The excellent Canadian magazine Western Standard now faces a lawsuit from an Islamic cleric in Calgary for publishing the Prophet cartoons in its coverage of the massive riots around the world earlier this year. The suit was presented in “human rights court”, an apparent dodge in which to silence criticism of radical Islam’s political goals through the squelching of legitimate satire. The cost of defending the lawsuit may prove too much for the magazine, estimated at $75,000.
CQ readers can assist the Western Standard in its fight for free speech. The information for their legal defense fund can be found here. If we want to prevail against the forces that would silence us and force us to live in dhimmitude either of their making or ours, now is the time to be heard.
Month: April 2006
The First Winner Of The Chef Award
Brian Maloney notes an appearance by Al Franken on yesterday’s Today Show that reveals the utter lack of a sense of humor by the supposed comedian. After riffing on the supposed exhaustion of outgoing White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his replacement, Joshua Bolten, Franken got very cranky indeed when Michael Smerconish turned the barb back on Franken himself. Newsbusters has the transcript, with Scott Whitlock’s commentary:
Lauer: “Andrew Card, five and a half years as chief of staff, out. Was he shown the door? And if so, is change good?”
Franken: “He was exhausted. I think he’s been exhausted since, pretty much, since day one…You know, they point to lousy decisions made recently, but they’ve been making lousy decisions since, pretty much since- I think they just stayed up too late at the first inaugural.”
[Franken went on to say that Josh Bolten taking over as chief of staff would do no good because he’s “even more exhausted.” He then added:]
Franken: “I think they should just fire these guys in order of exhaustion. I think Rumsfeld is looking real tired.”
[That last line drew a laugh from Lauer and the Today set. However, Mr. Franken, who felt free to dish insults out, became very testy when Michael Smerconish noted how somber the author of “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” seemed:]
Smerconish: “Yeah, Al sounds a little exhausted to me this morning.”
Franken: “It’s 4:11AM! It’s four in the morning here….Screw you! I got up at four in the morning.”
[Franken, who was appearing via remote from California and thus in a different time zone,couldn’t let the issue go:]
Franken: “I got up at 4AM, Michael! Four friggen AM!”
Ian Schwartz has the video clip. It’s a big file, so be patient while it’s downloading.
All of this again reveals Franken to be a hypocrite and a coward, a man who can dish out the insults but who loses his temper easily when challenged. He has assaulted people in public for crossing him, including Laura Ingraham’s producer and a heckler at a political rally. He can joke about how exhausted Card has become after five years of 18-hour days, seven days a week, but God forbid anyone mention a lack of energy on his part when he manages to roll out of bed before dawn on one occasion!
That makes Franken our new nominee for the Chef Award, given to those celebrities and political pundits who feel free to skewer everyone but howl when anyone dares criticize or satirize themselves or their pet causes. Isaac Hayes established this award by enthusiastically participating in South Park‘s satires of every major religion — but quit in a huff when Scientology got skewered. Dishing it up has proven easier for these two chefs de wheezine.
Those Aggies Don’t Just Tip Cows Any More!
One of the pleasures of having a vibrant local press is the colorful stories about the community that get missed when focusing on the national and international news. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports today on an agricultural fraternity at the University of Minnesota that has been suspended and may be disbanded for violating the university’s ban on hazing. The FarmHouse Fraternity apparently has pushed the Midwestern envelope a little too far — say, all the way to San Francisco:
Hazing by the suspended FarmHouse Fraternity at the University of Minnesota included hitting members on their backside with a leather strap and taking them to livestock barns for the apparent purpose of having sex with animals, a university report says.
The university suspended the agriculturally oriented fraternity, located on the St. Paul campus, on Wednesday and outlined various requirements for the lifting of the suspension in the fall of 2007. At least 15 of the fraternity’s 29 members also are under investigation in the hazing incident and could face individual discipline.
Wow — sadomasochism and a little animal husbandry (literally) mixed together! Not to worry, Gopher fans; the Aggies eventually defended the honor of their animals:
During the “livestock barns” hazing, according to the memorandum, members “were taken to the University livestock pens and handed condoms. No explanation was given, but the new members perceived that they were to have sex with the animals. Members were stopped before entering the pens and informed it was a joke.”
