baldilocks

California's Problem--and America's (RESTORED)

NOTICE: I don't know what happened to this post but this is the last time that I'm going to compose a post without saving it in Word or some other external word processing program.  Will post it again.

RESTORED POST:

Los Angeles Times:

How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?

Karen Bass (D-CA), Speaker of the California Assembly:

The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.

(Why is it that the innately tyrannical always whine about “unfairness?”)

The United States Constitution, Amendment One: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(All emphasis mine.)

There’s something happening here, a process I call the “Coconut Treatment” and it most certainly is not a new process.  It’s as old as the Garden itself; a recasting of roles, of characteristics and of characters.  It's where good becomes evil and evil, good. Where exercising one's rights under the Constitution and under the precepts of Natural Law becomes "terrorism."  It’s a pretense meant to undergird a pretext for…something.  Wait and watch.

(Thanks to Ed Morrissey who notes that the LA Times interviewer failed to challenge the Speaker’s monstrous assertion.) 

No Special Session

President Bush won't do it.

The White House has rejected calls from House Republicans that it convene a special session of Congress on energy, saying it wouldn’t make a difference.

“We don't have plans to call Congress into session -- it won't make a difference if Democratic leaders are unwilling to bring up a bill for an up-down vote,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. [SNIP]

They have a slight point.

House aides said that while the president can declare that Congress must sit for an emergency session, he cannot set the agenda – only the leadership of the majority party can do that.

But if they don't talk about domestic oil drilling during such a session, why can't the president get on TV and b*tch about it point this out? However, as Drew M. points out,

This White House has never really been any good at mobilizing public opinion, has it?

Only for a little while.

PREVIOUSLY:

Death Wish?
House GOP Members Earn Their Money For Once

Gaffrican American*

O RLY?

Today on CBS's Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that "the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years.

Just another malapropism, right Leftists? Or perhaps it's a bit of jet lag. Sure it is.

Right now, it's funny.

*Title courtesy of HA denizen profitsbeard

Animals Rights Before Human Life

Consider these terrorists.

BERKELEY, Calif. - In the hills above the University of California's Berkeley campus, nine protesters gathered in front of the home of a toxicology professor, their faces covered with scarves and hoods despite the warm spring weather.

One scrawled "killer" in chalk on the scientist's doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, "Your neighbor kills animals!" Someone shattered a window.

Borrowing the kind of tactics used by anti-abortion demonstrators, animal rights activists are increasingly taking their rage straight to scientists' front doors.

(Emphasis mine.) Please send any reports of anti-abortion activists invading the homes of abortion workers.

Over the past couple of years, more and more researchers who experiment on animals have been harassed and terrorized in their own homes, with weapons that include firebombs, flooding and acid.

Scientists say the vandalism and intimidation threaten not just themselves and their families but the future of medical research. Specialists in such fields as addiction, eyesight and the aging brain have been targeted.

"It used to be everyone was worried about their laboratories being broken into and their data being destroyed, their animals being taken away," said Jeffrey Kordower, head of the Society for Neuroscience's animal research committee. "What they've decided to do now is make things more personal."

Around the right side of the blogosphere, there have been several recent dust-ups on a topic I find mind-numbingly dull: evolution versus creationism and/or intelligent design. (Heck, I almost fell asleep typing that sentence.) In one corner are the atheists--militant and otherwise-- and in the other are the religious, mostly Christian.

The reason that I find the topic boring is because it's difficult, if not impossible, to see a resolution to it, one in which one side or the other will be proven unquestionably correct. The religious-creationists tell the atheist-evolutionists that they are going to Hell and the atheist-evolutionists tell the religious-creationists that they are anti-science. Personally I can't see how believing in evolution is going to effect a person's salvation one way or another and, conversely, many brilliant scientists are and have been observant Christians and Jews.

Both facts render meaningless most verbal exchanges about the topics-- but, strangely, not spittle-less.

The logical manifestation of fanaticism grounded in either belief, however, is full of meaning. And the existence of organizations such as the Animal Liberation Front--one which is both anti-religious and anti-science, which puts animals on the same spiritual level as humans and, due to that belief, would inflict terror upon scientists who save human life via animal experimentation--should cause ideologues on both sides to wonder whether they are wasting their time arguing with each other and misdirecting their vitriol. I say yes, they are.

Aside: I noticed that some UCLA professors' homes were vandalized. I'm guessing that none of them live near me, because if they did there'd be some hospitalized activists and not necessarily due to the injured parties. Especially after this sort of rhetoric:

Accompanying the attacks is increasingly tough talk from activists such as Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front press office. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said he is not encouraging anyone to commit murder, but "if you had to hurt somebody or intimidate them or kill them, it would be morally justifiable."

Right; that's the logical conclusion.

Keep your powder dry.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

[Re-edited]

UPDATE: I couldn't see stuff like this happening around my neighborhood or in states like Texas or Alabama.

