THE BIG CARNIVAL

2011-12-21T01:49:00.003-06:00

NY Times' public editor rebukes paper for outing alleged Sandusky rape victim

By David Paulin

The New York Times outraged many readers by outing one of Jerry Sandusky's alleged rape victims in an article that -- while not actually naming the alleged victim -- nevertheless revealed so much about him that his identify could be determined with a simple Google search.

On Sunday, the Times' public editor joined the chorus of disgust. Arthur S. Brisbane, the paper's in-house watchdog for newsroom ethics, rebuked the paper for violating a fundamental journalistic cannon -- failing to protect the identify of an alleged rape victim. It's a journalistic cannon that's rarely breached without compelling reasons.

So why did the Times do it? Specifically, how come it ignored what the Society of Professional Journalists, in its code of ethics, characterizes as a fundamental duty to "minimize harm" when reporting sensitive issues such as sexual assaults? In the Times' case, it was purely for the "transient benefits" of telling a good story, according to Brisbane's 1,136-word column, "Name Withheld, but Not His Identity."

In coming to this damning conclusion, Brisbane gathered opinions from a number of sources, including two unapologetic Times editors: Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor for "standards"; and Joe Sexton, the sports editor whose department produced the Nov. 22 article.

Brisbane also quoted Michael Boni, the lawyer for the victim who was outed, who criticized the Times' story. "These guys knew it would out the kid," he said.

And at various points, Brisbane referred to a column by David Newhouse, editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has extensively covered the Sandusky story.

In his widely cited column published Nov. 23, Newhouse said his paper deliberately withheld details about Sandusky's alleged victim in order to protect the boy's identity. And he harshly criticized the Times for failing to do the same in respect to "Victim One," as the boy is known in the grand jury report.

Most significantly, Newhouse described an overarching reason for protecting Victim One's anonymity -- a reason Brisbane quoted when describing the potential for harm the Times caused by effectively 'outing' the boy.

As Newhouse explained:

"It is no accident that Victim One was only the second boy to come forward to authorities in what is alleged to have been more than 15 years of assaults by Sandusky. Stories like these, if anything, could discourage future victims from speaking up."

It was a persuasive argument, Brisbane observed -- one backed up by experts on sex crime victimization such as Dean Kilpatrick, a clinical psychologist at the Medical University of South Carolina and director of its National Crime Victims Center.

"Most victims, based on the research, are very reluctant to report," he told Brisbane. He said that "some of the top concerns are: 'I am afraid,' 'I don't want other people to find out,' 'I am afraid that people will blame me for what happened.'"

Brisbane added: "Because of this, Mr. Kilpatrick said, surveys show that fewer than one in five rape cases are ever reported to authorities. Sexual crime is the most underreported category of serious crime in the United States."

In his final rebuke, Brisbane wrote: "The traditional mandate to preserve privacy is there to protect sex crime victims -- a broader social purpose that, in my mind, outweighs the transient benefits of a single human-interest story."

The New York Times has a storied history, and during a golden era of American journalism -- during the late 1800s and early to mid-1900s -- it distinguished itself from myriad other New York City newspapers with its level-headed judgment and good taste. Those virtues were summed up in its motto printed on the upper left-hand corner of its front page and dating to 1896: "All the News that's Fit to Print."

Perhaps the Times needs a new motto to better reflect the news that it now considers fit to print.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-12-21T01:37:00.002-06:00

An American's Nightmare in a Mexican Hospital

By David Paulin

A recent vacation in Mexico turned into a nightmare for a 79-year-old Illinois man. But it wasn't a devastating bus crash that almost killed U.S.-born Alfonso Acosta.

It was his stay in one of Mexico's government-run hospitals.

According to a harrowing account in the Quad-City Times, a daily newspaper, Acosta suffered a "major head injury, multiple facial fractures, broken ribs and a punctured lung." Yet for five weeks he lay "virtually untreated" at the hospital where he was taken in Toluca, about 40 miles southwest from Mexico City, say outraged family members in the United States who rushed to his bedside.

They found him in a hospital room with six other patients. They barely recognized him: His head was grotesquely swollen and his urine contained clotted blood from an improperly placed catheter. Alarmed at his deteriorating condition and by the indifferent and seemingly incompetent medical personnel who were treating him, family members began caring for Acosta themselves, all while dealing with medical personnel who were unable or unwilling to speak English.

Acosta's family members said they quickly learned that Mexico's government-run hospitals are far different than hospitals here. Medical provisions -- X-rays, blood work, and other hospital supplies -- had to be paid for up front, they said; and so they made regular trips to a local pharmacy to buy medicines or gauze. Eventually, they concluded the hospital wanted to keep Acosta bedridden for as long as possible in order to jack up his bill.

"The longer he stayed, the more money the hospital would get," Acosta's daughter Gina Lieferman, a sheriff's deputy in Iowa, was quoted as saying in the article, "Moline Man's Nightmare Vacation to Mexico."

"I accused them of holding dad hostage. It was a ransom situation," she said, adding: "The whole system operates on bribes and threats. At one point, I yelled, 'You're murdering my father!'"

Even as Acosta's condition deteriorated, hospital officials refused to discharge him, and it eventually took the intervention of the family's representative in Illinois, Congressman Bobby Schilling, a Republican, to discharge him and arrange for an air- ambulance flight to Houston.

A representative from Schilling's office, Andrea Pivarunas, was quoted as saying:

"There is no question that the family encountered an extremely challenging situation and that the Mexican government was of little help. Beyond being grateful we could help them overcome those challenges, we are looking at what can be done to help reduce the chance that others (could) go through what Mr. Acosta and his family endured for far too long."

The Acosta family also complained that the U.S. Embassy in Mexico failed to provide them with proper support, but Embassy officials said they did all they normally do.

The family's nightmare ended when Acosta was finally flown to a Houston hospital where he started to immediately receive the medical care that was never provided in Mexico. As the Quad-City Times explains:

When the jet carrying Acosta and Lieferman arrived at a Houston hospital, medical staff asked for his records from the hospital at Toluca.

"There was one page - one side of one sheet of paper," Mike Lieferman said. "After all those weeks in the hospital, there was nothing but a few notes."

Gina Lieferman hand carried a few X-rays, some of which contained stains from hospital workers setting their coffee cups on them.

Acosta's throat was in bad shape, probably from weeks of being on a ventilator tube, Lieferman said. Although doctors in Mexico had repeatedly declared he needed a tracheotomy, the procedure never was done.

"He got one in Houston almost immediately," Lieferman said. "The doctors in Mexico said his worst problem was a lung infection. The doctors in Houston had a different answer.

"They said his biggest problem was going all those weeks without treatment for his injuries. He spent his first week in Houston in the ICU."

The Quad-City Times' article is interesting on a number of levels, including how the nightmare story it tells contrasts with the excellent and humane emergency care that Mexicans -- including illegal and indigent immigrants - can count on getting at American hospitals, with medical personnel even making it a point to speak "medical Spanish" or having full-time translators available. Indeed, as the New York Times noted in an article in 2008 about larger numbers of poor immigrants seeking medical care at hospitals in the northeast, including Greenwich, Connecticut:

The number of illegal immigrants seeking emergency care at Greenwich has sharply increased since 2005 after the closing of United Hospital in the nearby Village of Port Chester, a community across the border in New York that has a high proportion of poor and working-class immigrants. In the year after United's closing, Greenwich's maternity load soared to 2,300 from 1,400.

Hospitals across New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut all report struggling with the costs of delivering emergency care and sometimes more to illegal immigrants and other uninsured patients, and many see it as their obligation.

