment was approved, our government exercised unchallenged power to restrict homosexual conduct. The record shows "20 sodomy prosecutions and 4 executions during the colonial period" and numerous records of prosecutions for homosexual sodomy thereafter. To quote Justice White, writing regarding homosexual sodomy laws in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick:

Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots. See generally Survey on the Constitutional Right to Privacy in the Context of Homosexual Activity, 40 U. Miami L. Rev. 521, 525 (1986). Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. 5 In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was [478 U.S. 186, 193] ratified, all but 5 of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. 6 In fact, until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia [478 U.S. 186, 194] continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults. See Survey, U. Miami L. Rev., supra, at 524, n. 9. Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious.

Whether one supports or contests gay marriage is wholly immaterial to how this case should have been decided. As a matter of Constitutional law, the fact that protecting the right of gays to marry was unambiguously outside the original intent of those who drafted and the Bill of Rights and those who drafted the 14th Amendment should have been the alpha and omega of the federal court inquiry. If the Constitution is not held to the meaning of the original drafters, then it is a meaningless document, becoming mere cloth to wrap around whatever social policies an unelected judge wishes to foist upon America as the supreme law of the land. Indeed, it renders a nullity those provisions in the Constitution that specify the sole conditions under which the Constitution can be amended by a majority of the people of the United States. That said - and notwithstanding prior court rulings that comprise existing activist precedent on the issue - gay marriage is not an issue of Constitutional law for the Courts, but rather one of social policy for the people of the fifty states and their state legislatures to decide.

It matters not a wit the evidence that Judge Walker heard at trial, nor his credibility determinations, nor his copious findings of fact - almost all of which are so ridiculously one sided as to read like a polemic drafted by the Gay Activists Alliance. The Court never should have reached the rational basis test. The unvarnished truth is that this is judicial overreach and judicial activism on a scale at least equal to that of Roe v. Wade. And given that this is an issue that deeply divides the nation, the Judge's decision to take the matter out of the hands of America's electorate promises to be equally as destructive.

So how did Judge Walker choose to invalidate the will of the people of California and get around the reality that nothing in the Constitution supports gay marriage? This paragraph from his order provides a good exemplar of his reasoning:

The evidence shows that the movement of marriage away from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from state-mandated gender roles reflects an evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage. The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. . . . Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.

Let's parse that. ". . . [A]n evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage?" That is incoherent. Is he trying to argue that what he is announcing is not a new right? If so, it is an utter canard.

As to the evidence of historical purpose, this judge is deliberately ignoring - and by implication invalidating - the role of religion and the historical treatment of homosexuality as a matter of social policy not merely in our country, but throughout much of the world since the dawn of written history. That is blatant intellectual dishonesty.

As to the "artifact of time," that is simply the Judge's way of tactfully saying that he does not agree with the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution, that he could care less what Californians think as to what the appropriate social policy of their state should be, and that he, by fiat, is choosing to unilaterally amend our Constitution.

At any rate, after several more pages of similarly suspect reasoning coupled with yet more bald pronouncements, Judge Walker concluded that the people of California could not possibly have acted rationally when they decided that marriage should be just between a man and a woman. To put that in perspective, that means the score on whether California acted rationally was 1 unelected federal judge versus 7,001,084 California voters. When one unelected judge trumps the will of seven million plus voters, what does that say about how dysfuntional judicial activists have made our legal system?

This is judicial activism run amok. This man is a judge charged with interpreting the Constitution. He is not imbued with the power to amend our Constitution per his whim. At a minimum, this judge should be impeached and removed from the bench. Tarring and feathering is optional thereafter, though highly recommended as an object lesson for the rest of our judicial activists occupying the bench.

Update: I do not address in this post whether the Judge, being himself gay, should have recused himself from this case. That said, it has been clear from day one of this trial that the judge was wholly biased in favor of the gay plaintiffs. As summarised by Ed Whelan:

Walker’s entire course of conduct in the anti-Prop 8 case has reflected a manifest design to turn the lawsuit into a high-profile, culture-transforming, history-making, Scopes-style show trial of Prop 8’s sponsors. Walker’s actions, taken together, have only one sensible explanation: that Walker has been hellbent from the outset to use the case to advance the cause of same-sex marriage.