Yeah, well, that would have been difficult to explain at the State Fair anyway.
The university divided the report into four areas of concern, with the livestock barn being one of those categories. “Strapping” apparently occurred outside of recruitment as a physical punishment for members at any stage of their membership. “Showering” involved hanging the young men upside down from the balcony, clad only in underwear, while dumping “liquid” on them. (The PP does not specify the liquid used, but I’d say beer would be a fair bet.) Some members got showered as many as five times in a single night — and the practice often resulted in injury when resisted. As odd as it seems, the “pre-initiation” category when hazing would normally occur sounds like the easiest time for students to engage with FarmHouse fratters; all they had to endure was “excessive cleaning”, mind games, verbal abuse, and sleep deprivation.
I guess they didn’t like to really party with people until they got to know them.
The most unintentionally funny part of the story comes at the end:
While under suspension by the university, the Minnesota chapter will not be able to participate in social and official recruiting events.
Uh-huh. Like these guys could find a date after this kind of publicity. I can just imagine how the young women on campus would find themselves attracted to a group of guys who appeared obsessed with seeing each other in their underwear, engaging in rather odd bonding rituals, and sending members to “date” Bessie in the barn. I don’t think the U has to worry about the frat engaging in any social activities in the foreseeable future.
UPDATE: No, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke … unfortunately.
Demostrations For Illegals Are No Civil Rights Movement
The demonstrations this week do not have any relation to the American civil-rights movement, Joe Hicks writes in today’s LA Times Op-Ed section. Hicks, a former director in the West Coast contingent of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — Martin Luther King’s organization — has spent his life working for civil rights but makes clear that those who cross the border illegally are, well, criminals by definition:
THE DEBATE over illegal immigration has reached a vigorous boil, with contrasting bills in the House and Senate and hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrating nationwide. The complexities of this debate seem lost on many of the protesters. Many claim that what lies beneath reform efforts is raw racism, leading to the view that the recent protests signal a new civil rights movement.
It’s simply not true. This nation’s civil rights movement of the 1960s broke the back of white supremacy that prevented black Americans (who were citizens) from enjoying the rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution. Undeniably, the freedoms codified by civil rights-era legislation have made life better for all Americans — regardless of skin color, gender or national origin.
Now, many Latino immigrant-rights organizers and their sympathizers seem to be saying that there is some inherent right being expressed when people sneak into the country, thumb their noses at the law and make fools out of those who wait patiently in foreign lands for visas to come to the United States.
It is quite clear that many of those participating in the demonstrations have adopted the stance of the beleaguered victim, perceiving frustration about illegal immigration as racism. Some comments have been painfully ignorant. One protester said: “I’m here to make sure that Mexicans get their freedom, their rights.”
During the student protests, the American flag was only occasionally on display, while the Mexican flag was omnipresent. A student said he was waving the latter in support of La Raza (the race), while another asked why illegal immigrants were “treated like criminals.” Perhaps he wasn’t aware that crossing the U.S. border without the required visa is now, and always has been, against the law.
Hicks brings a center-left perspective to these massive embarrassments, noting that the wave of illegals creates a downward pressure on wages in all entry-level areas of the market. Hicks writes about the stunning ignorance of teens who turn out for these protests, both in their lack of sophistication about the issue itself and their failure to grasp that the illegals compete for jobs that normally would have been filled by themselves and their friends. He also notes the irony of the demonstrations taking place on a day that honors labor leader Cesar Chavez, who fought against the use of illegals in the fields by agribusiness as a means to break the strikes he called.
Hicks has it exactly correct. These demonstrations did not occur to promote civil rights, but instead to demand an entitlement from the United States. The protestors want an entitlement to violate border laws, to use government services without paying income taxes, and to ignore American law in general. The fact that officials who rely on the social contract that springs from this rule of law to execute their official duties welcomed these protestors with open arms (he specifically mentions LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) should embarrass the people who elected them.
