As for me, I’m glad there is strip-mining

If you ever thought a hell pit was wonderful, you are a conservative

If we sent KOS a picture of an abattoir – another place no one suggests you actually live – do you suppose he’d stop eating meat?

Oh, and every penny spent cleaning up the countryside when the miners are gone just to make things pretty for squirrels and geese is pretty much a penny wasted.

And it adds up to a lot of pennies.

Further erosion of the American taboo on exogamy

Segregated prom tradition yields to unity

When I was a kid most people disapproved marrying outside the religious denomination in which you were born and raised.

When I was a kid, white people generally disapproved marrying outside one’s own ethnic group, for that matter - French, Dutch, Irish, or whatever - though generally not as much as marrying outside one’s religion.

To this day, Jews generally disapprove Jews marrying non-Jews.

I suspect most people of all races would still count it against a marriage that it crossed racial, ethnic, or religious lines, more recent immigrants more than others.

And when I was a kid prevention of interracial marriage was one of the big reasons for social, if not legal, segregation.

Socializing leads to dating leads to . . . well, you know how it goes.

Liberals disapprove such sentiments.

In truth, they approve of diversity for only as long as the process of erasing it takes, minimally, to set in.

After that, everybody’s supposed to have the same café-au-lait skin and slightly not-round eyes.

Efforts to prevent exogamy, either personal or political, limited or general, are just evil, in their eyes.

And this is really important, to them, unless resistance would cross one of their other taboos.

Alan Dershowitz recently wrote against the disappearance of American Jewry through both a shortfall of fecundity and persistent exogamy, for instance.

The liberals voiced no criticism, or muted criticism at most, he being Jewish.

You can criticize Israel but you can't criticize Jews for being concerned for the survival of Jews as a distinct people.

You can't insist they shouldn't mind blending away with others into a uniform mix, leaving all that troublesome diversity behind in the lost, unlamented past.

But you can imagine what they would have said about somebody expressing concern about plummeting fertility and miscegenation eventually wiping out white people, or Germans, or even Russians, seriously diminishing their numbers.

Somebody like Pat Buchanan, perhaps.

See?

You don't have to imagine.

You know well what they said.

And you recall their celebration of and enduring support for this famous constitutional innovation of the liberal Supremes of the mid-20^th Century.

Loving v. Virginia

Though I must say I agree that flat outlawing miscegenation was going a bit far.

Torture, the Bomb, and enemy combatants.

People like Krauthammer and Dershowitz defended torture as necessary when used to prevent such extraordinary things as an impending nuclear attack the plot for which was already unfolding.

But our military and security forces abused prisoners viciously when there were no grounds to fear anything so exceptional or outlandish, or to believe the people they abused had knowledge that would avert any such thing.

Even granting - and there is not really any good reason to grant this, that I know of - that torture was necessary to get OBL, that use also does not fall under the nuke-attack-in-progress scenario or any plausible variant of it.

That entire debate was illicitly related to the question whether terrorists can be regarded as "unlawful enemy combatants," it being equally criminal to torture them, I believe.

So far as I know, POWs, "unlawful" or not, cannot be tortured or mistreated under American law or under treaties we have accepted and never repudiated.

They can be tried and punished for their crimes under normal processes and with their normal rights intact.

But that is quite another thing.

And, so far as I know, there was never any reason to suppose any of the prisoners abused at Gitmo, at Abu Ghraib, or elsewhere fell under anything like the nuke-attack-in-progress scenario people volubly insisted justified anything, no matter how horrific.

Our military and security forces abused prisoners and treated them inhumanely partly as vindictive and exemplary punishment and partly as a routine way of gathering information useful in or relevant to combating terrorism, but not remotely covered by the nuke-in-progress scenario.

It was the Third Degree on steroids.

And it was probably widespread during the Vietnam War and often done in all our other wars, too.

War is hell.

Oh, POWs can be held for the duration, of course, with no charges and no trial.

That would be another reason some wanted the Boston Bombers considered "enemy combatants," though they lacked the necessary connection with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

On the other hand, it seems incontestable that many people would insist prevention of terrorism, deliberate attacks aimed at killing and maiming ordinary civilians going about their ordinary business in large numbers or relatively small, is itself a sufficient justification for the use of outright torture.

Not just in the nuke scenario but in pretty much any scenario.

And maybe not just terrorism, sensu strictu, but any form of mass or serial killing.

And if there is an objection, here, other than a moral or religious one, I don't know what it is.

Cases like that, in fact, were actually what Dershowitz had in mind, and Krauthammer.

Dershowitz on torture warrants

Krauthammer on when torture is warranted

They were quite frank about it and were by no means only adverting to the nuke-in-progress scenario.

In France, General Aussaresses, too old for prison, paid a substantial fine for saying torture had been useful in combating terrorism and justified during the Algerian War.

As did his publisher.

Paul Aussaresses

Of course, the real concern has always been the proper treatment and interrogation of “high value targets” profoundly in the know about plans and capabilities of a very large, international organization that will continue terrorist attacks in many places, some in the US, for as long as it survives.

It is not a case of a single ticking time-bomb we need to find quickly and disarm.

It is a question of ongoing operations of a well-funded and international organization of devoted slaughterers that have to be foiled.

And that’s pretty serious business.

Liberals want Bush, Cheney, and any others involved in bringing about the abuse of prisoners and the use of torture in Afghanistan, Gitmo, or in other places, at our own hands or at the hands of friendly governments, in connection with the “war on terrorism” to be punished.

So far, Obama has resisted that.

It is an interesting question how most Americans would feel about it.

As for me, I vacillate on the issue.

But on the whole I think I oppose such punishment.

I oppose people being punished for doing what I would have wanted them to do and am grateful they did.

Though I agree with Dershowitz relevant laws should have been changed to regularize the situation and provide necessary cover for security forces or individuals personally implicated.

Update, 5/1.

But others, like Digby, take the opposing view.

The torture memoir

To her arguments I reply that there are innocent people in prison, too. Shall we close them all?

Torture is indeed horrible. So is terrorism. Which is worse? Terrorism, I think.

The trial of Kermit Gosnell

Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Charged With Murder

The prosecution claims they were born alive and then he killed them.

In Pennsylvania that is first degree murder, says the story.

