Truth In Terrorism 101

[Annie]

Links at site:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_16_corner-archive.asp#080297

BARRETT BREAKTHROUGH? [Byron York]

In the Senate tonight, a major development in the struggle to make public the final report of Independent Counsel David Barrett, the man whose investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros began in 1995. The Senate voted to cut off funds to Barrett's office -- he has spent about $20 million on the investigation -- but more importantly, lawmakers required that Barrett's report be released to the public within 60 days of final passage of the law. The report has been finished since late last year, and its release has been delayed by lawyers for Clinton-era figures named in the report. The document is said to go far beyond the Cisneros matter. "Media reports are giving very credible commentary that the independent counsel report discusses problems at the office of criminal investigation at the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice," Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley said on the Senate floor tonight. "These matters do not involve Mr. Cisneros but raise extremely important questions about the administration of the tax code."

The Senate bill calls for the release of the report, "except for any such portions that contain information of a personal nature that the division of the court determines the disclosure of which would cause a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy that outweighs the public interest in a full accounting of this investigation," according to the text of the bill. The Senate bill still has to be reconciled with one passed by the House. If the measures are finally passed, Barrett will be required to go out of business within 45 days after the report is released.

Posted at 10:25 PM

MORE THAN I EVER WANTED TO THINK ABOUT REP. EMMANUEL [K-Lo]
From Rolling Stone:

Other Clinton veterans are even more pointed about Emanuel's assets. "He's got this big old pair of brass balls, and you can just hear 'em clanking when he walks down the halls of Congress," says Paul Begala, who served with Emanuel on Clinton's staff.


Posted at 10:03 PM

TOM COBURN'S PORKBUSTER FAILED [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
and...what a ridiculous drama queen Ted Stevens was.
Posted at 09:47 PM

RE: GLOOMY AND DEMORALIZED [Byron York]

At about 6:30 this evening, a White House source called to say that whatever strategy that was discussed in "The Miers Support Team: Gloomy and Demoralized" was the thinking of a third-party group, and not of the White House. "The White House has not discussed changing the plans," the source said. "It [the article] may represent what a third-party group thinks, but it is not representative of the mood or the strategic thinking of the White House. We were quite happy with the setting of a [hearing] date of November 7 yesterday, we feel like we're moving forward, and that's a very good thing."

Posted at 06:55 PM

ADVICE AND CONSENT [Ramesh Ponnuru]
David Limbaugh and Stephen Bainbridge are debating the issue intelligently. It would be odd if Senate Republicans were to end up taking a less deferential view of President Bush's nominating power than they did of President Clinton's.
Posted at 06:22 PM

PORK...NAUSEATING [Kathryn ]
I'm away from CSPAN but am told: "Inhofe just denounced the coburn amendment (now being voted on)...Says it doesn't save money & puts 'decisions in the hands of bureaucrats" & away from elected officials '"
Posted at 06:18 PM

RAMESH@PRINCETON [Robert P. George]
Ramesh wowed an audience of 300 at Princeton last night with a devastating critique of the lies, falsifications, and distortions contained in the famous Brief of 281 historians submitted in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services in a successful effort in 1989 to persuade the Supreme Court not to reverse Roe v. Wade. The Roe opinion itself, written by Harry Blackmun, relied heavily on an account of the legal history of abortion which turned out to be profoundly flawed. The "pro-choice" historians--including some of the most distinguished people in the field--stepped in to shore it up when Roe when it appeared to be about to fall. To do this, as Ramesh showed with devastating detail and precision, they brought disgrace upon themselves. Also appearing on the evening's program was Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the abortionist and co-founder of NARAL, who gave a chilling account of the lies he and his colleagues told in their effort to legalize abortion in the late 1960s and early 70s. He told the audience about disseminating false polling data, falsifying statistics about illegal abortions and maternal death rates, and engaging in many other appalling acts of dishonesty. "We believed our lies were justified in what we regarded as a good cause," he confessed. The forum was sponsored by Princeton Pro-Life, one of the nation's most savvy and energetic campus pro-life organizations.
Posted at 06:05 PM

THE SUPREME COURT AND COMMON SENSE: MORE [Peter Robinson]
A friend sends along this quotation by the great Justice Joseph Story. Story was nominated to the Court in 1811, at the age of 32, by President Madison. (Since he himself drafted a great deal of the Constitution, it can be safely assumed that Madison knew what he was doing.) Working closely with Chief Justice John Marshall, Story served until his death in 1845.

"Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties. . . . They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings. The people make them; the people adopt them; the people must be supposed to read them, with the help of common sense."


Posted at 05:48 PM

FUNNY, HE DOESN’T LOOK NEO-CONISH [Cliff May]

"When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke, there was not a single Arab who did not express the opinion that it was a despicable, mean [act] contrary to humanist values. They are right about this. But these people swiftly forgot their humanism and sealed their lips when the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi declared war against the Shi'ites in Iraq, and began to dispatch his booby-trapped soldiers to blow themselves up among children, women, and the elderly. None of those [who denounced the Abu Ghraib scandal] uttered a word and none shed a tear for the hundreds and thousands of Iraqis being murdered and whose bodies are being mutilated.

"The first to denounce [the Abu Ghraib scandal] were the Americans themselves, who thought that the acts of some of their soldiers distorted the image of the U.S. and served as a mark of shame...

"But don't the Arabs feel an even greater sense of shame when some of them kill and massacre Iraqi citizens? Don't the rest [of the people] feel pangs of conscience when they try to come up with excuses and justifications for the murderers and criminals whom they call the 'resistance?' How can someone outraged at the torture of or disrespect for another person be silent and ignore [Al-Zarqawi's] declaration of the [program of] extermination of millions of people because of their sectarian affiliation?

… "The war being waged by the Al-Qaeda organization and the terrorists against the Shi'ites in Iraq is among the acts of collective extermination, which is rare in modern history. There has been no case in the past in which somebody has declared a similar war against a race or a group as a whole, except [for the case of] Nazi Germany against the Jews.”

The above was written by Omran Salman, a Bahraini journalist – one who is willing to call a terrorist a terrorist, rather than an “armed man” or “gunman” or a “fighter” or an “insurgent” or some other weasel word. From our friends at Memri and there’s more here.

Also, I recently wrote this column on the MSM’s moral vacuity hiding behind a pose of high-minded neutrality.
Posted at 05:47 PM