There'd be terrorists activists strewn all over the place.

"No, Officer, I don't know who these people are or what happened to them."
"Okay, ma'am. The EMTs will have your yard/hallway cleaned up in a bit. Have a nice day."

The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

I wish that I would have found the following a couple of months ago. However, there's no time like the present.

Here's a little something for those who would urge God to damn America for her real and perceived sins against her citizens who are of black African descent.

The worst, most inhumane and most diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and later aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.

I predict that, as usual, the two subcultures--those of denial of facts and of political correctness will attack us without once disproving a single statement and/or conclusion that we make.

--John Alembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

Supreme Court: Gitmo Detainees Have Rights Under Constitution (UPDATED)

From reports heard, a United States Supreme Court 5-4 ruling says that the POWs at Guantanamo Bay have the rights of habeas corpus just like any US citizen and should be tried in US civilian courts. It is a 5-4 decision with the expected split along ideological lines; Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. The decision is being characterized as

the Bush [administration's] third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

It's not merely a setback for the Administration, silly Associated Press, but for all of us and the earthly forces that keep us safe here and abroad.

I have to step out, but by the time I get back, there should be a bit more blog commentary on the ruling and I'll post some of it in an update.

UPDATE: Lots of places to go at this point to see what conservatives think, lawyers or not.

But first, to the horse’s mouth. SCOTUSblog has the opinion (.pdf).

From Justice Scalia’s dissent:

Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable “functional” test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other Constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes [sic] important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner.

The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.

Emphasis mine.

Adler at Volokh:

As I (super-quickly) skim Justice Kennedy's opinion for the Court, it appears to hold that Guantanamo detainees have habeas rights, that these rights can only be denied through a valid suspension of habeas rights (under the Suspension Clause of the Constitution), that the procedures created by the Detainee Treatment Act were not an adequate substitute for habeas, and therefore Section 7 of the Military Commission Act is an unconstitutional suspension of the detainees' habeas rights.

Houston at Stop the ACLU:

[This decision] doesn’t “help” the murderers and terrorists get habeas corpus, or find rights, it will kill them on the battlefield. What battlefield commander will waste his time trying to figure out what rights the terrorist he is facing has or doesn’t have?

Mac Ranger:

For credit reference the next attack on America, cite Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg and Stevens, who decided today to rewrite the constitution decide that terrorists have the same rights as Americans.

Malkin:

Chief Justice John Roberts says the rule of law and the American people have lost out–and with this ruling, we “lose a bit more control over the conduct of this Nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges.”

A sample of the Left side of opinion from Hardin Smith at FireDogLake:

This is an enormous rebuke to the Bush Administration and their supporters who rammed the MCA forward, and a repudiation of their attempts to override the rule of law on fear tactics and power grabs.

And Levin at the Corner:

[I]f POWs have access to our civilian courts, how do our courts plan to handle the thousands, if not tens of thousands of cases, that will be brought to them in future conflicts?
It has been the objective of the left-wing bar to fight aspects of this war in our courtrooms, where it knew it would have a decent chance at victory. So complete is the Court's disregard for the Constitution and even its own precedent now that anything is possible. [snip]

I fear for my country.

(Thanks to Instapundit, Hot Air and Memeorandum)

Al B. Your Leader, Not Mine

Am I hallucinating or did I just see Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson on Fox News Channel in some kind of climate crisis commercial/PSA?

Apparently it's the latter.

With climate change not exactly being a hot-button issue among black Americans, the next white conservative who claims that black Americans have set up Al Sharpton as "our" "leader" and that it is black Americans who keep him in the public eye and afloat financially will get this thrown back at them.

PREVIOUSLY:
Tribalism in America (see comments)
Riding the Tide
Run, Jesse, Run!

USAF Leadership "Invited to Resign"

Let's just bend over, put our heads between our legs and kiss our own individual a**es goodbye.

Or have faith and believe that Someone is having mercy on us. Why? Because of what might have happened but didn't.

From Wired's Danger Room:

The Air Force's top civilian and uniformed leaders are being booted out of the Pentagon. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley has resigned. Secretary Michael W. Wynne is next.

The move, initially reported by Inside Defense and Air Force Times, isn't exactly a shocker. The Air Force has come under fire for everything from mishandling nukes to misleading ad campaigns to missing out on the importance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Most importantly, the Air Force's leadership has been on the brink of open conflict for months with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. That's because in the halls of the Air Force's chiefs, the talk has been largely about the threats posed by China and a resurgent Russia. Gates wanted the service to actually focus on the wars at hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For much of the past year I’ve been trying to concentrate the minds and energies of the defense establishment on the current needs and current conflicts," he told the Heritage Foundation. "In short, to ensure that all parts of the Defense Department are, in fact, at war."