The story of Alfonso Acosta's nightmare in a government-run Mexican hospital is worth considering the next time a self-serving Mexican official or open-borders advocate complains about how badly Mexican nationals are being treated in this country.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-11-19T02:59:00.003-06:00

In Texas, A Tragic Miscarriage of Justice Fails to Excite the Liberal Media

By David Paulin

A tragic and Kafkaesque miscarriage of justice in central Texas grows more intriguing by the day, with one stunning development after another generating new headlines. Yet, strangely, the wrongful conviction of Michael Morton in 1987 for murdering his wife has failed to excite liberal media outlets and advocacy groups that typically go wild over such cases. Why?

On Wednesday, the newest twist in the case made headlines: District Judge Ken Anderson -- the lead prosecutor who convicted Morton 25 years ago -- publicly apologized to Morton and those adversely affected by the wrongful conviction. The legal system had suffered a "system's failure," Anderson admitted. But he denied charges that prosecutors hid evidence that would have bolstered Morton's defense.

The former district attorney of Williamson County spoke outside the same historic courthouse where Morton, after being convicted 25 years ago, collapsed at the defense table, sobbing and proclaiming his innocence.

"I didn't do this. That's all I can say. I did not do this," said Morton, then 32 years old -- a man with no history of violence. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The case against Morton was built upon circumstantial evidence -- including what prosecutors in Williamson County, just outside the capital of Austin, had portrayed as Morton's supposedly inappropriate reactions to news of his wife's murder and a claim that there were some tensions in his marriage.

Prosecutors put forth a murder theory tailor-made for lurid supermarket tabloids: Morton was upset that his wife didn't have sex with him on his birthday, the previous day, and so he bludgeoned her to death in her bed. He then went calmly to his job at a grocery store at 5:30 a.m.

Morton, now 57, was exonerated last month by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after lawyers for Barry Scheck's New York-based Innocence Project overcame six years of objections from the William County district attorney and got a court order for new DNA testing of crime-scene evidence. The testing indicated that an intruder killed Christine Morton in 1986, as well as an Austin woman named Debra Baker after Morton was sent to prison. In 1988, Baker was beaten to death in her bed.

Last week, another stunning development made headlines: police arrested a suspect in Christine Morton's murder -- Mark Alan Norwood, 57, a dishwasher in Bastrop, Texas. He has a long criminal history. A bandana found near the crime scene contained DNA linked to Norwood and his victim. He has yet to be charged in Baker's death.

Morton's wrongful conviction has roiled the state's legal community as questions have emerged about prosecutorial misconduct in the case. Morton's lawyers are now pursuing Anderson and former assistant district attorney Mike Davis, now in private practice, claiming that they withheld evidence. Among other things, they want to know why a transcript from Christine Morton's mother was not made available to defense lawyers. She told the case's lead investigator that the couple's three-year-old son told her that a "monster" -- not his father -- had beaten his mother to death.

Prosecutors also allegedly withheld two other pieces of information: two weeks after Christine Morton's murder, her credit card was used in San Antonio. And a check made out to her was cashed with a signature deemed a forgery.

Judge Anderson, whom Gov. Rick Perry appointed in 2002, initially stonewalled efforts by Morton's lawyers to provide depositions aimed at learning whether he had intentionally withheld information that could have prevented Morton's wrongful conviction. However, a ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals forced him to provide depositions. That same ruling applied to Davis.

The Texas attorney general plans to reinvestigate the murder case, and the State Bar of Texas, in charge of lawyer discipline, is undertaking its own investigation focusing on Anderson and Davis.

One of the jurors who convicted Morton was distraught and teary-eyed when discussing her role in convicting him -- and she was particularly upset that exculpatory evidence was allegedly kept from the jury. "We should have known something more," Lou Bryan, a retired high school English teacher in Round Rock, told a local television news channel. "And if that's the way it works in our system, then there is something wrong."

She noted that a few jurors had found holes in the case during their twelve hours of deliberations; however, their doubts were cast aside by, among other things, testimony from a forensic specialist that Christine Morton was killed when her husband was still at home, based on food in her system she'd eaten the previous night.

During Judge Anderson's public apology, one young woman at his news conference said that she wasn't about to forgive him. Caitlin Baker, daughter of the second woman whom Norwood is thought to have killed, said that "[m]y mother could be alive right now" if Anderson hadn't convicted an innocent man. "If he feels bad, prove it -- resign."

Morton now lives with his parents as he tries to rebuild his life. He's eligible to receive $2 million from the state for his wrongful conviction -- $80,000 for each year he spent in prison. "Thank God this wasn't a capital case," he said after a judge released him from prison early last month.

All in all, it has been a breathtaking series of events in recent weeks. So where are all the nation's liberal media outlets -- CNN, the New York Times, and others who love to showcase abuses of power and miscarriages of justice? Perhaps the case lacks an essential element for them: race.

Michael Morton is white, as was his wife. So were the prosecutors who convicted him. What's more, he was convicted in overwhelmingly white Williamson County by a jury that presumably was overwhelmingly white. All of this is at odds with the favorite liberal media narrative about horrific miscarriages of justice -- that they're typically committed by white prosecutors and white juries who allegedly harbor a racial animus against hapless black defendants and other minorities.

How did things go so wrong in the Morton case? Aside from questions of prosecutorial misconduct, a columnist for the Austin-American Statesman described a perfect storm of tragic events: prosecutor Ken Anderson had a fine reputation, wrote Alberta Phillips, and so the jury was too willing to believe him.

Moreover, they wanted to believe him. It made everybody in the community feel safer that, with Morton in prison, "[n]o monsters lurked under our beds," Phillips wrote.

Bryan, the distraught juror, is surely not unique in her anguish over convicting an innocent man. Her reaction reflects a bedrock value in America's criminal justice system and, indeed, Western culture. "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer," observed famed English jurist William Blackstone.

Blackstone's 10-1 formulation has biblical underpinnings -- Abraham's argument with God over the fate of Sodom. "Will you consume the righteous with the wicked?" Abraham asks, and then presses that point, saying: "What if ten [righteous] are found there?" God replies: "I will not destroy it for the ten's sake." It's a concept that's hardwired into our culture and the expectations of ordinary Americans.

Liberal media outlets may find the Morton case dull -- not worthy of any showcase stories because in their minds, it fails to illuminate deeper problems in American society. But the perfect storm of events leading to Morton's conviction will continue to play out for months in Texas, out of sight and mind of liberal media outlets that cannot further their political agendas by covering the story in a big way. It would be another matter entirely if Michael Morton were black.

It's another sad aspect of this case.

For a YouTube clip of Morton being released by a judge on October 4, 2011 in Georgetown, Texas, click here. For a TV news clip of distraught juror Lou Bryan discussing her role in convicting Morton, click here.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-11-15T12:49:00.003-06:00

James O'Keefe video targets biased Pulitzer winner, Columbia J-School

By David Paulin

The myth of journalistic objectivity is the subject of James O'Keefe's latest video project -- and the YouTube clip he has produced is as amusing as earlier efforts that brought down ACORN and top NPR executives.

"Should journalists disclose their journalistic biases?" That's the question posed by O'Keefe's video released via YouTube and part of an ongoing series under his ProjectVeritas.com. Amusingly, the clip reveals that liberal members of the Fourth Estate hate having tape recorders and video cameras turned on themselves with the aim of holding them accountable to the ethical standards they claim to uphold and that -- let's face it -- were unrealistic standards to begin with.

The departure point for O'Keefe's video released on Thursday is a journalism conference where one of O'Keefe's associates poses as a cub reporter. With a hidden camera rolling, O'Keefe's operative engages a 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner at New Jersey's Star-Ledger, Amy Ellis Nutt, in what the reporter and adjunct professor at Columbia University’s journalism school thinks is innocent shop talk.