Go to the link for the specifics. If the defendants in the case do not figure out how to raise that issue on appeal, they are foolish indeed.

Update: Chris Wallace interviewed Ted Olson on Fox News Sunday this morning. Olson is the attorney for the plaintiffs in the Perry case. Wallace was clearly unprepared to argue the matter with Olson. You can see the entire interview here. Olson and Wallace had the following exchanges:

"Where is the right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution?" asked Wallace.

"Where is the right to interracial marriage in the Constitution, Chris?" replied Olson.

"The Supreme Court has looked at marriage and has said that the right to marry is a fundamental right for all citizens. So you call it interracial marriage and then you could prohibit it, no? The Supreme Court said no. The same thing here," explained Olson

Unfortunately, that response stymied Wallace. Olson was incredibly disingenuous to raise that particular example and I am sure that he damn well knows it. The entire legislative history of the 14th Amendment, passed by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, establishes that the drafters intended by that amendment that blacks and whites should be treated with complete equality. If they are equal, then it is completely in keeping with the intent of the drafters that intermarriage be allowed. As I have already pointed out above, all of the existing evidence indicates that homosexuality was subject to criminal sanction at the time of the passing of the 14th Amendment and thus the idea that gay marriage was within the contemplation of the drafters is simply ludicrous.

The exchange between Wallace and Olson continued when Wallace asked Olson how he defined "judicial activism." Wallace helpfully joined in with the asinine suggestion that it means that a judge has issued a ruling that you don't like. Olson then chimed in:

"The judge after hearing three weeks of testimony and full day of closing arguments and listening to experts from all over the world concluded that the denial of the right to marry to these individuals in California hurt them and did not advance the cause of opposite sex marriage," Olson continued.

"This is what judges are expected to do. It's not judicial activism. It's judicial responsibility in the classic sense."

What utter horse manure. This judge, at the urging of Olson, unilaterally amended our Constitution. To call that anything other than judicial activism "in the classic sense" is pure prevarication.

And finally, Olson finished the interview by calling gay marriage a "conservative value." What a supremely arrogant ass. Is Olson so full of himself that he now sees fit to define what all conservatives should think? I dare say that millions of conservatives don't like Olson declaring what their values are, nor having gay marriage jammed down their throat by a judiciary that is making of social policy whatever they want it to be as a matter of Constitutional law. Indeed, every American should be spitting blood over this.

Prior to this case, I was fairly neutral on gay marriage and quite willing to accept it should it have been subject to a state wide referendum. Not so today. The unbelievable arrogance of our Courts and the misuse of our legal system by the left to work fundamental changes to our society that they cannot get through the ballot box has gone too far by leaps and bounds. And the fact that this was done not on the basis of polls but rather a full election wherein seven million plus Californians voted to amend their Constitution makes this an outrage that dwarfs even the Roe v. Wade decision. If this stands, then we are no longer citizens, but rather subjects of a government every bit as imperious as the one we got rid of over two centuries ago.

Update: This issue has spawned many opinions. Here are links to some of them:

Anchoress: Not surprised. The judge's ruling makes sense "if one is peering through the narrowed prism of stringently secular law, and reducing marriage to a sort of contractual partnering."

Gay Patriot - A sloppy legal decision that may well "further divide the nation on gay marriage and embolden social conservatives." (Good legal analysis)

Powerline - "Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, . . ."

Newt Gingrich - "Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife."

Another Black Conservative - Gay marriage will ultimately be accepted by society. This attempt to push it down our throats today may well backfire for gay rights activists.

Left Coast Rebel - Why should I care?

Outside The Beltway - The Judge made the right decision.

DaTechGuy's Blog - "Once again a court discovers new obligations that never existed before…"

Sweetness & Light - "The will of the people as expressed by the votes be damned. We are now a nation ruled by black robed clerics."

Vox Popoli - "at the end of the day, it's little more than one more check in the societal collapse column."