The article outlines the tug-of-war, so to speak, between the general and the SECDEF regarding the mission of USAF--a metaphor for the struggle between the autonomous fighter pilot-driven USAF and the joint and sometimes subordinate role of a new kind of Air Force, a change which some feel is necessary to fight a new type of enemy.

However, what got the the general and his civilian counterpart fired...er...asked to resign, wasn't their lack of enthusiasm for the USAF's new role. It was their failure to competently execute an old one--a failure that could have led to catastrophe.

The service inadvertently shipped "four high-tech electrical nosecone fuses for Minuteman nuclear warheads were [t]o Taiwan in place of helicopter batteries. The mistake was discovered in March — a year and a half after the erroneous shipment," The New York Times reports. "The mishandling of the nosecone fuses was viewed as another indication of lack of discipline within America’s nuclear infrastructure, and was another embarrassment for the people in charge of those weapons."

Last fall, the Air Force's 5th Bomb Wing lost track of six nuclear warheads. Then, in mid-May, the service flunked a nuclear surety inspection[.]

Noah Shachtman, the author of the Danger Room post, thinks that the nuclear issue is merely excuse for Gates to get rid of the two. Oh yeah, sure. He isn't really concerned that their lack of attention to their assigned responsibilities might accidentally kill millions of people. /s

Consider this twelve-page .pdf stinging rebuke from Gates (excuse the caps; methinks it was a decision made at the O-6 or higher level) and tell me that Gates is acting:

Rather than an isolated occurrence, the shipment of the four forward section assemblies to Taiwan was symptom of a degradation of the authority, standards of excellence, and technical competence within the nation's ICBM force.

Similar to the bomber-specific August 2007 Minot/Barksdale nuclear weapons transfer incident, this incident took place within the larger environment of declining Air Force nuclear mission focus and performance. Specifically, the investigation identified systemic issues associated with this decline.

Gates goes on to outline the problem areas: lack of standard authority, malfunction of oversight programs and dearth of expertise. To fix the problems, Gates has created an outside senior-level task force to be headed by Dr. James Schlesinger, a SECDEF under Nixon and Reagan and DCI under Nixon.

Gates then delivers a final blow:

Individuals in command and leadership positions not only fell short in terms of specific actions, they failed to recognize systematic problems, to address those problems, or--where beyond their authority to act--to call the attention of superiors to those problems. Each had the leadership responsibility to identify and correct--or flag for others--procedural and performance deficiencies identified in just a few weeks time by Admiral [Kirkland H.] Donald.

Lots more lesser heads are due to roll. See video of the statement and press conference at Danger Room.

(Thanks to the Donovan and to Iron Mike)

PREVIOUSLY: B-52 Flies With Live Nukes

AFTERTHOUGHT: I think I need a category entitled 'Holy Crap!!!'

Just Words: Obama's Iran Policy

What dis mean?

Obama: Initial Meetings With Hostile Nations Would Start With Lower Level Aides; Bush Admin “Preconditions” Are Exactly What Need to Be Negotiated In These Meetings. Asked whether his idea of meeting with hostile nations consisted of “from the get-go of the President of the United States” or lower level aides, Obama said, “The latter. Understand what the question was. The question was a very specific question. Would you meet without preconditions? Preconditions as it applies to a country like Iran for example was a term of art. Because this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct negotiations with Iran until Iran has meet preconditions that are essentially negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are essentially what Iran used and many other observers would view as the subject of the negotiations. For example, their nuclear program. The point is that I would not refuse to meet until they agree to every position that we want. But that doesn’t mean that we would not have preparation, and the preparation would involve starting with low level-lower level diplomatic contacts, having our diplomatic corps work through with Iranian counterparts, an agenda.

Was this a transcript of a statement or is it a press release as is stated at the bottom of the paragraph? Either way, the jumble of words makes little sense.

Usually when a person puts forth such a mish-mash of meaningless words, it signifies that he's trying to hide something and I know what Obama is trying to hide. Come closer and I'll tell you.

Let me whisper it in your ear...this is it...

He doesn't know what the flock he's talking about!!!!

Elsewhere on his site remains this.

Diplomacy: Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

So he's going to personally meet with the Iranians both with and without preconditions.

Sleep on that.

(Thanks to LGF)

Hive of Scum and Villiany Plays Race Cop

File this one under jaw-dropping hubris:

GENEVA (Reuters) - A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.

"The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," a U.N. statement said on Friday.

His three-week visit, at U.S. government invitation, will cover eight cities -- Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

I wonder who invited him.

If the UN finds racism here, what could it possibly do about it? Would such a "discovery" mean that the body will find a new country in which to locate its headquarters? Will it stop accepting our money? Quick! Send the clowns email containing all the racial epithets you can!

Maybe they'll move to Tehran or Nairobi or Moscow.

No, I don't think so either.

(Thanks to Hot Air which entitles its post on the subject thusly: Jew-haters to investigate U.S. for racism)