The prosecutor cited Pennsylvania law stating that if a baby delivered during an abortion “shows any sign of life, it’s considered alive — a heartbeat, breathing, a cry, movement.”

Also, per the story,

Gosnell . . . is also accused of performing 24 abortions beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy, the limit in Pennsylvania.

The alleged victims of post-delivery murder are Baby Boy A, Baby C, Baby D, and Baby E, and staff at his clinic are the witnesses.

Those who oppose what are euphemistically called “late term abortions” agree it is absurd that killing a child in utero is legal but killing the same child ten minutes later, in the open air, is murder.

In this, they agree with the usually hidden opinion of some of the folks at Planned Parenthood.

Those people, who of course support the legality of late term abortions, recently let slip that, in their view, when things go awry and the infant is born alive the doctor should be allowed to kill what no one can deny is a newborn child.

The opponents – rightly, I think – insist late term abortions are egregious in utero infanticides and tolerating them is an unacceptable refusal to protect innocent and helpless human life.

On the other hand, generally, these same people also oppose abortion at any stage, and some of them oppose various drugs that prevent implantation.

I do not agree.

As a practical matter it makes some sense to draw the line at viability, allowing abortion at will before that and forbidding it afterward except for situations that would justify euthanasia or perhaps to save the life of the mother.

That, you will say, is no line but a blur, a gray area, constantly moved up by technology which might someday push viability all the way back to conception, making the “line” disappear altogether, and the right to abortion along with it.

Quite so.

And that would carry things, I think, further than necessary to truly protect the value of human life, though if we have to choose between that extreme and the other of permitting even late term abortions I would prefer that all abortions be disallowed – again, except for situations that would justify euthanasia or perhaps to save the life of the mother.

This is what I think is true, like it or not.

When it is unavoidable to recognize the fetus as an unborn child, however small, it is too late for abortion at will to be anything but a horror of selfishness, callousness, and inhumanity.

But before that, before we have anything thus recognizably a human, it could be allowed, I think.

But not after that.

Definitely not after.

Historically, infanticide and abortion at will have been at home in many societies, all of them drenched with man’s inhumanity to man, with gruesome cruelty.

I do not view cruelty favorably.

The story says,

Nine states have banned most abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Last month, two states went further: Arkansas banned abortion after 12 weeks and North Dakota beyond about 6 weeks, when a fetal heartbeat is “detectable.”

Good for them.

Liberal support for this, liberal endorsement of feminist demands for "a right to choose" reaching all the way to the natural end of pregnancy in childbirth and even beyond, is shameful and inexcusable.

The demand for such a right is a nakedly cruel demand for legal permission to commit murder out of sheerest, ugliest, horrific selfishness.

Nothing quite like that unconditional mother's love, is there?

And they bitch about men being selfish.

A liberal, huh? But is he a progressive?

Liberals have a Koch

Looks like just another post-progressive plute.

The kind Obama already answers to.

The kind who think ordinary Americans are way overpaid and overprivileged.

They worry first about global warming and second about HIV in Africa and third about leveling the global playing field with free trade and open immigration here in America.

Once in a while they throw a sop to America’s ordinary people.

But that’s just to keep the rabble in line as they intentionally accelerate the decline of America.

If people ask why you refuse to take politics seriously

Willem-Alexander takes Dutch throne after mother abdicates

Abortion mills are slaughterhouses for human babies?

DC Abortionist on Tape: If an Abortion Failed, We'd Leave the Infant to Die

So this is supposed to be "a woman's right to choose"?

To hell with all that.

If the only way to stop the murders is to close every abortion clinic in the country, so be it.

Such contempt for human life is not something to even tolerate, let alone encourage.

Perhaps we could start by advising Planned Parenthood to either stop all abortions or lose all government funding.

This piece has totally enraged most liberal bloggers

Different Places Have Different Safety Rules and That's OK

Actually, liberals generally want to impose uniform standards on the whole world, somehow.

And they consider setting up shop in foreign parts with standards less demanding than our own a proof of unforgivable US corporate greed.

Though why liberals want corporations to spend as much on worker safety in India as in America but not on worker salaries or other benefits is a bit of a mystery.

Anyway, it is exactly that that Matt Y here disputes.

This should not even be a question and we should not be drawing little red lines in the sand

Obama, war, Syria

Shamus Cooke asks,

Has Syria crossed the "red line" that warrants a U.S. military invasion?

Another dumbass “war of choice”?

Just thrilled to hear Kerry was “a cheerleader for intervention,” I am.

Swell.

Warmongering the Christian right

The death of churches in the Islam world

Really?

Listed as today’s top news at Human Events?

Taking sides. Amoralism, apoliticism, and empirical egoism

The relatively apolitical are that either because they lack clear and firm relevant opinions as to justice, rights, or the rights and wrongs of things – and, really, that is not a fault – or because they recognize their political impotence – and neither is that.

But it does not follow and is untrue that they wholly lack political preferences.

Having preferences about the weather does not require having moral or religious opinions about it or individual power to influence it.

Those preferences might or might not line up with anybody’s party program, in whole or in part, or support preference for rule by one party rather than another in certain respects or some cases.

And in case they do either that can be so even in the face of indifference regarding most of their agenda, or most issues in play at any given time.

Or even hostility toward all the significant agenda items of all the competing parties!

Sometimes the weather only seems to vary from bad to worse and back again, for ages at a time.

Dangerous minds

People who are determined to fight for what they think is right, is God’s will, or is demanded by justice are deluded fools, however brilliant they may be.

Fools who think they are or will be admired, if not by their contemporaries then by future generations - or maybe by God, or the Buddha, or Jesus.

The most dangerous and even mad thing about them is their determination to stand up for what they believe and change the world.

One thinks of Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, Mohammed, or Martin Luther.

Or Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, or Lenin.

I remember the radicals who led the demonstrations of the 60s.

They were just such crackpots then, and many of them are still crackpots, though some have switched from one madness to another.

Some of them robbed banks and even killed people to end capitalism and bring down Amerikkka.

Others were lesser criminals, but still criminals.

And all were heroes in their own minds like Stalin, who was also a bank robber, and the Italian Red Brigades, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Once I asked a kid working part time at a Pathfinder bookstore whether he was a student.