Don Surber - "Once again, the people of the United States are viewed as ignorant bigots by a disdainful court of lifetime-appointed political hacks."

Ace of Spades - "Judge Walker -- Thanks for the extra 7% turnout in November!!!"

Barking Moonbat EWS - "Take this judge out and hang him before he allows transgendered bestiality and grants sheep and goats equal rights."

Joshuapundit - "From a political standpoint, this is yet another disaster for the Democrats, as there is very little actual voter support for same sex marriage, even in a Blue state like California."

Snapped Shot - "This is just another slap at the Christain religion that does nothing but discriminate against us and this nation."

Sister Toldja - Against gay marriage

The Foundry - "an example of extreme judicial activism."

Excitable Andy Sullivan - "The compelling logic of the case reaches what can only be called an apotheosis."

The Other McCain - "These silly Conservatives need to refrain from restraining the Progressive Golden Age right now!"

Rhymes With Right - This "ought to make your blood boil."

The Colossus of Rhodey - Based on the judges reasoning, "what is to prevent some judge from claiming "The number involved in a relationship no longer forms an essential part of marriage"? Or some other manifestion thereof?"

The Volokh Conspiracy - This is 'maximalist' decision that invites a sweeping reversal that could well set back the gay rights movement.

Hot Air - So, Justice Kennedy, what is your decision?

Stop The ACLU - "Being openly homosexual, Walker would have recused himself had he any respect for the proper role of the judiciary. But under a regime of liberals, the judiciary has a new role: to ram through obscenities so monstrous that not even Nasty Pelousy’s Congress could pass them."

NRO - "From his decision to have a “trial” of the “facts” in the case rather than proceed straightaway to legal arguments about the constitutional issues (a choice that surprised even the plaintiffs’ attorneys) to his attempt to stage a nationally televised extravaganza (brought to a halt by the Supreme Court) to his unconcealed bias in favor of the plaintiffs in virtually every aspect of the proceedings (ably summarized by NRO’s Ed Whelan here), Judge Walker has been preparing us for a baldfaced usurpation of political power for quite a while."

Legal Insurrection - "There is a certain lack of reality to Judge Walker's fact finding, in that it deconstructed a traditional marriage to nothing more than its parts, ignoring thousands of years of history and its role in society."

Dean's World - "In our system of government, policy questions belong to legislators and voters, and judges are supposed to be limited to legal questions. Based on what I’ve read so far of today’s ruling, Judge Walker . . . appears to be ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional because he disagrees with the correctness of the state’s reasons for thinking Prop 8 was a good idea. I disagree with those reasons, too, but it appears the court is trespassing on turf rightly reserved for the democratic process."

Bluegrass Pundit - "Some things, such as new technology, may not have been envisioned by our founding fathers and could need interpretation by the courts. Gay marriage isn't one of them."

John Fund at WSJ - Based on Justice Kennedy's activist decisions in Romer and in Lawrence, it is likely he will be the deciding vote to uphold the district Court decision. And while Kennedy has long been a swing vote, he seems to embrace activism on numerous social issues.

Instapundit - has a roll-up

(H/T Instapundit & Memorandum)

Welcome Larwyn's Lynx readers.

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A Week Of Enemy Propaganda & Pusillanimous Interviews

Iraq is the penultimate issue for our national security today. The economy will bounce back, but Iraq will not if the Dems win the presidency or a veto proof majority in the Senate. We are winning in Iraq against both al Qaeda and Iran – a fact that is reverberating throughout the Islamic world. Moreover, the government of Iraq has made tremendous strides politically and militarily since the start of the New Year. If we legislate surrender in Iraq, the ramifications will be dire and permanent. We will have handed a victory beyond reckoning to al Qaeda and to Iran, and we will have done far more to advance the cause of Islamic radicalism than had we never gone into Iraq. Yet we have seen this week:

- Fox’s Bill O’Reilly do, at best, a marginal interview of Hillary Clinton on the issues of Iraq and Afghanistan on Thursday

- The Washington Post run a front page story Wednesday about American efforts to defeat the Sadrists in Sadr City – written from the Sadrist perspective and complete with photos of dead babies.