Nutt, however, is caught on video tape tacitly agreeing with the need to reelect President Obama and calls Republican Gov. Christopher James "Chris" Christie an "asshole" and “liar.” She covered his 2009 election.

O’Keefe subsequently attempts to get comments about the biased remarks from Nutt herself, her boss at the Star-Ledger, and her colleagues at Columbia's journalism school. However, phones are hung up on O'Keefe. He's stonewalled. And he's called unethical and unprofessional -- no matter that his techniques are no different than what many members of Fourth Estate themselves use. One Columbia professor even goes into a vulgar tirade against O'Keefe in an Internet post and e-mail -- and the young filmmaker later confronts the professor walking nervously in the street and avoiding questions about his juvenile conduct.

"These professors and journalists have never been held accountable in their entire lives," says O'Keefe. He adds: “Evidently, they hate when they are the ones being asked difficult questions."

Interestingly, when O'Keefe visits the Star-Ledger in a fruitless attempt to talk with the paper's editor, a man who identifies himself as being from the paper's advertising department shakes O'Keefe's hand. "I like your work. I can't say much for our editorial side," he says.

It's unclear if the man knows the encounter is being taped, however. One has to wonder if the poor schmuck still has a job. Maybe O'Keefe should have edited that encounter out of his video.

The YouTube clip runs nearly eight minutes.

(Originally published at The American Thinker blog. Also see another article at The American Thinker concerning O'Keefe: "James O'Keefe and the Fourth Estate's Double Standards."

2011-11-04T02:16:00.005-05:00

Obama's Food-Stamp Dole at Record Levels

By David Paulin

Nearly 15 percent of the population -- 45.8 million people - were on the food-stamp dole in August, the Wall Street Journal reported. How come?

According to the paper, it's all because of the horrible economy, with the number of people on food stamps having risen 8.1 percent in the past year.

What the WSJ doesn't mention is that the exploding use of food stamps has much to do with changing attitudes over the years about what food-stamp recipients are entitled to -- and that now includes junk food and sugary drinks. In addition, soaring levels of fraud have helped to drive soaring food-stamp use, according to a recent Op-Ed in The Journal, "The Food-Stamp Crime Wave." (Do WSJ reporters read their paper's Op-Ed page?)

Interestingly, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried some months ago to stop the use of food stamps for sugary beverages like soda pop in an effort to curb exploding levels of diabetes and obesity among New Yorkers. However, the Obama administration rejected Bloomberg's proposal for eliminating soda. Among other things, administration bureaucrats claimed Bloomberg's plan lacked "a clear and practical means to determine product eligibility, which is essential to avoid retailer confusion at point-of-sale and stigma (emphasis added) for affected clients."

Stigma? Now that's an interesting word, because there is no stigma left anymore for those using food stamps, which incidentally are no longer actually "stamps" but debit cards that you swipe like a credit card. And food-stamp cards can buy just about anything your stomach desires. Nationwide, 6 percent of food stamp benefits are spent on sugary beverages, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program and that was the source of the WSJ's statistics about soaring levels of food-stamp use.

As to fraud, that WSJ Op-Ed by James Bovard noted that "The number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007. Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse are rampant."

Among other things, he explained:

Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar "paperwork reduction" reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.

Ultimately, soaring food-stamp use is not just another anti-poverty program for the Obama administration. It's all about "spreading the wealth around."

Unfortunately, poor people who really need food stamps must now endure the "stigma" of being lumped together with the many deadbeats now on the food-stamp dole.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

2011-10-21T00:53:00.005-05:00

So long bastard. Have a nice trip to HELL!

2011-10-20T23:39:00.005-05:00

In Havana, Hugo and Fidel talk politics

By David Paulin

In between cancer treatments, Hugo Chávez is talking up a storm with Fidel Castro on some favorite subjects - the impending collapse of the United States and Venezuela's role as a "revolutionary model" for the world.

That's according to Castro himself, writing on Wednesday in his regular newspaper column, "Reflections of Fidel."

"I had long conversations with him (Chávez) yesterday and today," the 85-year-old Castro wrote in Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party. "I explained to him the intensity with which I am devoting my remaining energies to dreams of a better and more just world.

"It is not difficult to share dreams with the Bolivarian leader when the empire is already showing the symptoms of a terminal illness." ("Empire" is a reference to the U.S; the name "Granma" is taken from the name of the yacht on which Castro and fellow revolutionaries sailed to Cuba from Mexico in 1956.)

On Sunday, Venezuela's 57-year-old president arrived in Havana for a medical checkup, following four rounds of chemotherapy and surgery on the island to remove a cancerous tumor.

Castro didn't say anything about Chávez's illness, said to be terminal.

Nor did he comment on two interesting immigration trends -- the ongoing flow of Cubans fleeing to the "empire"; and the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who, during Chávez's 12 years as president, have immigrated to the U.S. and overseas. They include Venezuela's most educated citizens, including its best and brightest. They could have played a role in Venezuela's economic development, but Chávez saw them as part of Venezuela's problems. (In Monday's Wall Street Journal, an article by Venezuelan-born Ángel González discussed how the Venezuelan Diaspora has increased dramatically under Chávez'.)

Castro did at various point engage in his usual anti-American frothing, referring to "yankee plunder of oil, natural resources and the sweat of Venezuelans."

But not to worry, he noted, because the "Bolivarian people of Venezuela are organizing and uniting to confront and defeat the nauseating oligarchy in the service of the empire which is once again attempting to take government power in that country.

"Given its exceptional educational, cultural, social development and its immense energy and natural resources, Venezuela is called upon to become a revolutionary model for the world."

Regarding comrade Hugo, Castro wrote:

"I have observed him for 17 years, since he visited Cuba for the first time. He is a supremely humanitarian person and respectful of the law; he has never taken revenge against anyone. The poorest and most forgotten sectors of his country are profoundly grateful to him for responding - for the first time in history - to their dreams of social justice."

On the other hand, human rights groups have regularly criticized Chávez's government for bullying political opponents, harassing the country's media, and attacking democratic institutions.

In Cuba, to be sure, there is no concept of private property. In Venezuela, Chávez has nationalized large swaths of the economy, and he recently pledged to take over private residences, hotels, and yachts on the resort island of Los Roques; the idea is to create a resort for poor Venezuelans.

In his recent book, "Civilization: The West and The Rest," British historian and Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson at various points discusses Hugo Chávez and Latin America. In particular, he focuses on why glaring social inequities pervade Latin American yet are nowhere nearly as evident in the United States. The answer is simple: a lack of respect for private property in Latin America.

Interestingly, in a recent article about Ferguson's book in Venezuelan newspaper El Universal, author Sara Carolina Díaz notes that Ferguson compares "the revolutions of Latin American countries with the U.S. revolution." Understanding the differences between these revolutions, Ferguson contends, is the key to understanding why social inequities pervade Latin American.

As Díaz notes in her paper's English-language edition:

"The main reason behind the differences between both revolutions, Ferguson explains, is that the system created in the United States (from its origin as a nation), deemed a success by the author, is based on property rights. In Latin America, however, land ownership was first claimed by the Spanish royalty and then passed on to an elite minority. This situation gave rise to significant socio-economic differences that, among other things, paved the way for the caudillo phenomenon."

And in Ferguson's view Chávez is simply another strongman or caudillo, according to Díaz's article, "Chávez pins Venezuela under a false democracy."

There is a positive outcome to this tragic phenomena, of course. Members of Cuba's entrepreneurial and business classes, who fled to the U.S. after Castro came to power, have made many positive contributions to this country and, in particular, played a major role in creating the vibrant city of Miami. Today, that city's gleaming skyline stands in dramatic contrast to the grubby skyline of Havana, whose deteriorating buildings and homes are owned by the state.