He took immediate offense, said he was not, and insisted heatedly and in all seriousness, “I am a professional revolutionary.”

I am pleased and, I confess, even relieved - very relieved - to report that his revolution has not happened.

Nor any other more earth-shaking, in America, within my life time, than the civil rights and sexual revolutions.

And even their tremors continue, menacingly.

Yes and No.

Obama at Planned Parenthood

There is ample public support for restrictions on abortion.

Contraception?

Not so much.

A bigger jerk than his predecessor.

Venezuela’s president orders arrest of American filmmaker

Maybe he stole the election and maybe he didn’t.

But it’s not very credible the US is doing much in Venezuela, under Obama.

Though the previous jerk, Hugo Chavez, had open contempt for our president.

We need this. Every civilized society needs this.

Susan Griffith's last days

A brave woman making a brave choice.

A brave woman forced into a terrible choice among bad options.

Death comes for us all.

Strangely . . . .

The FBI’s Favorite Imam Sounds Off on Boston

There may be Muslims or Afghans who are glad we pushed out the Taliban.

There may even be Muslims or Iraqis who are glad we pushed out Saddam.

And there may be numerous Muslims glad we knocked off OBL.

But neither the phobes nor the philes have any reason to share news of them with us.

Islamo, I mean.

For the phobes, all Muslims are against us.

For the philes, they are right to be so; we deserve it.

What is the EU for, anyway? Is its job to undermine Europe?

Brussels seeks to 'make it easier' for EU migrants to move to Britain

Maybe just to undermine Eurosocialism by giving the right more, and more legitimate, grievances against the Welfare State?

The example of our betters

Confronting the dreaded D-word

What? Is he still here?

Writes VDH,

President Obama’s own aunt, Zeituni Onyango, not only broke immigration law by overstaying her tourist visa, but also compounded that violation by illegally receiving state assistance as a resident of public housing.

Only after Mr. Obama was elected president was his aunt finally granted political asylum on the grounds that she would be unsafe in her native Kenya.

. . . .

Mr. Obama’s own uncle, Onyango Obama, is at present illegally residing in the United States. 

Is there a politician in the whole world who does not disappoint?

Democrats exploiting addiction. And Republicans.

If smokers quit, who will pay the bills?

Drinkers?

On the other hand, Republicans stand for legalization only so they can then complain about the public costs of addiction, whining about Medicaid or Medicare paying for liver transplants, pharmacy costs for people with COPD, or repeated visits to the rehab center for coke-heads.

What? Jack Bauer is now among the PC police?

Hollywood and Post-Boston Xenophobia

12 years and one movie script later, Kiefer Sutherland has gone over to the dark side?

As for xenophobia, recall the old saw, “Just ‘cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there’s nobody out to get you.”

Better safe than sorry, eh?

Shut down the empire and butt out of the Muslim world, says Pat Buchanan

The dark side of diversity

And stop Muslim immigration, too.

Why not at least try better vetting?

Malkin: a national security history lesson for Marco Rubio

Because the Democrats’ client identity groups oppose it and because numerous people out to intentionally “diversify” America – meaning swamp white, Christian America with immigrants not white, not Christian, or  both not white and not Christian – don’t want it.

More a Muslim identity thing than a Muslim religious thing?

Official: Suspect says Iraq, Afghanistan drove Boston bombings

The motivation of these two seems not really traceable to the Koranic counsels of Jihad to spread, impose, or even defend Islam, per se.

Hence it’s not really traceable to those factors that have made Islam historically the most dangerous and violent of at least the world’s major religions.

Now and again, it looks a lot more like ordinary tribal loyalty.

“You attacked my people so I’m attacking back.”

And you always have to wonder how far most Muslim fighters in their battles all over the world are motivated by like considerations, mixed in varying measures with more specifically religious and more specifically Islamic motivations.

Likewise Muslims who side with the Palestinians and oppose Zionism.

Likewise Muslims who oppose America's policies in the Middle East.

That a Muslim terrorist yells "Allahu Akbar" as he fires into a crowd or sets off his bomb does not mean his cause or his motivations are rooted in the special and spectacular violence of the Koran.

That an IRA bomber kisses a crucifix in a like circumstance does not mean his fight is primarily an act of obedience to God's presumed will, nor an effort to impose that will.

Tribal war is not religious in the sense alleged even when the tribes are defined by their religion.

And certainly not merely because fighters try to take comfort and courage from those same religions as they fight.

Nor even because it is by no means uncommon for warriors of any given religion to believe, or to hope, that God is on his side.

God, or Allah, or the gods, or whomever.

Which throws a different light altogether on the spread of Islam by Jihad in the years between the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages, as well as the Christian counter-attacks of the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquista, doesn't it?

Still, a bomb is a bomb and these things have to be dealt with, either way.

Even if the blame does not attach to the bombers' religion, strictly speaking.

Is Catholicism at fault for the crimes of the IRA?

Protestantism for those of the Protestant opponents of the IRA?

No, OK.

But they were crimes, all the same.

Pat Buchanan, by the way, has seen things in this light, more than once.

A good and valid point, and an important one.

The Beantown Bombers were on their way to blow up The Big Apple

Boston bombing suspects planned Times Square attack, Bloomberg says

All too easily believable.

A terrorist improv.

The headline tells you all you need to know about why America is always at war or getting ready for war

Sarin in Syria: What's the United States' next move?

And what’s up in Korea, lately, by the way?

The crisis there got pushed off the front pages by the Boston Bombing and never made it back.

But it’s still happening, and Obama has never rescinded his pledge to South Korea that we will go to war to protect them from the North.

Just how many wars do our heroic leaders want to be able to fight at the same time?

Financed on credit, of course, and on whatever the administration dares to steal from domestic programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and maybe even Food Stamps.

From Beantown to Benghazi in one quick jump

Graham: 'Ultimate blame' for Boston attacks on administration

For those who forgot, Benghazi was the scene of an al-Qaeda hit hiding behind a popular Muslim celebration of 9/11 that the administration labeled, taking its lead from the propaganda of the Muslims, deserved public outrage at a downright comical amateur video bio of Mohammed on the web.

That was their story for days.

The guy who made and put up the video was jailed for some irrelevant offense and punished far in excess of what that offense would normally warrant.