- The AP run an incredibly disingenuous story spinning statistics on our war dead and, in addition, ignoring all the positive indicators out of Iraq.

- Fox’s Chris Wallace do a horrendous interview of Obama on the issues of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan on Sunday. It was one puff ball question after the next with no follow-up.

I. Hillary and O'Reilly

This was Hillary Thursday night in her interview with Bill O’Reilly discussing issues of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran:



1. Why does O’reilly, of all people, play this kabuki dance with Hillary of accepting at face value her ostensible reasons for legislating defeat in Iraq? Her opposition to the war in Iraq is pure opportunistic partisanship. Very coldly, very calculatingly, she’s tossing our national security under the bus so that she can gain power. Her base wants to label Iraq a failure at any cost. She heard the clarion call of her base and then tried to get to the left of Edwards and Obama. She is ambition unguided by any principles. Why in God’s name allow this woman to make her utterly ridiculous assertions without calling her on her motives?

2. O’reilly opens the segment of questions on Iraq by saying that "Iraq is a mess." Apparently the incredible progress in Iraq, both in terms of security and politically, since the start of the surge literally through today counts for nothing. What an utterly pretentious pusillanimous pontificating pedant O’Reilly is.

3. Once Hillary starts in, it is just insane. O’Reilly let’s Hillary get away with the tired and intellectually dishonest half quote of Gen. Petraeus, that "there is no military solution" to Iraq, and then a bald and breathless assertion that what we face in Iraq is "unprecedented." What is "unprecedented" Hillary never explains and O’Reilly never asks. She utterly refuses to acknowledge any progress in Iraq, as apparently does O’Reilly. Update: As Gateway Pundit sagely asks, "why is there no 'military solution in Iraq' but there is a military solution in Afghanistan?"

4. Hillary trots out the dishonest argument that to withdraw is the only way to "focus the Iraqi government." This is so transparent as to be mind-numbing. Iraqis are doing a tremendous job of focussing with us there at the moment. Further, we know from the recent hearings that Amb. Crocker thinks that pressuring the Iraqi govt. with withdrawing U.S. forces will have the precisely opposite effect.

5. Can Hillary possibly believe that Iran actually wants the U.S. to remain in Iraq? Every intelligence briefing we have seen and everything Iran is doing is designed to drive out America and create a Lebanon out of Iraq. This is a ridiculous theory made out of whole cloth. I want our spy-chief Mike McConnell to poll our intelligence agencies to see if there is any analyst who has been able to seriously consider Hilary's Iran-wants-us-to-stay-in-Iraq theory without laughing to the point of incontinence.

6. Under what possible alternate reality is Afghanistan more strategically important than Iraq? How much of the world's oil reserves are in Afghanistan? Iraq’s economy is, what, 100 times the size of Afghanistan’s. Iraq is dead in the center of the Middle East, it has both major Islamic sects and two major ethnic groups. Its loss to either al Qaeda or Iran would be exponentially more devastating to the war on terror than would be the loss of Afghanistan. There is a reason al Qaeda’s leaders have been saying publicly and privately since 2004 that Iraq is their main effort and there is a reason Iran is trying to "Lebanize" Iraq but not Afghanistan.

7. How does Hillary square her claim that Iraq is harming our effort in Afghanistan with the recent testimony from our military that Iraq is not detracting from our effort in Afghanistan.

8. O’reilly is at least accurate when he tells Hillary that withdrawing from Iraq will appear as weakness to Iran and al Qaeda. Both Benard Lewis and Arthur Hermann have written excellent essays on how destructive that would be, and I written on the topic here. O’reilly is also accurate that once we are out of Iraq, the Dems claims to go back into Iraq in case of problems is devoid of substance. The only reason we are succeeding in Iraq is because we have the large scale support of the people. That is what counterinsurgency is all about. If we pull out and things fall apart, who in Iraq at the local level will put their trust in U.S. troops - who will be on the ground for only a few days - while the people who will kneecap them with a power drill will show back up again as soon as the U.S. leaves? Where will we get our intelligence? If Clinton or Obama actually believe that we can pull out of Iraq yet remain close with a QRF and that such is sufficient to keep al Qaeda and Iran out of Iraq, they are utterly clueless.