And today, members of Venezuela's Diaspora in the U.S. are making their own contributions, with their brain power and entrepreneurial skills.

Cuba and Venezuela's losses have been American's gain.

Originally published in The American Thinker

2011-10-19T02:26:00.002-05:00

Hugo Chavez: Sick in Mind and Body

By David Paulin

In a Havana cancer ward, as Hugo Chávez contemplates his final days, the truth about his medical condition -- mental and physical -- is coming out.

His face grotesquely bloated, Hugo Chávez has been fighting the biggest battle of his life: cancer. But the prognosis for Venezuela's increasingly reclusive president has been a highly guarded state secret. Besides distorting his features, the chemotherapy he's receiving has rendered him bald.

Several unconfirmed reports -- all from anonymous sources -- have claimed in recent months that Chávez's cancer is very bad. Yet during his increasingly irregular and brief public appearances, the leftist 57-year-old leader has remained upbeat -- seemingly defying the worst-case scenarios put forth about his health.

Now, Chávez's former Venezuelan physician has dropped a bombshell: Chávez's cancer is terminal, and he has "no more than two years left."

"President Chávez has a tumor in the pelvis called sarcoma," said Dr. Salvador Navarrete, during a lengthy interview published Sunday in Mexican newspaper Milenio Semanal. He added: "The information I have from the family is that he has a sarcoma, an aggressive tumor with a poor prognosis and I'm pretty sure that's the reality."

Navarrete's revelations offer the most intriguing information yet about Chávez's health -- and perhaps the most credible. So why is the prominent Venezuelan surgeon breaking a hallowed oath of doctor-patient confidentiality? It's a question many Venezuelans are asking.

"Traitor or Good Citizen?" That was the title of an article published Monday at analitica.com by Gustavo Coronel -- a Chávez opponent and former top Venezuelan executive in the South American country's state oil company. Coronel's conclusion regarding Navarrete's "complex ethical situation": he's a good citizen, because knowing the truth about Chávez is vital to Venezuela's future political health.

Interestingly, Navarrete described himself as a former Chávez supporter, the only "ideological" member of a Venezuelan team of physicians who started treating Chávez in 2002. Months ago, however, Chávez dismissed his circle of Venezuelan physicians, having grown increasingly suspicious of everybody around him, Navarette said. "In Venezuela, President Chávez does not trust anyone, only Cubans," he added. Navarrete, for his part, said he's finished with militant leftist politics.

Citing information provided by Chávez's family -- but not naming specific family members -- Navarrete said Chávez's cancer is being treated with "aggressive chemotherapy."

Asked if Chavez had prostate cancer, he replied: "It is not a tumor of the prostate. It is a tumor that is very close to the prostate and probably invading the bladder. Or it's a tumor that originates in the bladder that is invading the pelvis. In any case, it's a tumor that originates in the bottom of the pelvis, which is considered the anatomical region that is within the hips."

Chávez is Bipolar

In revealing information he'd obtained from Chávez's family members, Navarrete may not have been violating patient-physician confidentiality, Coronel noted. That surely wasn't the case, on the other hand, in respect to intriguing details Navarrete revealed about Chávez's precarious mental health in early 2002 -- a period of seething political turmoil in Venezuela that was taking an emotional toll on Chávez.

Chávez at the time was "very distressed," Navarrete said, and "under intense pressure and physical exhaustion." Accordingly, a team of psychiatrist began treating him.

Chávez had reason to be anxious, for his grip on power was becoming increasingly tenuous. At the time, tens of thousands of anti-Chávez protesters -- on the eve of a March coup against him -- marched regularly in the streets, demonstrating against Chávez's autocratic style and leftist agenda.

Yet it wasn't political turmoil alone that was provoking stress-related problems in Chávez. It was much more serious: Chávez is a "manic-depressive," Navarrete said. He explained that Chávez's "unstable mental states turn from euphoria to sadness -- states in which the personality becomes dissociated and has episodes of loosing contact with reality. It is a very common disease in today's world, described as bipolar disorder. President Chávez oscillates between these poles, more prone to euphoria, to hyperactivity and mania."

Interestingly, Navarrete noted that Chávez's psychiatric team was led by Dr. Edmundo Chirinos, now serving a 20-year prison sentence for murdering a patient in 2008.

Over the years, Chávez has been described as a narcissist by many, an observation reflecting his desire to be the center of attention. When he was in good health, he regularly gave rambling speeches on the radio and TV that went on for three or more hours. But the diagnosis of bipolar disorder gives physiological underpinnings to Chávez's high-energy and rambling monologues and governance.

Regarding Chávez's personal habits, Navarrete said Chávez pays a great deal of attention to his personal appearance, keeping himself "very, very clean," and this includes careful "nail care for his hands and feet." He noted: "He thought he was not going to get sick -- ever."

As for health-related vices, Navarrete said Chávez "drinks too much coffee, a lot, consuming countless cups of coffee a day[.]" He also smokes "under stress or pleasure, in private, never in public."

He added: "He works late into the night every day, is a night owl, and makes his ministers work at the same rhythm. He rises at six-thirty or seven o'clock, sleeping an average of three or four hours a day, no more than that, and sleeps very little. He's a strong man, although he's now deformed by the effects of chemotherapy.

A recent article in El Nuevo Herald (sister publication of The Miami Herald) described Chávez as being in grave condition when he was recently rushed to a military hospital. But Navarrete said Chávez underwent kidney dialysis treatment due to complications associated with his chemotherapy and its negative effect on his kidneys. The kidneys cleanse the body of toxins.

Navarrete's remarks about Chávez's prognosis echo those of Roger F. Noriega, assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush and a former ambassador to the Organization of the American States. In a column last July in The Miami Herald, he wrote: "Doctors treating Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez for cancer told him weeks ago that he has only a 50 percent chance of living another 18 months, according to sources close to his medical team in Cuba."

Venezuela's Future

It was a little over two and a half months ago that Chávez, during a national television address, told stunned Venezuelans that he'd undergone two surgeries in Cuba to remove a pelvic abscess and cancerous tumor. Speculation has been rife since then about what a post-Chávez Venezuela will look like. Last month, early elections for next year were called for October as opposed to December.

To date, however, Chávez has no credible successor. But he does have his fanatic supporters, Chavistas, along with plenty of help from Cuba. Large numbers of Cuban intelligence agents now operate in Venezuela in support of Chávez's regime.

Venezuela has provided Cuba with economic largess and regular shipments of oil; accordingly, Cuba can be counted on to do all it can to make sure Venezuela remains an ideological and economic alley.

Unfortunately, Chávez has so completely polarized his country that it will be difficult for Venezuelans to repair the damage he has done. He has taken three bad ideas from Venezuela's past -- statism, authoritarianism, and populism -- and taken them to epic levels. Anti-Americanism has become more prevalent than ever. Large swaths of Venezuela's economy have been nationalized. And hundreds of thousands of middle-class Venezuelans -- including many of the country's best and brightest -- have immigrated to the U.S. and overseas. They could have been part of the solution to Venezuela's economic development, but Chávez viewed them as part of Venezuela's problems.

The opposition will have much work to do to find a candidate to appeal to Venezuela's poor majority; and even if an opposition candidate prevails, a new government will face an epic task to undo Chávez's damage -- soaring levels of corruption, crime, and dysfunctional governance. Venezuela's state oil company, critical to government revenues, is a shadow of itself thanks to Chávez's mismanagement.Even without Chávez (or a Chávez clone), Venezuela will take years to recover from the damage Chávez has done with his leftist and anti-American agenda.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-10-12T00:10:00.016-05:00

Boston Globe outs tipster who turned in 'Whitey' Bulger

By David Paulin

In a case of journalistic malpractice aided by big-mouthed federal law-enforcement officials, The Boston Globe has outed the tipster who told the FBI where to find James "Whitey" Bulger, the former South Boston crime boss.