There are signs the hit worked out for the killers because Hillary and the state department bureaucracy lowered security at the consulate, just in the nick of time.

Not every day is your lucky day.

Let us pause for a moment to reflect on the oddness that the left, always so quick to condemn our society for blaming the victim in cases of rape (but it's the rapist who goes to jail, is it not?), always joins the Muslims in blaming their victims, those who freely speak against them and upon whom they seek violent vengeance.

And even repression.

Is it not always the left that seeks laws to criminalize whatever speech upsets their client identity-groups, most especially and definitely including anti-Muslim but not anti-Christian blasphemy, under the label, "hate speech"?

And is it not they who also condemn - for hate! - the efforts of those who document and publicize the very real hate speech of which those client groups are themselves daily guilty?

Blaming those who protect us

Finding Misha: Could the mystery man who radicalized Tamerlan Tsarnaev have been an FBI informant?

Casual observation

Somewhere, there’s a loon who read Othello and murdered his wife.

Don’t tell the feminists or that’ll be the end of Shakespeare in the Park.

Or in the schools.

Or even in the elite colleges, where feminist, black, and queer criticism, I hear, are already more than half the reading in an undergrad Shakespeare course.

All kidding aside, this line gets trotted out after every Muslim attack.

Haven’t you noticed?

It’s the liberal’s version of the standard, whacko conspiracy theory.

Not “the gummint did it” and certainly not “the Jews did it.”

Instead, it’s “the FBI did it,” or as close to that as they quite dare, yet, to go, the left wing public enemies for whom the blame must always fall on Christian, white, male Americans.

And the Muslim murderer, or would-be murderer, is always that loon who read Othello.

Come to think of it, Greenwald and his ilk have more than once crossed the line, haven't they, accusing the FBI of basically framing hapless dupes as terrorists?

Close the door

The problem isn’t just illegal immigration, it’s legal immigration, too

If you feel for some reason we MUST allow immigration then allow it only for a small number, annually, of well-educated and self-supporting adults with a job already lined up.

And we don’t need such people from abroad, really, producing plenty of our own, anyway.

We don’t need to be granting asylum to anybody.

Let refugees and asylum seekers go to Britain, or France, or somewhere else.

No doubt you have noticed the right is pretty seriously divided on immigration and has been since the libertarians have become more numerous, throwing their weight on the side of plutocrats and agribusinessmen looking to keep the price of labor down and against those worried about issues of loyalty, assimilation, cultural compatibility, and even race.

And that pro-immigration stand puts them on the same side as the many and various leftists out to do their bit to make white and Christian Americans minorities in their own country, just as soon as they possibly can.

And there's this.

25,000 Muslims rally to demand criminalization of criticism of Islam

Want that here?

Nope.

If you don't like it when the left insist we have to change our ways - and abandon our values - to suit the cultural sensibilities of foreigners so we "can all get along" in this post-modern, multicultural world your real alternative is to refuse post-modern multiculturalism in your own country.

Don't let people that foreign into you country in the first place, either at all or anyway not in dangerous numbers.

And there are other reasons for concern.

Maybe this is not a very serious threat, but still.

Reconquista Mexico

By “Mexicans” they mostly mean, of course, Indians and mestizos.

Whites from Mexico?

Not so much.

Liberals insist it’s all the same.

Rubio Tells Cavuto He's Open to Idea of Profiling Muslim Students

Actually, he says he’s ready to consider the idea of denying student visas to Muslim applicants.

He does not say he actually favors it.

And that is not profiling of any kind, anyway, and would not in any case be based on race but on religion.

Good idea, it seems to me, and long overdue.

As is actual profiling at the airports, by the way, narrowing the intrusive anti-terrorism measures to a subset of people one has actual reason to suspect, even if only because they are Muslim.

Both ideas are long overdue.

If not, why not?

What would a conservative court say?

Reports: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev confessed before Miranda rights, then fell silent

Now THIS is where the public safety exception to the Miranda rule becomes relevant.

According to that exception, evidence gained from questioning a suspect who has not been Mirandized may be admissible if there was good public safety reason to question the suspect without the warning.

This does not mean the suspect does not HAVE the rights in question, but only that he needn’t be expressly warned of them in all cases.

And if the Obama administration thinks it needs to I am sure it will, with however great reluctance, seek to use such evidence in this case.

If the evidence is excluded at trial they will appeal that ruling or the Democrats will pay a very heavy electoral price if he does not.

And what would the Supremes say?

A truly textualist court would reject Miranda, anyway, and Gideon right along with it.

I doubt our Supremes would actually go that far, though, if asked about this case.

Pretty good bet they'd be willing to make that public safety exception pretty broad for dealing with terrorists, though, I would guess.

Hmm?

But, Charlie, “war on terror” is just a metaphor.

Charles Krauthammer on words President Obama isn't saying

Like “war on crime” or “war on poverty,” the expression is not used literally, though there is, literally, a war on against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Chechen fighters and terrorists in Russia are not members of either group, though indeed they are in sympathy with them and their causes.

As were the Boston Bombers and as have been numerous people bent on terrorism in the US.

All the same, there is no literal war with them and they are literally only criminals, in the same boat legally as Americans guilty of such violence.

And the broader, global struggle against Muslim terrorism is mostly a matter of exceptionally aggressive law enforcement, necessarily relying on an unprecedented intelligence effort, aimed more than usually at prevention, though in part it relies on presidential use of military or other force, short of war, outside our borders and against folks with whom we are not literally at war, such as Islamist terrorists, guerrillas  or soldiers in sub-Saharan Africa.

And the “generational struggle” that could actually go on rather longer than that, and longer even than the cold war, properly conducted, can and should demand far less of the people than any actual war and not much more than extra money, as compared to ordinary law enforcement.

Comparisons with World War Two are absurd.

Even comparisons with America's centuries of Indian Wars, though perhaps unfortunately similar in likely duration, are not entirely apt.

As for the Boston Bombers, their Mom has an outstanding warrant waiting for her for shoplifting?

Muslim white trash, are they?

Close the door on Islam

US must decide if immigrants from countries where radical Islam is taught are still welcome here

It’s all very well to insist we must decide.

But read the piece.

He does not decide.

Phooey.

Huffpo says Fox is after them.