All in all, I would have to rate the O’Reilly interview of Hillary a D. And that is by far the best of this rouge's gallery of agenda journalism for the week.

II. WaPo Does Dead Baby Propaganda For Sadr

On Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a front page story, U.S. Role Deepens In Sadr City, which discusses the U.S. push into Sadr City to put an end to the fiefdom being run by the Iranian backed Sadrists and to end the Iranian proxy attacks on the Green Zone, where, among other things, the Iraqi Parliament meets. Those attacks have been ongoing for months. Our soldiers are dying at the hands of Sadrists.

I sat down to fisk the article, but have found myself so outraged on each occasion that I have refrained, as what I would have written would have been incoherent profanity. The majority of the article is given over to presenting the Sadrist point of view and dwelling on collateral damage caused by U.S. counterattacks against Sadrist combatants who have taken up positions in inhabited dwellings. The article reports the casualty count according to the Sadrists and clearly gives the impression that the Sadrists are being more honest than the U.S. military – who stand accused of wantonly killing civilians. Here are the money quotes/photos from the article:

. . . An Associated Press photograph showed a boy being pulled from the rubble [after a U.S. counterattack]. The AP reported that Ali Hussein, 2, died at the hospital.

"Sadr City is under the American hammer and nobody is monitoring it," said Leewa Smeisim, the head of the Sadr movement's political bureau. "Eighty percent of the military operations are targeting innocents, . . .

Not to appear cold-hearted, but we are in a war and the people trying to kill our soldiers were in or near where that child was located. But a photo of that does not appear in the WaPo. The only reason to run the photo of this dead child is to create a negative emotional response towards our military. The child's death is a tragedy. The photo of that child's death is utterly despicable agenda journalism on behalf of those who wish to kill our soldiers.

If you would like to express your displeasure with this traitorous propaganda, the author is Amit R. Paley and can be reached by e-mail form here.

III. AP Misleading Reports Of U.S. Casualties

Also spinning beyond the pale was the A.P. with their article, US troop deaths push monthly toll to 7-month high in Iraq. It is a piece that ignores the incredibly positive news from Iraq in April and spins the rest in a manner as to approach the WaPo article as a piece of enemy propoganda. Dafydd at Big Lizards does an exceptional job of addressing this article, and I will simply link to his work here.

IV. Chris Wallace Interview of Obama

And then, lastly on Sunday, Fox’s Chris Wallace did a puff ball interview of Obama, letting him get away with ridiculous answers to easy questions on Iraq with no follow-up of any note. There were at least eight questions that should have been put to Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan, and I posted them here in detail. To summarize them:

1. At the Senate Hearings, you had a chance to ask Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker to evaluate your plan to leave Iraq beginning as soon as you take office – to let the American people know what the costs and benefits would be? You chose not to ask them that. Why not?

2. How much damage will it do to the war on terror, the fight against radical Islam led by al Qaeda and Iran, and our ability to convince any nation facing a threat to ally themselves with us if we leave Iraq before it is stabilized, allowing al Qaeda to reinfiltrate the Sunni portion while Iran creates a Hezbollah to dominate the Shia south?

3. Ambassador Crocker has clearly stated that attempting to pressure Iraq with threats of pulling out our soldiers is counterproductive because it puts Iraq’s political groups in the position of looking at their interests when the U.S. is gone rather than having enough feeling of security to make concessions. Why should we believe your argument to the contrary?

4. Al Qaeda says Iraq is its main effort. Zawahiri and bin Laden hate the Sunni Anbar Awakening movement and have vowed to destroy it because its success poses a mortal danger to the radical Islamic cause al Qaeda champions. We have all but destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq. So why should we leave and endanger all these gains before Iraq can handle its own internal and external security?

5. If Afghanistan is so important in your eyes, why, if you are in charge of the Sen. For. Relations subcommittee, have you not put the interests of the nation ahead of your own for a week and convened hearings to put pressure on our NATO allies to support the Afghan mission?