We can debate how we want to handle the people who have already crossed the border after securing it against further incursions. Reasonable people can differ on this complicated issue. However, the basis for any practical resolution has to be the security of our southern border, as no program can succeed until we effectively stop the flood and establish credibility in our efforts. It isn’t a matter of civil rights, but a matter of law enforcement and wartime security. The fools out waving Mexican flags in the streets and asserting that “the border crossed us” only shows how much credibility we have to regain.
How To Clear The Room (Democrat Style)
The New York Times notes that the call to censure President Bush for his approval of a program to conduct surveillance on an enemy in wartime without treating it as a law-enforcement project has made lots of headlines but won few converts, even among Bush’s opposition in the Senate. David Kirkpatrick reports that Russ Feingold’s push to officially scold Bush has Democrats oddly silent:
Although few Senate Democrats have embraced the censure proposal and almost no one expects the Senate to adopt it, the notion that Democrats may seek to punish Mr. Bush has become a rallying cause to partisans on both sides of the political divide. Republicans called the hearing to give the proposal a full airing as their party sought to use the threat of Democratic punishment of the president to rally their conservative base.
Five Republicans at the hearing took turns attacking the idea as a reckless stunt that could embolden terrorists. Just two Democrats showed up to defend it, arguing that Congress needed to rein in the White House’s expansive view of presidential power. The Democrats’ star witness was John W. Dean, the former counsel to President Richard M. Nixon who divulged many of the details in the Watergate scandal.
Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who proposed the censure motion and is considering a 2008 presidential run, argued that the Bush administration’s insistence that it needed no Congressional approval for its wiretapping program implied that “we no longer have a constitutional system consisting of three co-equal branches of government; we have a monarchy.”
“If we in the Congress don’t stand up for ourselves and for the American people, we become complicit in the lawbreaking,” Mr. Feingold said.
Here, I think, is the crux of the problem for the Democrats. First, in the hearing itself, five former FISA jurists have told the Judiciary Committee that Congress cannot strip the president of his powers granted by the Constitution to defend the nation in wartime, no matter how many laws they pass — and that to the extent that FISA does so, it is unconstitutional. Conducting intelligence on a wartime enemy has always been part of any military response, including (and especially) their attempts to communicate to agents within the US. Both Truong and in re Sealed Case, discussed at length at Power Line and joined by liberal legal scholars such as Cass Sunstein, back the FISA judges that appeared this week.
Beyond that, the problem Feingold faces is that Congress had been briefed about the program since its inception. Leading Democrats on the relevant committees knew full well about this program and its implications starting in late 2001. None objected in any serious manner to the program’s existence, tactics, or goals, and only mildly objected on occasion about its reach — after which the NSA suspended it, retooled the parameters to meet the objections, and then restarted it. When Feingold talks about complicity, the Democrats understand what that means, and they’re not keen to throw themselves on a political pyre just to help Feingold gain momentum for a presidential run in 2008.
These attacks on a program that has consistently won solid support from the American public do nothing but energize both parties’ bases. That may help Feingold personally, who right now has made himself the darling of the MoveOn crowd, but it won’t help moderate Democrats. Feingold has explicitly called them cowards, fueling the radicals in his party to attack them and press for primary opponents to knock them out of the general election in the fall. Meanwhile, a dispirited conservative base that had made a lot of noise about staying home in November to protest the lack of fiscal discipline and the paltry efforts made at securing the borders now finds itself back on the front lines, determined to thwart Democratic plans to impeach Bush after winning control of Congress after November. The GOP base will put aside many differences, even they key disputes over budgeting and borders, in order to ensure that stops right now.
Russ Feingold hasn’t been paying attention, not to his caucus, not to the testimony presented in the hearing, and not to the majority of the American electorate. He may remain tone-deaf and in the grasp of the lunatic fringe, but his fellow caucus members seem to have a better sense of politics. Don’t expect them to jump onto the pyre any time soon.
UPDATE: The LA Times notices another reason for all the echoes — the room was mostly empty:
[T]he hearing also dramatized, in the form of a long row of empty chairs, the hesitance other Democrats have about the resolution. Besides Leahy and Feingold, the only other committee Democrat who attended was Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. And he left without delivering an opening statement or questioning any of the witnesses.
Democrats skipping the session included Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. Five of the panel’s GOP members also were absent.
Feingold’s resolution has been championed by an array of left-leaning blogs and the online liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org. But it has attracted only two co-sponsors — Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
Patrick Leahy did wind up endorsing Feingold’s resolution, which brings the total on the commitee to … two. And those two had better get used to loneliness, because when your best witness for censure comes from the Nixon Administration, you really have lost all sense of perspective. John Dean spent his time promoting his book by claiming that the NSA surveillance program was “worse than Watergate”, a notion that even a Clinton appointee just couldn’t let pass:
Disagreeing were Robert F. Turner, the associate director of the University of Virginia’s Center for National Security Law; Lee Casey, another former Reagan administration attorney; and John Schmidt, an associate attorney general under President Clinton. They contended the spying was justified either by the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force against terrorists after Sept. 11 or by the president’s inherent constitutional powers as commander in chief.
“He did not break the law, and there is no evidence that he has in any way misused the information collected,” Casey said. “This is not Watergate.”
But … but … that doesn’t sell books … or get people votes in the presidential primaries!
Demanding Accountability For Dean Johnson
The controversy over Dean Johnson’s lies to a group of pastors regarding assurances he supposedly received from state Supreme Court justices on how they would rule on gender-neutral marriage has escalated, thanks to two seperate requests for ethics investigations. A former judicial candidate and court critic has joined a Republican state representative in demanding an accounting for either judicial malfeasance or deliberate deception on the part of the Minnesota Senate majority leader:
A legislator and a longtime critic of the judicial system filed separate ethics complaints Friday asking a board to determine whether several state Supreme Court justices held improper conversations about Minnesota marriage law with Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson.
Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said he discussed the law with justices but they offered him no assurances on how they might rule if it were challenged. The justices have denied talking to him about the law.
In his complaint, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, asked, “Who is telling the truth?”
Former judicial candidate Greg Wersal, a Golden Valley attorney, also filed a complaint calling for an inquiry by the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards.
Johnson made headlines in Minnesota when tapes of a meeting he held with pastors about Johnson’s opposition for a referendum on marriage got released to the public. The tapes, clandestinely made by one of the attendees, revealed that Johnson had claimed to have had conversations with four of the justices, and that they had assured him that they would not overturn the statute in Minnesota passed recently that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. This assurance, if true, would mean that the constitutional amendment reinforcing the statute was unnecessary. It would also represent an unconscionable breach of judicial ethics, as jurists cannot make such assurances, and certainly not in secret to politicians while considering legislation germane to the point.
Johnson at first denied he had said it, and then excoriated the minister for his low ethics in secretly taping the conversation. (He had nothing to say about the ethics of lying to ministers about fantasy conversations.) He then retreated somewhat from the taped statements, saying that he had spoken informally to one Supreme Court justice, who had said something casual that led him to believe that the court would not take up the issue. However, the Chief Justice, Russell Anderson, had become so irate over the suggestion that his court would corrupt itself in such a manner that he interrupted his family vacation to interrogate current and former members of the court, releasing a statement that stopped just short of calling Dean Johnson an outright liar.
After a couple of days with that simmering, Johnson finally apologized, but the incident had already done its damage. His apology never cleared up whether he had dropped his assertion that any justice had ever discussed the marriage law with him in such a manner, and now that lack of clarity has left the door open for this ethics investigation. The entire fiasco makes it much more likely that the referendum will appear on the ballot eventually as the opposition has lost all credibility to deny the voters a shot at deciding the issue directly. If that happens, recent electoral history has shown that it will pull conservatives to the polling stations in large numbers, threatening the thin edge of power that the DFL holds in the upper chamber and the electoral momentum they gained in 2004.
This, of course, is the real reason Johnson wanted to keep the question off the ballot. Now he has ironically made it more likely that the DFL will have to face an energized conservative base thanks to his lack of honesty and his besmirching of the character of the Supreme Court justices. One wonders when the DFL might think about replacing him with a leader who isn’t a proven prevaricator.