Fox News Attacks Muslims Relentlessly In Wake Of Boston Bombing

By the way, I have seen reports that earlier reports the elder brother was shouted down in a mosque for preaching radicalism are baseless inventions whose point, of course, is to exonerate Islam, or anyway our Islam, American Islam.

“Europeans”?

Hundreds of Europeans fighting in Syria, says EU expert

Muslims resident in Europe, they likely mean.

Get a haircut. Get a job.

"Going Extinct Is Genocide": Lakota Elders Tour to Raise Awareness About Struggle

Indians having a problem with population decline go on the warpath.

The part about matriarchy is interesting and even funny.

Oh I just feel so guilty!

Kudos for Dan Gainor

The monstrous abortion trial the media don’t want you to know about

He knows “media” calls for a plural verb.

Well, are Muslim terrorists all that special?

Eric Rudolph and the rights of American terrorists

Again, so far as I know, no American right wing terrorist (if that’s a fair label for anti-abortion bombers) has yet targeted an American warship or the Empire State Building.

Or every major train station in DC or New York on the same day.

Never an attack targeting the general population, that I know of.

Always focused on government figures, police, or people in the abortion biz.

It’s not the same.

Did ER ever say he’d nuke New York, if he could?

Oh, and late term abortion is infanticide, anyway.

The only difference is geographic.

Immigration battles?

Marco Rubio's Immigration Plan Sparks Conservative Civil War

Elsewhere on the web today a liberal blogger denigrated white people dismayed at the prospect of becoming a minority in the USA.

I posted a comment asking him whether anyone has ever been happy as a member of a racial minority.

Who would welcome such a fate for himself, particularly if the emergent majority is noted for grievance against and hostility toward his, the current majority, race?

Who would welcome it for his descendants but someone who would likely also not care much about how bad the physical environment gets for them, right along with the social environment?

I posted two comments to the article to which I link, above, about immigration.

Second.

Oh, I'm a Democrat, by the way.

The next time I vote Republican (I voted for Nixon and Bush the Younger) will be after the party stops trying to kill Social Security and Medicare and starts voting to enhance benefits for both.

Let me know when you're ready.

:-)

 First

I admit I speak only for myself, but why not just shut the door?

Declare a moratorium on all immigration for a few decades?

And why do the line jumpers, rendered legal residents, have to be allowed EVER to become citizens?

Why shouldn't permanent loss of that prospect be a fair punishment for line jumping and a deterrent to future line jumping?

And if we do nothing else can't we stop or at least further limit Muslim immigration and Muslim visits on temporary visas?

Just asking why not, is all.

Overreaction?

Did the brothers Tsarnaev fail?

Pat Buchanan didn't quite say the words "grotesque, fear-driven over-reactions are successes for terrorism and invite more of the same."

But that seems to have been his judgment.

The comments indicate his readers are divided, some calling for a ban on Muslim immigration, others dissenting from terrorist-hysteria, and others yet seizing this new opportunity to damn key targets of right wing hate in the administration.

Meanwhile, others lambaste the FBI for “dropping the ball, yet again.”

Judging by the general run of Muslim terrorist incidents, it seems fair to say our authorities over-estimate the danger and over-react, regularly.

But judging by their occasional, major deeds, it all seems rather less extravagant and out of place.

And judging by their declared aspirations and what they might actually someday be able to do, attack with real wmd and not pressure-cooker bombs, maybe not at all.

But how much of that "aspiration" has just been our enemies having fun yelling “Suitcase nukes! Radiological weapons! Sarin gas! Weaponized Anthrax! Boo!” and then watching us first go pale with fear and then squander a trillion dollars blowing up sand and making lots more enemies?

How far has our overreaction to 9/11, with two invasions and a decade of war, destabilized the whole Maghreb and the Middle East and Central Asia to the advantage of Islamism and its anti-Zionist, anti-American ambitions?

And how far have we continued to play with fire by surreptitiously and openly supporting Islamists in conflicts with Russia out of no more than a stupid cold war habit?

The propaganda of denigration

If the Tsarnaevs were part of a terrorist network, it was a network made up of idiots

Everyone has his own agenda and so his own reasons for denigration of terrorists.

GW and Obama both referred to terrorists of obvious bravery as cowards.

Pretty much everyone mocked the Unabomber for fear of imitators.

Liberals mock Muslim terrorists, ridiculing them as incompetent boobs of only the shallowest religion, to minimize the danger, distance them from Islam, and lay the groundwork for opposition to counter-measures.

Meanwhile, they do all they can to pump up fear of home-grown, right-wing, domestic, and Christian terrorism.

The endless errors of leading Democrats and liberals, pronouncing every new attack the deed of some right-wing crackpot, only to watch as America is not surprised to discover it was a Muslim who dunnit, are not errors but propaganda, deliberate efforts to skew public judgment as to who or what is a threat.

Axelrod and others said they thought the bombing in Boston the work of a right-winger, a Tax Day protest.

Remember?

Conservatives, the Boston Bombers, and immigration

Several sources say conservatives are calling for changes to our immigration law and perhaps to the bill now before congress in light of the Boston Bombings.

No particulars, but it looks like what they want but don’t dare to say is we should cut off or diminish Muslim immigration in some fashion, and perhaps do the same with student visas or other temporary residency permits granted to Muslims.

On the other hand, they could just be blowing smoke about terrorism in order to bail on a compromise bill that they don’t really like.

So now a pressure-cooker bomb is a weapon of mass destruction?

Surviving Boston bombing suspect charged: conspiracy to use WMD

He was charged in federal court in Boston.

Not clear whether this is because he is a citizen or because they don’t think he’s covered by the authorization for the use of force, or for some other reason.

When I was in the army during the Vietnam War they taught us that WMD included radiological, chemical, and biological weapons.

Not plain explosives, bombs, or whatnot.

But usages change and this is a question of legal meaning, anyway.

He was not charged in connection with the deaths of the policemen they killed.

I suppose those would have been tried in the Massachusetts state courts, and that state has no death penalty.

But perhaps they will have a go if the kid is acquitted in federal court or doesn’t get the death penalty.

Or in any case, but after the feds are done with their trial.

As for that special questioning by that special FBI/CIA team, looks like it didn't happen or it took about five minutes.