6. The Protect America Act contains an immunity provision for telecom companies who voluntarily cooperate with our intelligence community. Those companies face massive law suits from a dem special interest group - the tort bar. The Chairman of the House Sen. Intel Comm., a democrat, is on the record as noting that continued voluntary cooperation from these companies is vital to our national security and would be endangered by these lawsuits. You voted to strip out the immunity provision from the act. Why did you place the interests of a special interest group ahead of our nation’s security?

7. Given Iran’s long history of terrorism since 1979 and their clear goals to expand their influence and build a nuclear arsenal, what could you possibly offer Iran in talks that would change the inherent nature of the theocracy and move them from their current course?

8. What makes you think your plans to hold talks with Iran under the current circumstances are, one, justified, and two, would be any less ill advised, counterproductive and disastrous than the attempts to find a middle ground with Hitler in the 30's?
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If you value intellectual honesty, objectivity and reality, this has been a very bad week for you, indeed.

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Outfoxed By Obama & The Twelve Unasked Questions

Yesterday, Fox’s Chris Wallace interviewed Barack Obama. It was an interesting interview, and Obama came off well overall. But Chris Wallace did a very poor job of asking probing questions on the major issues of Iraq, the War on Terror, and Rev. Wright.






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You can find the transcript of the Obama interview here. After watching the interview twice, my impression was that Obama came off well. Part of that is that Obama is both likable and highly intelligent. Part is that, unless pushed, he will always dance past the tough questions with the liquid grace of a Fred Astaire.

On several of the issues raised by Chris Wallace, such as the issue of his appeal across the spectrum of voters, Obama defended his position well. And Obama did change his tune from last week and now agrees that his relationsip with Rev. Wright and Trinity United does reflect on his character and that it is a legitimate political issue. Obama did not do so well when Wallace questioned Obama on the fact that, while Obama claims to be able to heal the partisan divide, his record is extremely liberal and that he has never attempted to reach across the aisle on a single controversial issue. Obama’s response to that question was very muddled, at one point attempting to claim that he somehow met this criteria in regards to the confirmation hearings for John Roberts:

WALLACE: But, Senator, if I may, I think one of the concerns that some people have is that you talk a good game about, let’s be post-partisan, let’s all come together . . . The gang of 14, which was a group — a bipartisan coalition to try to resolve the nomination — the issue of judicial nominations. Fourteen senators came together, you weren’t part of it. On some issues where Democrats have moved to the center, partial-birth abortion, Defense of Marriage Act, you stay on the left and you are against both. And so people say, do you really want a partnership with Republicans or do you really want unconditional surrender from them?

OBAMA: No, look, I think this is fair. . . During the Roberts –

WALLACE: John Roberts, Supreme Court.

OBAMA: John Roberts nomination, although I voted against him, I strongly defended some of my colleagues who had voted for him on the Daily Kos, and was fiercely attacked as somebody who is, you know, caving in to Republicans on these fights. . . .

That's not quite a profile in courage. At any rate, Instapundit has a round up some of the commentary on the interview.

. . . Via MyDD, where Jerome Armstrong observes: "Obama is trying to separate himself from the most strident parts of his base, and he does this pretty effectively throughout the interview." . . .

UPDATE: A more critical take at No Quarter. "The truly scary part is that Obama stands for, essentially, nothing. Obama stands for Obama." More discussion at TalkLeft.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reviews from the Rightosphere aren't much better: "I supported Roberts when I opposed him." Plus this: "He called Wright a 'legitimate' campaign issue, which will seem rather shocking to the New York Times, the McCain campaign, and others who have demanded an end to the North Carolina GOP’s television ad.. . . . Obama sounded a lot less convincing when it came to responding to the William Ayers controversy."