The Globe, in a long and riveting article on Sunday, revealed that the tipster and recipient of a $2 million award for information leading to Bulger's capture was Anna Bjornsdottir of Reykjavík, Iceland. She was Miss Iceland in 1974, and went onto work as an actress in movies and TV commercials. The Icelandic beauty, now 57, is famous for her role as one of the sexy blonds in the Noxzema shaving-cream TV ads, who tells viewers to "take it off, take it all off."

Her name was supposed to have been kept a secret by law-enforcement officials. But The Globe, after figuring out who she was, felt it had a duty to reveal her identify. When Globe reporters approached her on two occasions outside her Reykjavík apartment, she ran back inside. Later, her husband sent The Globe an e-mail, saying she wouldn't talk about the Bulger case.

Most of the Globe's story, "Whitey in Exile," deals with Bulger's life on the lam for 16 years -- living for much of that time in a rent-controlled Santa Monica apartment. He had some $800,000 of cash stuffed in the walls along with an arsenal of guns and knives.

In a tease for its story, The Globe explained: "It is a portrait of the gangster as a grumpy old man, hunkered down in a Santa Monica flat with his girlfriend. Neighbors liked them, but no one got close -- or, rather, almost no one. And that was their undoing."

It was through gum-shoe detective work, dumb luck, and the unwitting help of law-enforcement officials that Globe reporters figured out who the tipster was who brought down the 82-year-old Bulger -- wanted for organized crime activities that included allegedly murdering 19 people while leading the notorious Winter Hill Gang, a fixture of South Boston's "Irish Mob" in the 1970s to mid-'80s.

Now, questions are being raised about whether Bjornsdottir's life might be in danger due to The Globe's decision to out her.

In its story, The Globe explains that Bulger's undoing began about six years ago with a scene fit for a Hollywood script - an abandoned tiger-stripped cat roaming outside Bulger and Greig's Santa Monica apartment. Greig went outside twice a day to the feed the hungry tabby whose name was "Tiger."

Bjornsdottir - also a cat lover -- was living nearby at the time. She was touched at the sight of Greig feeding the wayward feline. The two struck up a conversation while the cat was being fed, and they eventually became friends, according to the Globe's account.

Globe reporters were led to Reykjavík and Bjornsdottir by two things. First, big-mouthed law-enforcement officials -- apparently in the FBI or U.S. Attorney's office - had let loose an intriguing detail last September: Bulger's tipster was a woman living in Iceland.

Who could it be? Globe reporters put two and two together when they visited the Santa Monica neighborhood where Bulger and Greig, now 60, had lived. There, they came across a neighbor who recalled how Bjornsdottir and Greig had become fast friends, having bonded over the abandoned cat.

Bulger's downfall came on June 20. That's when the FBI started running TV commercials seeking information about the whereabouts of Bulger's girlfriend, figuring the best way to catch Bulger was through her. In Reykjavík, Bjornsdottir saw a news item about the ads on CNN. She phoned the FBI. The next day, FBI agents arrested Bulger and Greig at their Santa Monica apartment, near where the wayward tabby used to roam.

Bjornsdottir now works as a graphic designer and yoga instructor, and some in Iceland are wondering if her life is safe, according to an article in Monday's Boston Herald. An arch rival of The Boston Globe, The Herald said it won't be revealing Bjornsdottir's name. It offered no explanation, but it appears that it felt this was a case of journalistic ethics and responsibility, and it also was a way of keep their heads high after being scooped by The Globe.

The Globe, to be sure, could easily have written a story without using Bjornsdottir's name -- offering just enough details to make it interesting. But in the end, the paper's editors could's resist dragging Bjornsdottir into the story; for doing so in their minds made a good story a great story - and most journalists find greats stories irresistible.

Many of Bulger's gangland pals are now dead or too old to do anybody much harm. But that surely is no comfort to Bjornsdottir, who had thought her privacy would be protected when she contacted the FBI. That she was outed may well deter other potential informants from coming forward in high-profile cases.

The FBI has been embarrassed for years by the case of Whitey Bulger, for it was a corrupt FBI agent -- Bulger's "handler" -- who tipped off the crime boss that he was about to be arrested; this was after an indictment was issued charging Bulger with murder, racketeering, and other crimes. In the end, Bulger played the FBI like a fiddle, serving as an FBI informant for rival crime groups, while the FBI ignored his own gang.

Now, somebody in the FBI or U.S. Attorney's office has inadvertently helped the Boston Globe reveal the name of a person who had been promised anonymity. It will be interesting to watch the finger-pointing that is sure to start in the coming days over the latest wrinkle in the sordid case of Whitey Bulger.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-10-11T01:11:00.004-05:00

In socialist Venezuela, air travel becomes a white-knuckle affair

By David Paulin

"Socialism or death" is taking on a new meaning for Venezuelan air travelers. Recently, a spate of incidents and emergency landings by some of Venezuela's domestic air carriers -- including two emergency landings occurring hours apart -- prompted Hugo Chavez's government to open an inquiry concerning the causes of the latest in-flight emergencies.

In one incident, an Aeropostal DC-9 carrying 125 passengers reported problems with both engines. It made a hard landing in Puerto Ordaz. Photos of the DC-9 and its damaged engines -- both torn loose and hanging from the fuselage -- may be seen at The Aviation Herald and Noticas 24. In another incident, an Acerca Airlines DC-9 carrying 90 passengers made an emergency landing at Carlos Piar airport after smoke was detected in the cabin. No injuries were reported during either incident involving the aging DC-9s.

These incidents and others have raised the usual questions about maintenance standards. But other observers say there may be other problems involved -- specifically, Venezuela's draconian currency exchange controls and their effect upon Venezuela's domestic airlines. Exchange controls are a cornerstone of Chavez's command-and-control economic policies.

As Financial Times writer Benedict Mander explains in a blog post about the aviation incidents:

As well as a general problem of oversight, there is a consensus that the fundamental cause is a widespread lack of maintenance. And shoddy maintenance is largely due to the fact that getting spare parts in this country, as any Venezuelan will tell you with a weary sigh, can be a traumatic exercise, not to mention time-consuming and costly, if it is possible at all.

The reason is simple enough: currency controls.

(snip)

The problem is, access to dollars is severely restricted in Venezuela – in part to prevent capital flight and in part also because of an exchange rate that is seriously overvalued — which means that dollars are unusually cheap, and hence demand for them is unusually high.

Basically, like so many other sectors of the economy, Venezuela’s tight-fisted exchange control agency isn’t giving airlines enough dollars.

At the same time, more cynical observes speculate that good old-fashioned Venezuelan corruption and sloppiness also may have played a role in the spate of aviation incidents. There are about 17 private airlines in Venezuela, a number that includes charter and scheduled carriers.

Hugo Chavez has no reason to fear for his own safety when taking to Venezuela's skies. He flies in his Airbus A-319, the most modern presidential jet in Latin America. Amid much criticism, it was purchased to replace an aging Boeing 707 used by previous Venezuelan presidents.

Chavez, meanwhile, continues to battle cancer. Its type and prognosis is a highly guarded state secret. One thing that's certain about El Presidente's health: He's not on his death bed as El Nuevo Herald (sister publication of The Miami Herald) recently reported, citing unnamed sources. Chavez, to be sure, quickly dismissed that news report and on Saturday, looking reasonably fit, he announced at the presidential palace that he would return to Cuba yet again for a series of medical exams next week. "We are going to confirm what I believe is the case; no more cancer cells...with the blessing of God, that will be the news," Chavez said. (For a video of the news conference, click here.)

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-10-05T20:38:00.007-05:00

Rick Perry's 'N-Head' Problem and the Fourth Estate's Hypocrisy

By David Paulin

"Nigger go home."

So read the ugly note. It was left in the mid-'70s on the desk of a young black woman -- a college intern.

Where did this happen? Not, to be sure, in the deep South; nor in the part of West Texas where Gov. Rick Perry grew up, during a time when the Lone Star State was segregated. It happened in sophisticated and liberal Boston -- and at a mainstream newspaper: the Boston Herald American (now the Boston Herald).

The young black woman claiming to have found the note was Gwen Ifill -- now PBS NewsHour's senior reporter and news anchor.

The mainstream media and fellow travelers in the lefty blogosphere have a hypocrisy problem -- one underscored by the Washington Post's recent race-hustling piece on Gov. Perry: "At Rick Perry’s Texas hunting spot, camp’s old racially charged name lingered."

In her disingenuous article, young reporter Stephanie McCrummen cleverly suggests that Perry suffers a potential character deficiency: He grew up in a "segregated era" and "mostly white world."

Even worse, she writes, his family has a sprawling hunting camp in West Texas that some locals once called "niggerhead" -- a name that even used to be painted on a rock, though Perry's father had the rock painted over when he joined the property's lease, according to Gov. Perry. He told the Washington Post that “niggerhead” is “an offensive name that has no place in the modern world.”

Interestingly, the Washington Post notes the name “niggerhead” is not unlike many names of other geographic sites across the U.S. in years past; sites named long ago with variations of the "n-word" that were renamed over the years.

However, the Washington Post fails to stress that this underscores that the word “nigger” has undergone various metamorphosis over the years. It has meant different things to different people at different times, as Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy notes in his book, "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word."

The Washington Post nevertheless hints at this during an interview with Haskell County Judge David Davis. He looks out a window and says of the hunting camp once called niggerhead: "It's just a name. Like those are vertical blinds. It’s just what it was called. There was no significance other than as a hunting deal.”

So what to make of the "niggerhead" scandal that's casting Perry as a something of a racist? Well, it's really "much ado about nothing," says Wallace Jefferson, the first black chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court -- and a Perry appointee.

Jefferson, during an interview with the Texas Tribune, said that Perry "appreciates the role diversity plays in our state and nation. To imply that the governor condoned either the use of that word or that sentiment, I find false."

Yet the white liberals at the Washington Post, together with other liberal race-baiting journalists, are nevertheless uncomfortable about Perry having grown up in a "white world.”

This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. After all, when Perry was growing up in a "white world," America's mainstream journalists worked in overwhelmingly white newsrooms. Indeed, up until the late 1980s and early 1990s, it would have been hard to find many blacks and Hispanics in newsrooms -- a fact that changed in the late 1990s due to aggressive affirmative action efforts by the nation's major news organizations, which had grown embarrassed over their lack of diversity. Yet even today, not enough integration has occurred, according to diversity advocates.

Liberals and conservatives debate the reasons for the problem of "whiteness" in the newsroom, as one journalism professor snidely put it in an article in trade magazine Editor and Publisher. (Conservative media analysts contend it's due to a lack of qualified blacks and Hispanics in a highly competitive field.) But one thing is certain: If you use the standards that liberals themselves use, you have to conclude that the reason the nation's newsrooms are mainly white (in the past and even today) is because they are, well, racist. Or at least racist in the way that liberals now define racism – that the ethnic and racial composition of America's newsrooms fails to reflect the communities they serve; that there is not, in other words, appropriate “diversity” in them.

Even the Fourth Estate's aggressive affirmative action and "diversity efforts" have failed to resolve this "problem," although they have brought into newsrooms people like journalistic huckster Jayson Blair, the former disgraced New York Times reporter.

In the mainstream media's Perry-is-a-racist narrative, a contradiction emerges. It's a case of do as I say, not as I do. In the mid-1970s, newsrooms where overwhelmingly white. Yet while America's journalists worked in white worlds, that definitely was not the case in respect to Rick Perry and the world he inhabited.

In the mid-1970s, Perry left behind the “white world” of West Texas. After graduating from Texas A&M University, he was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force -- an institution that like other branches of the armed forces was integrated to an extent that America's newsrooms were not integrated -- and are still not integrated

A friend of mine is a former Air Force F-16 senior pilot and captain. He flew nearly 15 years, including during about the same time that Perry was an Air Force pilot. In an e-mail to me, he provided these observations about racial integration in the Air Force:

"It's very fair to say that at least a quarter of the entire USAF manpower was made up of African-Americans. You had to look long and hard to find a true blue racist among us. And when you did, he usually stuck out like a sore thumb. This went both ways. When it became apparent you disliked someone merely because of the color of their skin, your circle of friends shrank dramatically, as did your chance for advancement."

So how did Perry distinguish himself in the Air Force, an institution far more integrated than most of the nation's newsrooms have ever been? He was, according to a recent article in the Austin American-Statesman, regarded as a good pilot and officer, one with a "magnetic personality." After five years, Perry left the Air Force with the rank of captain. The Statesman's article was based on interviews with six men who served with Perry. If Perry had any major character issues as an officer, it's likely the Statesman would have dug them up.

As Texas' governor, Perry also distinguished himself in another respect. He appointed large numbers of blacks and Hispanics to top positions on state commissions, courts, and colleges and universities. And according to an interview Perry gave to an African-American newspaper, these appointments were based on merit – not on “the color of your skin or the sound of your last name." On the other hand, skin color and ethnicity are the criteria used by many newsroom editors in their hiring decisions -- a fact explored by William McGowan in his book, "Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism."

"Perry’s appointments of African-Americans are significant and in some ways ground-breaking, and they can and should be applauded," a black-oriented website called “ThyBlackman.com” grudgingly acknowledged.

The mainstream media has a double standard. It finds racism where none exist in respect to Rick Perry; yet during Sen. Barack Obama's presidential run, it failed to vet candidate Obama's curious relationship with racist preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Now, it's ignoring another emerging scandal: Obama's relationship with the New Black Panthers that was recently revealed by Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.

Speaking on Fox News Tuesday morning, black presidential candidate Herman Cain clarified earlier remarks about the controversy over "niggerhead." It's a hateful word, he said, and has nothing to do with who Rick Perry is.

If history is anything to go by, expect the Washington Post and others to engage in lots more race-baiting of Republican presidential candidates.

Originally published by The American Thinker

2011-10-05T00:02:00.005-05:00

In the U.N., grievance-mongering Caribbean leaders call for slave reparations

By David Paulin

In another case of anti-Western grievance-mongering at the United Nations, the leaders of two Caribbean nations are calling for slave reparations from Western nations that profited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Recently, the U.N. General Assembly heard from the prime ministers of two twin-island Caribbean nations: Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. In separate speeches, the Caribbean leaders declared that reparations were needed to remedy the barbaric injustices of slavery that Western nations loosed upon the world -- and whose legacies continue to this day, according to Caribbean news outlets.

"Antigua and Barbuda has long argued that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and racial violence against peoples of African descent have severely impaired our advancement as nations, communities and individuals across the economical, social and political spectra," Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer told the General Assembly.

For his part, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines said: "Racial discrimination was justified and became itself the justification for a brutal, exploitative and dehumanizing system of production that was perfected during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and ingrained over the course of colonial domination."

"The structure of our modern world is still firmly rooted in a past of slavers and colonialist exploitation," he added. "While we celebrate the noble heroism of the famous and the faceless who resisted racist colonial hegemony, we must continue to confront the legacy of this barbarism and continuing injustice."

The leaders' comments, during a Saturday session, were made one day after another case of grievance-mongering and grandstanding before the General Assembly: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's call for Palestinian statehood.

The reparations racket has been around for years. It has attracted a motley bunch -- from jive-talking hustlers to erudite professors of academic disciplines like African-American history and post-colonial studies. But only in recent years have whole countries joined the reparations racket. Besides having large black populations, they share common traits: leftist leaders, ailing economies, and a host of anti-Western grievances propagated by leftist elites.

How should descendents of African slaves be compensated according to reparations advocates? Spencer called for formal apologies from former slave-trading Western nations, after which these offenders must "back up their apologies with new commitments to the economic development of the nations that have suffered from this human tragedy." The Caribbean region, to be sure, is already a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid, a fact the speakers failed to mention.

Neither of men, moreover, mentioned an awkward detail: their own African ancestors may have owned slaves and participated in the slave trade (though they never did as well, of course, as Westerners, who were not doing anything illegal at the time).

Ten years ago, the anti-Western reparations movement was energized by the United Nations' racism conference in Durban, South Africa; that was the infamous UNESCO-sponsored event in 2001 that equated Zionism with racism. It also offered tacit support to the idea of slave reparations.

Regarding Durban, Spencer was full of pride, calling it "an innovative and action-oriented agenda to combat all forms of racism and racial discrimination."

It's a view shared by the United Nations. Just five days after Spencer and Gonsalves made their reparations pitches, the U.N. held a high-level meeting to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action.

Spencer and Gonsalves are not the first Caribbean leaders to jump on the reparations bandwagon. Four years ago, Jamaica's political leaders were angling to shake down Britain for slave reparations.

The left-leaning People's National Party was then in charge on the island, a hotbed of leftist politics with a population of 2.7 million. Struggling to reverse years of economic decline, leftist political leaders and elites started beating the drum for a regional campaign to convince Britain to provide compensation for its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

"We owe reparations to ourselves and our ancestors," Rupert Lewis, a lecturer in government at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, told a gathering of schoolchildren in Kingston, the capital. The occasion was part of activities associated with Jamaica's commemoration of Britain's 200-year-old Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, adopted March 25, 1807. At the time, the case for reparations was being made to ordinary Jamaicans with lectures and the airing of the pro-reparations documentary film The Empire Pays Back. The message: the source of the island's problems is indeed the legacy of slavery and British colonialism -- not the misguided leftist policies that have guided Jamaica since it gained independence from Britain in 1962.

"In the medium term, the goal is to mobilize all those who have been working in the [reparations] field for a long time, and to sensitize those who have dismissed the work of the movement for lack of knowledge," Jamaica's minister of tourism, entertainment, and culture, Aloun Assamba, told the Jamaica Observer.

'Cultural Marxism'

Curiously, the Caribbean's reparations hustlers single out only Western nations in their demands. They ignore the slavery that existed elsewhere in the world -- the Middle East, Africa, and South America -- and while they mourn Africans caught up in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, they shed no tears for the millions of Africans who disappeared into the Muslim slave trade. Nor do they condemn slavery that persists in Africa today, nor the human trafficking that's a problem in many parts of the world, including Jamaica.

Slavery, in other words, doesn't bother these people nearly as much as all their frothing suggests. How come? Some are obviously racists. And all are leftists; for them, reparations are the means by which they can achieve the Marxist redistribution of wealth they dream about.

In recent years, they've adopted a postmodern form of Marxism -- what might be called "cultural Marxism." In this view, the villains are no longer capitalists and bourgeoisie, as espoused in economic Marxism. Now the villain is "white male privilege" -- a privilege supposedly made possible by the head start that black African slaves gave to white Western nations. Indeed, as Cambridge University senior lecturer Richard Drayton wrote in an upbeat review of The Empire Pays Back, "Africa underpins a modern experience of (white) British privilege." The documentary was produced by Jamaica-born producer Robert Beckford, a lecturer in African Diaspora Religions and Cultures at England's University of Birmingham.

How should Britain's monstrous historical theft and injustice be remedied? In a word: reparations -- by redistributing wealth from whites to the descendants of black African slaves. Ultimately, reparations advocates say this is all about healing. "These [reparations] proposals are not intended to be divisive or confrontational, but rather form part of a process to heal the wounds of the past," explained Jamaica's Ambassador to the United Nations, Stafford Neil, during Durban's racism conference.

And no matter that few if any whites are around anymore with any connection whatsoever to the slave trade hundreds of years ago -- yet whites as a group are nevertheless cast as modern-day beneficiaries of slavery.

Ultimately, reparations advocates distort the realities of the ancient slave trade, according to Ohio State University Professor Robert Davis. "We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people," says Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). In his book, Davis documents that Muslim slavers off North Africa's Barbary Coast enslaved one million or more white Europeans between 1530 and 1780 -- a number greater than Africans enslaved during the same period.

Why is the enslavement of white Europeans ignored? Because, says Davis, it fails to echo the scholarship favored today -- that history is all about European conquest and colonization.

In this version of history, Britain and America get no credit for leading international efforts to end the profitable trans-Atlantic slave trade -- even using their warships to stop it. Both countries are portrayed in the worst light possible; whatever they did, it was too little, too late.

Not surprisingly, reparations advocates who claim that the West's prosperity is founded upon slave labor overlook the obvious reasons for the West's prosperity: its political and economic life are organized around democracy, free markets, and the rule of law.

Dedicated leftists won't admit this. This includes the Caribbean's leftist rulers, who ambivalently embrace free markets and look for their inspiration to Cuba -- a place where you won't find any of the 2.6 million members of the Jamaican Diaspora living.

Besides slavery, Jamaica's leftist elites obsess endlessly over British colonialism, but there's a glaring irony with this grievance-mongering: Jamaica's dramatic decline over the years -- crime, gangs, political corruption -- occurred when black Jamaicans, not their former masters, were running their country. Jamaica's problems, in other words, have all been related to specific decision made by Jamaica's politicians and elites.

Jamaica vs. the Bahamas

Jamaica's blame-it-on-slavery argument becomes especially problematic when the country's dysfunction is contrasted against the prosperity enjoyed by the Bahamas. A former British colony, the Bahamas also has a legacy of slavery. Yet it has no crippling debt, no history of serious political violence, and no out-of-control crime rate. It has one of the region's highest per capita incomes: $19,000, nearly five times more than Jamaica's. There's no huge Bahamian Diaspora.

Why is the Bahamas a success? Because its political leaders and voters look forward, not backward -- and they unashamedly look to America as an example. They have for the most part embraced business-friendly policies and a low-tax philosophy.

Four years ago, for instance, an interesting political phenomena occurred in the Bahamas. Its ruling left-leaning political party suffered a stunning election defeat, despite having overseen an expanding economy and an unprecedented development boom. Interestingly, the main campaign issues were good management and honesty in government -- not racial issues (such as which candidate had the darker skin color). It's an example of the Bahamas' good governance and civic culture -- traits not as apparent in Jamaica and other Caribbean island-nations with similar histories of racism and colonialism.

Notably, in the Bahamas, the bicentennial of the slave trade's abolition got circumspect media coverage -- and was consigned to the inside pages of the main newspapers. In Jamaica, on the other hand, The Observer -- a popular left-leaning daily owned by Sandal's resort owner Gordon "Butch" Stewart -- ran a chest-thumping front-page article in which Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller paid lip service to reparations, telling schoolchildren to honor their slave ancestors by respecting one another. "My request for honoring them is that for every child that is raped and is left to soak in the rapist's semen and her own blood, you are perpetuating, Mr. Rapist, the action of the slave master."

It's hard to imagine political leaders in the Bahamas making such lurid comments to schoolchildren. Nor are Bahamian political leaders grandstanding before the U.N. General Assembly, demanding slave reparations based on a leftist post-modern view of history.

They're too busy looking forward, not backward.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-09-21T17:32:00.007-05:00

Europe's Communist Past Haunts Euro-Zone

By David Paulin

It’s an overlooked aspect of the euro-zone debt crisis and Greece’s probable default: the hand that former European communists (now top members of the European Parliament) had in creating the euro-zone’s command-and-control economic system, along with the trappings of a common (and dubious) European culture. Now it’s all coming apart — a calamity that’s threatening the viability of the euro-zone and rattling the global economy.

The quest for a united Europe — one with a common currency (the euro) along with a single flag and anthem – was in retrospect a project for dreamers. And as euro-skeptics have said all along, the dreamers were European elites with autocratic tendencies.

So perhaps it’s not surprising to learn that a number of the elites who constructed a utopian political and economic union for Europe have something in common: communism.

This explains, in part, why headstrong Euro elites recklessly expanded the European Union and, in particular, the euro-zone (comprising the 17 states utilizing a common currency in the 27-member European Union). But in their zeal to achieve their dream, the European Union’s idealists failed to recognize a daunting problem: Countries as different as economically disciplined Germany and corruption-riddled and undisciplined Greece shouldn’t share a common currency under the same economic system — a system with one-size-fits-all interest rates and no chance for currency devaluations. (And if Greece still used the drachma – not the euro – a currency devaluation would be a way out of its economic mess. That option would spare ordinary Greeks the suffering caused by harsh and unrealistic austerity measures imposed by unelected eurocrats.)

Britain’s Nigel Farage, a conservative politician, euro-skeptic and delegate to the European Parliament, has on more than one occasion drawn parallels between Europe’s old communist dreamers and European Union dreamers.

Speaking in the European Parliament early last year, Farage drew attention to the number of former communists and their fellow travelers in the European Parliament – and he took them to task for their handling of Greece’s economic troubles, which were then in their early stages. (See the YouTube clip, below.)

Farage, a former metals trader, has made similar comments in the past about Europe’s financially troubled PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. He appears to be one of a handful of members of the European Parliament who has a firm grasp of financial markets and economics.

Declaring that Greece had become less democratic after becoming part of the euro-zone – now “trapped in the economic prison of the euro” — Farage observed: “While 60 years ago an Iron Curtain fell across Europe, today we have the iron fist of the European Commission” imposing its will upon Greece.

Early last year, Farage also delivered a dramatic speech in the European Parliament in which he recounted a tragic-comic story: Europe’s evolution from a continent divided by communism to one divided by the undemocratic political and economic system created by the EU and euro-zone. His comments, lasting just under four minutes, drew howls of protest and jeers. They are worth watching on this YouTube clip.

With respect to Greece’s probable default, Farage told the European Parliament last week that Greece was now a “protectorate,” subject to the EU’s “economic governance.” And just like the Iron Curtain that went down over Europe some 60 years ago, the EU is now divided between North and South, said Farage – all due to the economic calamities brought on by the economic straightjacket created by the euro-zone on countries such as Greece, which EU dreamers – against the advice of pragmatic euro-skeptics – allowed into the euro-zone. “Is it any wonder that Greeks are now burning EU flags and drawing swastikas on them,” he said. (For the YouTube clip, click here.)

In the case of Europe’s old communist past and the euro-zone, history is repeating itself in some respects.

(Originally published at FrontPage Magazine. Also see a related article: "Euroskeptics on Greece: 'We told you so!'")

2011-09-21T17:28:00.001-05:00

On Obama's orders, White House chef to prepare pork chops

David Paulin

President Obama is no doubt enjoying lots of delicious sea food in Martha's Vineyard -- lobster, scallops, that sort of thing. But when he's back in Washington, he'll be chowing down a favorite new meal prepared by the White House chef: gourmet-style Iowa pork chops!

Specifically: "cinnamon brined grilled Iowa pork chops."

That's what Obama ordered during his recent visit to Iowa while staying in Davenport at the Hotel Blackhawk. He loved the meaty chops so much that his staff requested the recipe from the hotel's chief, so that the chops could be added to the official West Wing menu.

That's according to an amusing article by veteran newspaper columnist Bill Wundram in the Quad-City Times about how Obama pigged out on the heavenly chops that were 2-inches thick. Wundram tried the chops himself -- all to experience the pleasure of eating like a king.

Interestingly, Obama initially ordered a New York strip steak, but then changed his mind. Or as Wundram relates:

"He had taken a couple of bites of the steak - medium-well - when he spotted an aide licking his chops over pork chops. The president sneaked a bite of the chops and is said to have spoken out:

"I want an order of those."

So how was the $25 plate of two chops?

According to Wundram:

"Just like the order for the president, my chops came on a square white plate. It was more than an order. It was a mountain of food, with those rib bones protruding alongside a 4-inch slab of Iowa cornbread casserole.

"There was enough food on that plate to feed a family of four. The chops were nuzzled in a bacon braised warm cabbage slaw with caramelized onions. This was a breakthrough from the way I usually get my pork chops, from a kitchen stove frying pan.

"I was raving hungry and ready to eat. I couldn't wait to dig into those chops.

"Trust me: They were smackin' good!"

Let's hope that diet scold Michelle doesn't see how that chops are prepared: "marinated 24 hours in a brine of cinnamon, salt and sugar before being grilled and finished off in the oven."

Wundram said he left the table "stuffed to the gills. By mid-afternoon, my lips felt salty, an aftertaste of the best pork chops in town."

Wundram failed to mention what became of that New York strip steak Obama took a bite out of -- but then discarded upon spotting a White House aide devouring pork chops.

Perhaps the New York strip ended up in a doggy bag for "Bo," the Obama family's Portuguese Water Dog.

It's good to be the king.

(Originally published in The American Thinker, August 24, 2011)

2011-09-13T08:16:00.005-05:00

Euroskeptics on Greece: 'We told you so!'

By David Paulin

Will Greece default?

The question is roiling financial markets in Europe -- and spreading financial jitters around the world. It's also energizing Britain's Euroskeptics and renewing pointed questions about the wisdom of European unification, and specifically about the "eurozone" -- the 17 states of the 27-member European Union that share a common currency -- the euro.

Keeping Greece on the euro means imposing more harsh austerity measures on that country, which got it's first bail-out package in May last year. But tougher austerity measures for Greece are probably untenable because of the tremendous hardship they'll impose upon ordinary Greeks. Even more problematic: Keeping Greece on the euro means eliminating -- virtually overnight -- Greece's endemic corruption that should have disqualified it from joining the EU's eurozone in the first place. (Greece may be the cradle of democracy and inspiration for Western civilization, but in many ways modern-day Greece has more in common with the Balkans than Western and Northern Europe.)

Unfortunately, the EU apparently has no contingency plan for how Greece would return to its own currency, the drachma; this would give it the flexibility to deal with its financial mess (by setting its interest rates or through currency devaluations) -- all with the least amount of pain and social disorder. But that doesn't mean a return to the drachma can't be done -- and it would be the best thing for Greece, say some analysts.

The problems in creating a United States of Europe -- to counterbalance American power in the minds of some European elites, especially the French -- were criticized early on by British Eurosceptics (British spelling), who feared the anti-Democratic values of an EU Parliament; an avalanche of regulations; and a common currency that would be untenable.

Britain's Euroskeptics have much in common with America's "Tea Party" movement. And their most famous member is undoubtedly one man: British politician Nigel Farage -- leader of the UK Independence Party; Member of the European Parliament for South East England; and co-chair of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group. