Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

DECEMBER 12,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

UNDERSTANDING THE ENEMY – It's hard to make this up.  From the Jerusalem Post:  "Perhaps you were wondering if all the terrible tales of sex slavery by ISIS could be true? After all, they claim to be a very religious group. Unfortunately, new evidence reveals the situation is indeed as grim, if not grimmer, than the reports.  ISIS militants recently handed out pamphlets in Mosul ,Iraq, entitled, 'Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves,' explaining in a clear question-and-answer format the official positions of the 'Islamic State' concerning female slavery, according to CNN. 'Can all unbelieving women be taken captive?' reads one question, taken from the translation done by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).  The answer: 'There is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to capture unbelieving women [i.e., any non-Muslim woman].'"  Read the whole thing.  It is just stunning.  But, of course, who are we to question another culture?

OUR COLLAPSING LAW SCHOOLS – Law schools should be the bastions of reason and freedom.  They are not.  From Fox:  "Law school exams often present legal conundrums ripped from headlines of the day, but one UCLA law professor is apologizing for basing a test question on what is apparently a taboo subject -- the fallout from the police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri.  Professor Robert Goldstein said the exam question was designed to test students’ ability to analyze the line between free speech and inciting violence. It cited a report about how Michael Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, shouted, 'Burn this bitch down!' after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown.  The question then asked students to imagine that they are lawyers in the St. Louis County Attorney’s office and had been asked to advise the prosecutor 'whether to seek an indictment against Head' for inciting violence. The exam reads:  '[As] a recent hire in the office, you are asked to write a memo discussing the relevant First Amendment issues in such a prosecution. Write the memo.'"  A perfectly good question, but the little children in the law school were "offended," as they are by almost anything.  The professor should not have apologized.  He should have insisted that the students grow up.  What a mess our universities have created.

MADNESS – Political correctness gone amok.  From the New York Post via Townhall.com:   "The Fire Department has stopped requiring probationary firefighters to pass a job-related physical-skills test before getting hired — a move that critics derided as a lowering of standards.  The move by first-year Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, which allows probies to fail components of the Functional Skills Training test but still graduate from the Fire Academy, comes amid criticism of the department’s low hiring rate of women."  Christine Rousselle of Town hall comments, "This, frankly, scares me. If I were trapped in a burning building, I wouldn't care if the person tasked with saving me were a man, a woman, or a genderless robot--my main concern would be their ability to carry me to safety. It's also highly unlikely that physical fitness tests are the only reason for the disparity of the sex ratio in firefighters. Call me crazy, but if I were a mother with children, I personally wouldn't seek out a job that required me to regularly risk my life and run into a burning building."  Common sense from Christine.  Women should of course be treated equally.  But that means meeting minimum standards of strength.  Just as we should not give men breaks on verbal aptitude tests, where women often score higher, we should not give women breaks on physical tests.  Both verbal skills (giving and receiving orders) and physical skills (carrying casualties) are critical.

December 12, 2014       Permalink

WARREN'S THE ONE – AT 10:52 A.M. ET:  I'm increasingly convinced that Elizabeth Warren is running for president.  Warren has the backing of the Democratic Party's left wing.  Hillary Clinton's star seems to be fading.  She appears to be running for asterisk.

And I believe Warren has Obama's support.  The Obamas and Clintons despise each other, and I don't think Obama would have any enthusiasm for Clinton succeeding him.  Consider this, from Weekly Standard:

A group of more than 300 hundred former Obama staffers have written an open letter urging Elizabeth Warren to run for president of the United States. "We helped elect Barack Obama — now we’re calling on Elizabeth Warren to run in 2016," the letter is titled.

We believed in an unlikely candidate who no one thought had a chance.

We worked for him — and against all odds, we won in Iowa.

We organized like no campaign had organized before — and won the Democratic primary.

We built a movement — and the country elected the first-ever African American president.

We know that the improbable is far from impossible.

Now, former staffers from President Obama’s campaigns, along with former staffers from OFA, are joining with the thousands of Americans who are calling on Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016.

Rising income inequality is the challenge of our times, and we want someone who will stand up for working families and take on the Wall Street banks and special interests that took down our economy.

We urge Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016.

The letter was organized by a group called Ready for Warren. The group's goal is to get Warren to run for president.

COMMENT:  I doubt if this statement could have been issued without a wink and a nod from the White House.  If there is a fight for the Democratic nomination, it will tear the party apart.  I think Warren has at least a 40 percent chance of winning that fight. 

She will then have the liberal press firmly behind her. 

December 12, 2014       Permalink

A GREAT LADY SPEAKS – AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave Muslim dissident, scorned by American universities and the phonies in the "feminist" movement, is warning Americans about the threat of Islamic extremism to the United States.  From Algemeiner:   

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born writer and vocal opponent of Islamist extremism, has warned that the United States increasingly faces a similar challenge to Europe in terms of dealing with radicalism among its Muslim communities.

Hirsi Ali, a former member of Dutch parliament who came to the United States after repeatedly receiving death threats in The Netherlands, was addressing the 2014 Gala Celebration of the American Friends of the Open University of Israel in New York.

“I’ve seen things in America that I would see in the Netherlands, say, in the 1990s and beyond,” Hirsi Ali told the audience. “It’s okay to establish mosques. It’s okay to establish Islamic centers; all are under the first amendment. And you know what? That’s fine.”

But, Hirsi Ali continued, there are legitimate concerns about what she described as “the indoctrination of children.”

“On one side, the Islamic extremist side of things, they cry, ‘You’re an Islamophobe,’ and the rest of society says, ‘Let’s leave them to it, let’s not be bigoted,’” Hirsi Ali observed. “I think you have seeds of the same dangers that I saw in Europe, because now in the United States of America, the population of Muslims is relatively small compared to that of various European countries and their demand for Shari’a Islamic law, or aspects of that, is there and it’s strong in some states and in some cities. But across the nation, it’s not as strong as it is in some of these European countries.”

Hirsi Ali also scorned the Obama Administration’s failed efforts to negotiate a deal with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program.

“I think that the Islamic Republic of Iran is now taking us for a ride. They’re not going to concede,” she said. “We need to show the Iranians that we are a power to reckon with and that we will absolutely not let them develop a bomb.”

COMMENT:  She's correct, of course.  In a way, she's like a female Churchill, warning of what will be.  And, like Churchill, there are forces fighting her tooth and nail. 

Western Europe is basically finished.  Its own reproduction statistics, combined with increasing populations of Muslim immigrants who don't want to assimilate, will doom the continent.  The political balance of power will shift to Muslims in some countries within 20 years, maybe even sooner.  Some countries, like the Netherlands, might not even exist in 40 years.

Can it happen here?  Will we give up our civilization to political correctness?  I have a certain confidence that the American people, with their fundamental common sense, will block a disaster.  But I can't be sure, given the power of our decadent universities and super-decadent media. 

We have defeated most of our external enemies.  The internal ones might be tougher.

December 12, 2014       Permalink

DEMS BLOW IT AGAIN – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  Democrats have apparently been taken by surprise by the blowback over their biased attack on the CIA.   The reaction signals to the Dems that they may not have it all that easy in 2016.  From Jen Rubin at the Washington Post: 

I strongly suspect Senate Democrats did not anticipate the events that played out after the release of their much-criticized report on CIA interrogation tactics. Sure, the gory details dominated headlines and delighted the antiwar left, but then conservatives and some Democrats — and most telling, current and former CIA officials — struck back.

We have seen a parade of former CIA directors, deputy directors and even former senator Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) blast release of the report and the shoddy attempt to pronounce upon the agency without interviewing those who knew the most. That story — condemn first and don’t ask questions because you might get an answer you don’t like — has resonated. All of this has cast the Democratic Party once again as the party that’s weak on (and unserious about) defense.

Even worse, the president won’t say (!) whether he agrees with his own handpicked CIA director, John Brennan, that the information gained through enhanced interrogation techniques was useful, and he won’t criticize or endorse the Senate Democrats. Now, there’s a resounding vote of no support for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The White House spokesman has turned himself in knots as to whether the findings are correct; they, of course, conflict with a prior inspector general report.

And to top it off, Brennan went to the press to hold forth on the report. He offered an entirely reasonable conclusion: “Detainees who were subjected to EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] at some point during their confinement subsequently provided information that our experts found to be useful and valuable. The cause and effect relationship between the use of those EITs and useful information subsequently provided by the detainees is unknown and unknowable.” Indeed, one cannot tell whether eventually we would have obtained the information about Osama bin Laden and additional terrorist plots without the information. What we do know is that we got actionable information that was used to foil deadly attacks.

That strikes at the heart of Feinstein’s hatchet job. Brennan turned the knife a little more: “For someone to say that there was no intelligence of value, of use that came from those detainees…I think that lacks any foundation at all.” Take that, senator.

COMMENT:   The left, collectively, acts like a bully.  And the only way to defeat a bully is to confront him.  I'm a bit surprised at Feinstein, who's generally been known as a reasonable, responsible senator.  I think she went over the top this time, possibly out of personal anger.  There is talk that she's going to retire.  It's time.

December 12, 2014       Permalink

A BALANCED VIEW – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  The American people are reacting to the Senate Democratic report on the CIA.  As usual, the people are wiser than the politicians, especially the ideological Democratic politicians.  They see the issues as nuanced.  From Andrew Malcolm at IBD:

For days now Americans have heard graphic details of intense CIA interrogation tactics imposed on a handful of captured terrorists years ago and deemed torture by the media and Democrats on Dianne Feinstein's oddly-named Senate Intelligence Committee.

The goal, of course, in those early post-9/11 attack days when almost 3,000 had just died was to encourage these fellows to divulge details about other plots and plotters planning further expected attacks on the homeland.

The rough methods included exposure to sleep deprivation, terrible music, cold temperatures and water-boarding similar to that imposed on U.S. Special Forces candidates. Democrats and sympathizers who do not see the country in an undeclared war with terrorism profess profound shock at such ruthless methods against helpless prisoners by a Republican administration.

It turns out, however, that about half of Americans, who've been witnessing bomb attacks and barbaric beheadings, are just fine with the nasty CIA questioning and see real value in preventing future losses of American lives in unprovoked and unanticipated attacks.

Rasmussen Reports this week surveyed 1,000 likely voters and found that 49% agreed with both Republican and Democrat former intelligence chiefs that such questioning produced valuable information that protected the country. (That information detailed in an IBD editorial here.)

A similar percentage (47%) believe such aggressive interrogation methods should be used against these captives. Thirty-three percent were opposed while 20% claimed to be unsure.

Forty-nine percent of Democrats oppose enhanced interrogation. But those types evenly divide on whether the information gathered is valuable regardless.

Among Republicans and independents, the lines are clear. A majority of GOP members (64%) and a plurality of independents (48%) are good with water-boarding etc.

While 69% of Republicans and 46% of unaffiliateds believe valuable intel comes from them. The more that respondents have followed the Feinstein report and its torture allegations, the more value they see in such severe interrogations.

These new findings match similar recent polls showing Americans listing concern with terrorism and attacks among their top concerns, prompting a belief "that preventing a terrorist attack is more important than protecting Americans’ privacy right now."

COMMENT:  No civilized person likes rough interrogation techniques.  But I find it fascinating that some of the same people who tut-tut these techniques were indifferent to the horror inflicted by Saddam Hussein, and opposed our entry into Iraq.  The hypocrisy flows.

There were probably excesses in the CIA program, and any program involving unusual techniques must be closely monitored.  But the prevention of the murder of Americans was the highest priority, and we have avoided another 9-11.  The waters of cause-and-effect are murky.  However, while we should always act in as noble a manner a possible, nobility does not include the sacrifice of American children.

December 12,  2014     Permalink

DECEMBER 11,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

WE ARE SAVED – From Campus Reform:  "It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas—except at the University of Maine.  UMaine faculty and staff received an email on Monday forbidding candy canes, Christmas trees, Christmas presents, Menorahs, and wreaths in public areas on campus.  'What is allowed our [sic] winter themes, snowmen, plain trees without presents underneath, decorative lights, but not on trees, snow flakes, [sic] etc.  Just wanted to remind everyone that Aux Services is not to decorate any public areas with Christmas or any other religious themed decorations,' the email states. 'Winter holiday decorations are fine but we need to not display any decoration that could be perceived as religious.  This includes xmas trees, wreaths, xmas presents, menorahs, candy canes, etc.,' the email says. 'What is allowed our [sic] winter themes, snowmen, plain trees without presents underneath, decorative lights, but not on trees, snow flakes, [sic] etc.'  According to a statement from the university, UMaine's holiday decorations decision was made to better promote diversity on campus."  Yeah, right.  We get diversity by banning Christmas.  I'll sleep better tonight knowing that Maine students are protected from candy canes. 

WHAT A JERK – From Campus Reform:  "In a Dec. 5 op-ed, the president of California State University (CSU) claimed if you are 'light skinned' you have 'significant unearned privilege' and routinely think less of those who are different than yourself.  In her piece, 'Privilege at The Beach,' – referencing the Long Beach area where the school resides—Jane Close Conoley, a white woman herself, asserts that 'light skin color and high income levels may attract significant unearned privilege.' Those who qualify for such privilege, often unknowingly exert distrust and 'lower expectations of behavior' on those of another skin color.  'Those who are less affluent with darker skin or from other cultures can be targets of micro to macro aggressions, distrust, and low expectations for behavior.  This privilege can manifest itself in numerous ways that afford automatic trust, deference, and security,' writes Conoley, in the piece first noticed by the Pundit Press."  Don't you love living in the 1960s?  Someone should remind this bozo "educator" that people from India are also people of color, and they go right to the top.  Hard work.  Education.  Family.  Sense of responsibility.  The unbeatable combination.

SO SENSITIVE – From National Review:  "Greenpeace activists who trespassed and set up pro-renewable-energy banners on ancient grounds may have irreparably scarred the Nazca Lines World Heritage Site, says the Peruvian government.  As the Wall Street Journal reports, 'The Nazca Lines are one of South America’s most famous archaeological wonders, a mysterious series of huge animal, imaginary human and plant symbols etched into the ground between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500.'  So fragile is the ground that Peru hasn’t even allowed presidents and other top officials to tread where the Greenpeace activists went; Jaime Castillo, the deputy culture minister, told the BBC, 'You walk there, and the footprint is going to last hundreds or thousands of years.' Visitors generally view the site aerially, or, on rare occasions, wearing special booties.  But as Lima hosted the UN climate conference, Greenpeace activists sneaked into the restricted area and installed bright yellow banners, proclaiming: 'Time for change! The future is renewable.' A Greenpeace spokesperson claims the demonstrators, who wore sneakers in the photos, were 'absolutely careful to protect the Nazca Lines.'"  Yeah, in the same way that they're careful about "climate change" claims.  They just don't care.  They're interested only in themselves.

December 11, 2014       Permalink

THE REAL CRISIS – IRAN – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  The word "crisis" is overworked, but our crisis with Iran is real because it involves the possibility of a fanatical regime acquiring nuclear weapons, and changing the entire balance of power in the Mideast and west Asia.  And yet, facing Iran is one of the weakest American presidents of modern times.  From Breitbart: 

Quiet allegations of Iranian cheating on its interim nuclear agreement are fueling speculation in the Israeli press that Israel may be preparing to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, reports the Algemeiner.

The official position from Washington has been reflected in Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertions that Iran has so far adhered to the November 2013 Joint Plan of Action nuclear agreement, which bound Iran to suspend certain work at its Arak heavy-water reactor designed to produce plutonium. “Iran has held up its end of the bargain,” Kerry said last month in Vienna while announcing a seven-month extension to the P5+1 nuclear talks.

However, according to journalist Colum Lynch writing in Foreign Policy, Washington has quietly accused Iran of going on “an international shopping spree” to acquire the necessary components for the Arak heavy-water reactor to produce nuclear weapons-grade plutonium. Lynch said that the White House has so far not publicly acknowledged its displeasure with the Iranians.

Separate research by the Institute for Science and International Security also documents a possible Iranian violation of its commitment to freeze its centrifuge research and development program under the “Joint Plan of Action” (JPOA) agreed in Geneva last November. Restrictions on centrifuge R&D were tightened under the recent extension of the JPOA.

In the context of these allegations, Israeli website NRG speculates that should Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hang on and be re-elected in March 2015, he will face a dilemma of whether to strike at Iran in June, one month before the currently extended deadline for an agreement.

Such a decision will be especially difficult because the Obama administration, looking to Iran for a foreign policy legacy, is unlikely to give support to military action. However, many American-allied Arab states, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are also alarmed at the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and thus are not pleased with the American-led negotiations and deadline extensions.

COMMENT:  Incredible.  If Israel initiates military action, it may have to depend on Arab states for support.  The negotiations with Iran are clearly failing.  Iran is cheating.

What will Obama do?  His instinct will be to appease the children of the left and make a very bad deal.  But it's possible that sanity will prevail and that he will back away.  His new secretary of defense is not known as a softie.  Even John Kerry may have his limits.  In the end, the president will have to decide whether his legacy should be a nuclear Iran.  I fear he may not care.

December 11, 2014       Permalink

CHENEY FIGHTS BACK – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:   The man the left hates more than any other is fighting back against the biased, one-sided report on "torture" put out by Senate Democrats – a report whose authors never interviewed a single person responsible for the acts charged in the report.  From Fox: 

WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the recently released Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques Wednesday, calling it “full of crap,” and a “terrible piece of work” that was “deeply flawed.”

Cheney, speaking on Fox News' “Special Report with Bret Baier,” said some of the controversial techniques used on militants had been previously tested and the interrogations produced results.

Cheney acknowledged he had not read the entire 500-page report summary. He strongly defended the tactics, including waterboarding and rectal hydration.

“What are you prepared to do to get the truth against future attacks against the United States?” Cheney asked.

Cheney also refuted claims that President George W. Bush was kept in the dark about the interrogations.

“I think he knew everything he wanted to know and needed to know,” Cheney told Baier.

A Democrat-led Senate panel released a scathing report Tuesday on CIA interrogation practices amid warnings from lawmakers that the findings could "endanger the lives of Americans" -- a concern the Obama administration apparently shared as it put more than 6,000 Marines overseas on high alert.

The report, from the Senate intelligence committee, claimed the interrogation techniques used were "brutal and far worse" than the CIA represented to lawmakers. Further, the report claimed the tactics were not effective and the spy agency gave "inaccurate" information about it to Congress and the White House.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the intelligence panel who ordered the release of the report, alleged on the Senate floor on Tuesday that the CIA techniques in some cases amounted to "torture."

"History will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say 'never again'," she said on the floor. "There may never be the right time to release this report. ... But this report is too important to shelve indefinitely."

COMMENT:  A subject like this requires mature analysis, not the adolescent rantings of a bought press and profound hypocrites who knew all about the tactics used by the CIA, and deny that they knew them.

I have no doubt that there were mistakes in judgment and some excess.  In war there are always mistakes, needless deaths, and brutality.  War is not an athletic contest.  But the notion that no important intelligence came from rough interrogations is nonsense.  If the program wasn't succeeding, why did it continue?  Why weren't resources put somewhere else?

At the same time, it is entirely proper that we recoil at some of the descriptions.  We are a decent people who, in war, are sometimes called upon to do indecent things.  That contradiction will not end.

In the 1970s the self-righteous ones in the Democratic Party also "investigated" the CIA and other agencies, and almost destroyed them. 

As in dealing with the very real fact of police excess, the facts must be put in perspective.  We are asking people to take on challenging assignments.  We are asking them to protect the American people.  And then we're telling them they may go to prison or be declared war criminals by the very country that asked them to do some very nasty things.

And there are people suggesting, with a straight face, that the very people who prevented another 9-11 be tried as war criminals.  The left will not stop.  It is a religious crusade.

December 11, 2014       Permalink

I WONDER WHY – AT 8:42 A.M. ET:  All these terrible things being said about our fine, former secretary of state.  Why do they want to hurt our Hillary?  From Fox:

The State Department has failed to turn over government documents covering Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state that The Associated Press and others requested under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act ahead of her presumptive presidential campaign. They include one request AP made four years ago and others pending for more than one year.

The agency already has missed deadlines it set for itself to turn over the material.

The State Department denied the AP's requests, and rejected the AP's subsequent appeals, to release the records sought quickly under a provision in the law reserved for journalists requesting federal records about especially newsworthy topics.

In its requests, the AP cited the likely prospect of Clinton entering the 2016 race. The former first lady is widely considered the leading Democratic contender hoping to succeed President Obama. She has made scores of recent high-profile speeches and public appearances.

On Wednesday, the conservative political advocacy group Citizens United sued the State Department for failing to disclose flight records showing who accompanied Clinton on overseas trips.

Citizens United, which in 2009 mounted a legal battle that led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning campaign finance limits, said the department unlawfully was withholding the records it sought nearly five months ago.

COMMENT:  Why, I'm sure Ms. Hillary did everything to her high ethical standard.  But, once again, the forces of darkness are demanding that she prove it.  She must take time out from the important work of earning $300,000 a speech to attend to requests made by these little racist, fascist, anti-gay, oil-guzzling right wingers.  When will we ever learn?

December 11,  2014     Permalink