For my part, I thought Chris Wallace completely failed to ask anything other than puffball questions on Iraq, the war on terror, Afghanistan and Rev. Wright. Here are the questions that I think should have been asked on those issues:

1. Whether or not invading Iraq was a good decision, the fact is we are there, and so is al Qaeda and Iran. You can’t un-ring the bell. You have made the centerpiece of your campaign the fact that you are against the war in Iraq and said unconditionally that you will draw out our combat troops within 16 months after becoming President. The other day, during the Senate Hearings, you had the opportunity to question General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker about Iraq. You had the chance to ask them to evaluate the likely outcome of your plan to withdraw the vast majority U.S. forces over a sixteen month period. That would have informed America as to the costs and benefits of your proposal. Yet you chose not to ask them that. Why not?

2. We know from testimony General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker gave to other Senators, that they believe a drawdown such as you have proposed would likely be fatal to all the gains we have made in Iraq. It would reopen Iraq to infiltration again by al Qaeda and Iran would seek to dominate Iraq much as it has Lebanon, using militias to create a "Hezbollah" - something which it is trying to do now. Do you agree that all of these things would be incredibly harmful to our efforts to defeat Islamic radicalism and stop expansionist Iran? And if so, how do you possibly justify your plans to pull us out of Iraq before we have that nation stabilized and able to control its internal and external security?

3. Ambassador Crocker has clearly stated that attempting to pressure Iraq with threats of pulling out our soldiers is counterproductive because it puts Iraq’s political groups in the position of looking at their interests when the U.S. is gone rather than having enough feeling of security to make concessions. It makes political progress far less likely. Members of the Iraqi government have made significant concessions over the past several months. Those concessions have resulted in the Iraqi government, at this point, meeting the vast majority of the bench marks we had set out for Iraq to mark political progress. In light of that and Ambassador Crocker’s testimony, how do you justify pulling out of Iraq before the country is stabilized?

4. Both bin Laden and Zawahiri, in public and private correspondence and speeches, have always stressed that Iraq is the central front in al Qaeda’s war against the West. Indeed, al Qaeda’s number two expressed it again in a speech to the world wide umma just the other day. Both Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus said that they had every reason to believe those statements, and evaluated suggestions to the contrary as ridiculous. Moreover, they see the Anbar Awakening movement as having huge ramifications for the world-wide fight against Islamic extremism. And indeed, al Qaeda’s number two has been explicit in saying that destroying the Anbar Awakening movements is one of his top priorities. With those facts in mind, how do you justify pulling out of Iraq, particularly when we have all but defeated al Qaeda in Iraq as of today?

5. You say that we need much more effort in Afghanistan, and much of what we have tried to do is to get NATO to play a much larger role. Indeed, Afghanistan is a NATO mission. Yet far too many of the European NATO nations are, in many ways, not supporting the action in Afghanistan. You have been the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee for Europe since the 2006 election, and thus have had significant power of oversight for our relations with NATO nations. Can you explain why you have not held a single hearing to bring pressure on our European NATO allies to fully support the Afghan mission since the 2006 election? And if your answer is because you have been busy with this election, can you tell us why, throughout 2007, you could not forgo your interests for a week to put the interests of our nation in the forefront?

6. We can agree that intelligence is our single most important line of defense in stopping plots of murder and mayhem planned against our country. In the wake of 9-11, when over 3,000 Americans died in attacks on our soil by the acts of an enemy few of us even knew about, U.S. intelligence agencies approached the telecom industry and asked for their voluntary cooperation with intelligence gathering. The companies did not get paid a single dime for their help deemed critical to the defense of our nation. Moreover, the head of our intelligence organizations, Mike McConnell, has since explained on several occasions how vital it is that we continue to get voluntary cooperation across the spectrum of intelligence gathering operations from telecom companies. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, agrees and that is why both fully support granting the companies immunity from the class action lawsuits that these companies are now facing. These class action law suits are all brought by a Democrat special interest group, the tort bar. The tort bar stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars in their law suits while we, as a nation, risk losing the the very critical voluntary cooperation of the telecom industry in intelligence gathering. You recently voted in favor of the tort bar, to strip immunity provisions for telecommunications companies from the Protect America Act. Could you please tell us why you are supporting a Democratic special interest group over the vital needs of our national security?

7. Iran has been a rogue nation ever since the theocracy was imposed in 1979. That theocracy has a long history of acts of war, directly or by proxy, against the United States. They have been responsible for kidnapping Americans, the torture and murder of CIA agents, the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. They are an incredibly destabilizing force in the mid-East, essentially controlling Hamas – an organization you said you would not meet with – and Hezbollah. They have supported coups in several neighboring countries. They call for the destruction of Israel and years of talks have not dissuaded them from pursuing nuclear weapons, which now threatens to create a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East. Yet you voted against anything that would even allow the U.S. to use even a threat of force against Iran, and have stated that you will, as President, meet unconditionally with your Iranian counterpart. Iran's goal is very clear - to expand its revolution beyond its borders. What could you possibly offer Iran that would change the inherent nature of the theocracy and move them from their current course?

8. You routinely quote JFK who said that while we should not negotiate out of fear, we should not fear to negotiate. You seem to take that quote out of context. JFK certainly never met with Cuba, nor with North Vietnam, both of whom we had ongoing hostilities with at the time. To the contrary, JFK tried to foster a coup in Cuba and he drastically increased our military involvement in South Vietnam. With those things in mind, many people feel that meeting within the Iranian government for unconditional talks is naive and would be very counterproductive. It would give legitimacy to a government that is responsible for killing American soldiers as we speak and it would give legitimacy to a government that does not have the support of its people. Further, talks with an expansionist enemy have historically proven disasterous. For example, had Europe taken a stand against Hitler in the mid '30's, as Churchill argued, WWII may have been aborted. Instead, Chamberlin held talks with Hitler. That merely emboldened Hitler and, in part, led to World War II, with a loss of lives estimated at close to sixty million people. What makes you think your plans to hold talks with Iran under the current circumstances are, one, justified, and two, would be any less ill advised, counterproductive and disasterous than the attempts to find a middle ground with Hitler in the 30's?

9. We’ve been treated to some of the sermons from your pastor, Rev. Wright. They show a man who appears virulently racist and anti-American. That is buttressed by a number of other facts that we know, such as the Church’s black liberation manifesto reviling "middle-classness," Rev. Wright's close relationship to the racist Louis Farrakhan and, frankly, how in your book, Audacity of Hope, you were moved by a semon which included the assertion that "white folks greed runs a world in need." This raises several questions. Many people are concerned at the incredible dissonance between the sermon’s we’ve heard by Rev. Wright, your supporting his message with large donations to the Church, and yet your claim to be a post racial candidate who can somehow heal partisan and racial divides. We’ve heard you say that you didn’t hear anything like what we are hearing from Rev. Wright while you sat in his pews every Sunday for twenty years. And indeed, you say that the clips the press is playing are taken out of context. Let's take just one of many examples. I find it hard to put into context Rev. Wright's claim that the HIV virus was created by the white government in order to conduct a genocidal attack against African Americans. Can you explain how such an incredible statement by Rev. Wright can be contextualized as anything other than virulently racist and anti-American?

10. It is beyond argument that if a white candidate, such as John McCain, had a close relationship with a virulently racist preacher for over twenty years, and that he described him as his spiritual mentor, that it would raise very serious questions about Mr. McCain’s character and judgment. Is there any reason why, when its you instead of John McCain, a different standard should apply?

11. The sermons we are seeing on the news were not taken by hidden camera. They were recorded by Trinity United and sold on DVD through your Church’s bookstore. They are the "best of" moments. Clearly, the Church was quite proud of these sermons. This would indicate that these sermons were part of Rev. Wright’s mainstream message. That could lead some to wonder if you are being honest in your claims to the contrary and what that says about your veracity, your character and your judgment. In order to resolve these issues, would you make available all recordings you have of Rev. Wright’s sermons and ask Rev. Wright to make his unedited sermons available for the period of time you have been in his church?

12. On the basis of far less provocative speech than Rev. Wright's, you were one of the first people to come out and seek the ouster of Don Imus from his radio program. How do you square this with what appears to be a grossly hyocritical double standard - and by that I mean your twenty years of support for Rev. Wright and Trinity United?

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