Is the White House that stupid or was this just Axelrod telling a political lie?

Facing the threat, &c.

Nordlinger writes,

David Axelrod said something interesting after the terror in Boston. (He is the president’s chief political strategist.) 

He said the president was connecting the bombing to Tax Day.

Friday night, I was sitting in a concert hall. 

The critic sitting behind me was saying to his friend, “I assumed this was right-wing domestic terror. It happened on Tax Day.”

The other week, a U.S. Army instructor issued a list of threats — a list headed “Religious Extremism.” 

At the top of the list was “Evangelical Christianity (U.S./Christian).”

Two years ago, Mayor Bloomberg in New York guessed that the Times Square terrorist was opposed to Obamacare.

You have to hope this sort of thing is just pious bullshit and not a reflection of their true opinions.

Right wing terrorism is fairly rare and generally directed at police or government officials, not the American public.

That could change, of course.

But it hasn't.

I am not aware anyone on the right is suggesting it, but I will.

How about a moratorium on Muslim immigration?

And maybe a ban, for the duration of the global Islamist uprising, on Muslims coming here for education or any purpose that requires more than the briefest residence?

And let's deport any non-citizens, shall we?

If not, why not?

No bullshit about rights, justice, or morality allowed. 

If there are reasons we should run the added risk of terrorism letting Muslims in brings with it, what are they?

And I am far from saying there are none or that they are insufficient.

Just asking for clarity, here.

How about that?

. . . David Sirota went so far as to publicly offer his fervent hopes that the bomber was “a white American.”

I forgot.

Well, both were white and the one still alive is in fact an American.

And so what?

Joke’s on Sirota.

A very sensible editorial from the National Review Online.

After Boston

The interrogation is on

Badly wounded Boston Marathon bombing suspect responding to questions

Looks like it started last night.

Not much more here than notice that it’s happening.

There are some reports of a wider investigation

Boston Marathon Bombings: FBI Hunts Terror 'Sleeper Cell' Linked to Tsarnaev Brothers

If it’s true, that there are some sparse and scanty reports indicates the forces of order want it to be a secret and are not quite succeeding at hushing it up.

In which case, once again, we wish we had a suitable official secrets act providing suitably draconian individual and not just corporate punishments.

Some may think the fact that few other news outlets are carrying this is proof it's unreliable.

But the fact may be just the opposite, and it may be many of the more respected sites are keeping mum so as not to mess up police efforts.

The source for the IBT is the Sunday Mirror.

Boston bombers: FBI hunting 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

If anything like this is true one can only wish the special interrogators talking to the kid luck.

As Patrick Jane might say if asked how sure of this he is, "50%," I'd say.

The Boston Bombers. The confusion continues.

Ian Millhiser

Perhaps the confusion will clear up when the special interrogators tell a prisoner who wants to remain silent or won’t speak without a lawyer that they can continue to question him and deny him a lawyer because nothing he divulges to them can be used against him at trial, anyway.

What the administration is doing is related to but not narrowly based on the public safety exception to the Miranda rule.

The rule says information obtained by questioning a suspect before he is advised of his right to remain silent, his right to counsel, and that anything he says can be used against him in court is not admissible.

The rule does not actually apply to the questioning the administration proposes since from the beginning the point is to obtain information for public safety that will not be used for prosecutorial purposes.

But neither does the exception.

The exception to the rule allows prosecutorial use of information obtained from a suspect not advised of his rights owing to the need to question him right away for the public safety.

Given prosecutorial use is not intended, anyway, the public safety exception is not actually relevant.

I suppose if they have to the administration could always claim to be holding and questioning the kid as a material witness.

GW's administration did that more than once.

Material Witness per Wikipedia

The traitors among us

ACLU

Did you know the ACLU was founded as a communist front for the purpose of advancing the subversive efforts of communism in the USA?

We are a long way from those days and the ACLU has been on the right side of numerous issues since then, often with the blessing of Moscow.

Of course, contemporary radicals have since 9/11 treated Muslims, Islamic fundamentalism, and Muslim terrorism according to the maxim, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

And the ACLU has stood with them, shoulder to shoulder.

And yet the very same radical left has called for much greater FBI watchfulness of Christian, anti-abortion groups, especially those which may spawn actual violence and terrorism.

I have never heard of Senator Feinstein or any other Democrat expressing objections to denigration of or spreading hatred toward Christians of however narrowly defined a sort.

Or discriminatory, unlawful, prejudicial, or unconstitutional “profiling” of Christian or other militia or related organizations.

American policy toward terrorism would make a lot more sense were it not for the fact that while Christianity – primarily Protestant Christianity – has become a client religion of the Republican Party, Islam has become a client of the Democrats.

In this instance, Representative King may have been right.

Top Democrat Slams GOP’s Islamophobia After Boston Bombing

In any case, the suggestion should be debated on its merits rather being rejected out of hand, as it seems to have been by Senator Feinstein.

The quote from Levin supporting the idea that the Bombers were not part of any organized, threatening group may be relevant but is not clearly decisive.

On the other hand, it certainly is relevant to note that the elder brother actually was subject to an investigation some time ago and the FBI found no special cause for concern.

But the methods and failures of the NYPD some time ago perhaps are not.

Are the Boston Bombers unlawful enemy combatants?

G.O.P. Lawmakers Push to Have Boston Suspect Questioned as Enemy Combatant

Though some have called for it to be rescinded, it has not been.

I refer to the congressional authorization for the use of force against the perpetrators of 9/11, passed on September 14, 2001.

It reads in pertinent part,

[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Nobody else is covered by the resolution in question.

And it doesn’t seem to cover the Boston Bombers,since there is no apparent tie between them and al-Qaeda.

That quoted text does not put the US in a state of war with regard to any and all terrorists, or even just any and all Muslim terrorists.

Not even those who attack the US.

Hence Charlie Savage, author of the Times piece, is quite right in his first two sentences here.

But while the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a naturalized American citizen, is a Muslim, there is no known evidence suggesting that he is part of Al Qaeda.

The United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, not all Muslim extremists.

As a result, the dispute is pushing beyond familiar arguments and into new territory.

He is wrong in the third.

The dispute arises from the demands of some Republican senators who either mistakenly believe any Muslim terrorist is covered by that resolution or merely desire the government to behave as if that were so.

But the president can no more lawfully declare these two to be enemy combatants than he could a Swedish bank robber or an American Christian murderer of abortion doctors.

There simply is no relevant or enabling law, although it is an interesting question whether congress might create something to suit the purpose, and whether an attempt at application to these guys would run afoul of the ex post facto provision.

And while it may well be true that these two, as good Muslim loons, thought of themselves as at war with the US, that does not make it so.

It is interesting that Graham appears to understand and accept that the resolution does not extend to all Muslim terrorists.

But do his quoted remarks show he thinks it does at least cover non-al-Qaeda Muslims who “fight with al-Qaeda”?

Given that a declaration of war against a given nation is not sufficient to establish a state of war against any or all of its allies, I would have to suppose he is mistaken.

Even the then government of Afghanistan and the Taliban who ran it are covered only as being respectively a harboring and aiding nation and an aiding organization.

Besides, even that sort of connection is a bit of a stretch, given the two, though ethnic Chechens and Muslims, were not part of any organization of Chechens fighting with al-Qaeda, nor were they as individuals fighting with al-Qaeda.

Graham is right that such a connection might turn up, of course; but it does not follow it is lawful to treat them as if it had been established, pending exoneration.

That seems a little too like treating your suspected bank robber as guilty until proven innocent, no?

And as for that 30 day time limit for treating the kid as an unlawful combatant while the government checks to see whether he actually is one, well, he just made that up, didn't he?

It's not law.

None of which is to say special questioning without a lawyer and without mirandizing the suspect as the administration intends is not appropriate or permissible.

It does not rely on any supposition that the Bomber is actually a detained combatant, but only that public safety requires interrogation for the purpose of preventing further harm.

As I understand it, what is related by the detainee to interrogators in such special questioning - an invention, in fact, of President Obama - is understood from the outset to be unavailable for use against him in a trial.

It is this, the administration supposes, that obviates the need to mirandize and removes the (alleged) constitutional requirements that a suspect (a) cannot be questioned, if he so wishes, out of the presence of his attorney and (b) cannot be interrogated at all if he chooses to remain silent.

The ACLU, I understand, has protested even that concession to the special needs of a terrorism situation.

But the administration can, I think, rely on the public safety exception in the 1984 Quarles ruling of the Supremes.

In that case, evidence obtained at the very time of the arrest from a detainee who had not been mirandized was ruled admissible in court because of a public safety need for such immediate questioning.

In several other cases use for prosecution of evidence obtained through admissions of an unmirandized detainee without the presence of counsel have also been allowed under the plea of public safety.

In some recent terrorism cases, the Obama administration has delayed mirandizing and denied access to counsel, but apparently not attempted to use information thus gained for purposes of prosecution.

And that is what they want to do, here.

They want to get information in questioning that from the git-go will be, they say, excluded from such a use, to satisfy the special public safety needs of a terrorism related case.

But it may be that by the time the kid is able to talk, if that ever happens, that particular window of opportunity might be considered by a court to have closed.

The administration may say that given there is no question of using admissions for prosecution there is no reason to insist on the window being of short duration, for situations of immediate necessity, only.

But it is not clear a court would buy that.

I would prefer they did.

That doesn't mean they will.

Jack Wagner (Dem) is running for mayor of Pittsburgh as a marine war veteran

What crap politics is.

So that’s misogyny?

My wife left an issue of Star open on the bathroom scale.

Kevin Bacon is angry with the producers of The Following because the series is to end, apparently, with the murders of the female leads but not of the Master Villain or, I guess, Bacon’s own character.

That dissimilar treatment of male and female characters in the script is misogyny and sexism, according to him – according to Star.

So, the feminist Bacon denounces as sexist a story in which horrific murderers led by a really horrific male serial killer slaughter dozens of people including women in black hats and white hats, alike, and then several of them, including that alpha male whack job, are taken alive by police who also survive the hunt.

Well, Mr. Bacon, the prisons are full of violent males who have brutally murdered numerous people, often women, taken alive by police who themselves lived to enjoy retirement.

Reality has a liberal bias?

Mmm, I guess not.

Actually, I think the role of women on the cop side in the show exaggerated and unrealistic.

But that’s just me.

The domestic equivalent of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq?

It will finally be said, at some point, that the authorities way overdid this, placing maybe a quarter of the population of New England under lock-down while some thirteen thousand cops - a number cited by CNN, so who knows? - conducted a house-to-house search over the whole of Watertown, at least.

And all of that was done, apparently, with not a shred of worry about such constitutional niceties as warrants.

The entire, rather astonishing affair was quite unprecedented.

And it will not be easy in days to come to make the proposition seem reasonable that a fleeing, wounded kid was so vastly more dangerous than the general run of Boston hoodlums that all of this was really called for.

One stupid-looking adolescent in a white baseball cap, worn backwards on his head, was that much more of a threat than the serial rapists, loony murderers, and professional criminals on the lose in Boston, all day all the time, every day of the year?

Wait for talk of weapons of mass destruction and the history of exceptional violence of Muslim terrorism to come up in justification.

And the specific history of Muslim terrorism in Russia will help to sustain that defense of such extraordinary measures.

Beslan. The opera house. And so on.

Yes, the professional left will turn up the volume of their angry, half insincere, half merely demented, and entirely irrelevant and unhelpful accusations of racism, though the Boston Bombers were quite visibly as white as any Grand Imperial Wizard has ever been.

And their efforts to smear their own invention, so-called "Islamophobia," as racism through endless hand-wringing about descriptions of terrorists as "swarthy," "Middle-Eastern looking," or even "Muslim looking," will be even sillier as we are shown again and again photos of terrorists from the Caucasus region of Russia.

"Caucasus"?

Whyever does that word seem so familiar?

Anyway, experts and authorities will be talking about that very special history of Muslim terrorism, and perhaps especially of Russian Muslim terrorism, for days and even weeks to come.

The only flaw in the argument will be evident and well-known counterexamples to the claim Muslim terrorism is unique in its violence, like that other white-as-snow mass slaughterer up in Norway, the frankly Christian and proudly anti-Muslim terrorist, Anders Breivik.

But are such cases really a flaw in the argument that modern terrorism, in general, calls for such historically exceptional and legally questionable counter-measures?

Won't that reference to the mad Norwegian quickly be taken to mean these draconian methods are also called for to cope with the escalated threat of non-Muslim terrorism?

Of anybody's terrorism, in our unfortunate age of very, very effective and easily obtained means of slaughter on a huge scale?

Remember as well the Tokyo subway gas attacks in 1995 by the bizarre Japanese Christian sect - or post-Christian cult, if you prefer - Aum Shinrikyo.

And to get a clearer idea of the scale of the threat, if one is needed, recall that interview, a few years back, of an al-Qaeda official in Pakistan.

A guest of the local Taliban, he blandly assured a visiting journo that yes, indeed, if only they could lay hands on one, al-Qaeda would certainly use a nuclear weapon against the US homeland.

Absolutely.

Oh, about those invasions.

As I have written in the past, I think and have thought all along they were both fool's errands and horrific, not to say likely counter-productive, wastes of resources in a hopeless effort to turn backwards, benighted, and barbarous Muslims into Bos-Wash suburbanites devoted to both the US and Israel.

But apart form the liberal stupidity of refusing profiling for airport security measures, I have thought the considerable ramping up of US anti-terrorism measures, both defense and offensive, domestic and foreign, entirely appropriate and sensible.

So, on the whole and all things considered, while the manhunt in Boston might well have been a bit overdone, going beyond and even well beyond ordinary law-enforcement, anti-crime methods was the right thing to do.

And it will seem all the more so to all the more people if further investigation of the Bomber Brothers turns up some really scary stuff, as time goes on.

By the way, Aum Shinrikyo is listed as a terrorist organization by numerous authorities and the Japanese evidently refer to it as a "dangerous religion."

Surely the very idea of such a thing is unacceptable and profoundly politically incorrect?

Tsk, tsk.

I wonder what other religions are on their list.

Oh, wait.

Doesn't this all mean profiling of terrorists at airports is racist, foolish, and evil?

Well, no.

Mostly, the really dangerous-in-a-big-way terrorists out to attack the US at this time are, in fact, Muslims.

When Aum Shinrikyo cultists join in we can add their profile to the airport security list.

And then liberals will yell some more about racism because the cultists are mostly, I think, Japanese, to this day.

White hat in custody from about 7 last night

Watertown Hero David Henneberry Points Police to Bomb Suspect

This guy is a hero in the same way the two bombers are cowards.

At six, the governor lifted the lockdown on the city, so Henneberry went out of his house to walk his dog.

He noticed his boat in his yard appeared different and used a ladder to take a look.

He saw what he thought was a bloody body, fled, and told police.

So Watertown has a hero.

Police surrounded the place and shot the hell out of the boat.

They, too, are heroes.

White hat is in custody in unknown physical condition.

Two guys from the Russian Caucasus region, they seem to think

Boston manhunt

Born Chechens, raised in Kazakhstan.

I have long thought and several times written we ought to be working closely with the Russians against Muslim terrorism.

But though the cold war is long over, Washington’s elites prefer to continue to regard the Russians as bad guys, enemies, and global rivals if not opponents.

They have a better attitude toward China, though that country is in fact more of a rival in its region and is still controlled by the ancient enemy, its communist party.

As for Syria, for example, we should be with the Russians quietly supporting Assad rather than the al-Qaeda affiliated rebels with whom Russian Muslim terrorists are also, of course affiliated.

But the Democrats really prefer not to admit how high up on our threat list Muslim terrorism should be – or how low most other matters should be – and the Republicans just can’t stomach palling around with the Ruskies.

Per the story,

A statement from the office of Chechnya's president echoed that: "According to preliminary information, coming from the relevant agencies, the Tsarnaev family moved many years ago out of Chechnya to another Russian region," press secretary Alvi Kamirov told Russia's semi-official Interfax news agency.

"After that they lived for some time in Kazakhstan, and from there went to the U.S. where the family members received a residence permit.

Therefore the individuals concerned did not live as adults in Chechnya."

There remains a lot nobody seems to know, yet.

Like whether there were only two, and what other targets there might be or have been.

What does this mean?

While I, like most Americans, am concerned about what else might surface about this attack, and about what the US can do to reach any others in other countries who might have been involved, the only apparent concern of American liberals since the moment of the explosions has been to prevent the US or the US right from harming Muslims.

For as long as they could they did everything they could to deny and delay attribution of the Boston Bombings to Muslims, though they appeared certain from the start the attacks were actually terrorism.

And, as far as that goes, though it is very likely it was terrorism, that point has not actually been established, to my knowledge, though the Boston police, the FBI, or others have said so.

Anyway, why is the first and last concern of liberals, the professional left, and the radical left not to protect and avenge Americans but to protect and justify those who have chosen us as enemies?

One can only be glad their influence on the Democratic Party in these matters is not what they would wish.

Was it these two?

Black hat, white hat

Black hat was killed during a shootout with police.

White hat is being hunted.

They’ll be discovering fire, next

Death of a Nation

You don’t say?

Post-progressive liberals. Post-progressive Democrats.

No, cutting Social Security won't make young people love Democrats

More little Obamas, sticking their heads up, as Joan McCarter reports.

This is the newly rising post-progressive Democratic Party supported by a post-progressive liberalism more about identity and social issues than class, favoring the real or supposed interests of foreigners outside America over those of Americans right here at home.

The new coalition and the new liberalism that powers it have little in common with the progressivism with which liberalism allied at the beginning of the 20^th Century and the progressive/New Deal/Great Society coalition that rested on the solid foundation of the working class, small farmers, and ordinary folk of America.

We are very, very far from the days when John Dewey wrote his classic, Liberalism and Social Action.

Or even Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life.

We are only now hearing about things the people who have been trumpeting the new coalition have not been telling you.

Doing without the white working class as voters means dropping the centrality of working class interests, unless they’re basically freebies that don’t cost much, if anything, in taxes or even foregone profits.

Doing without the white working class means dropping the centrality of the interests of the ordinary people of America without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, or whatever slice-and-dice you like.

The agenda changes to the hurt of ALL ordinary people in America.

We boomers OF ALL RACES, RELIGIONS, ETC. paid for those earned benefits all our lives.

Too bad, eh?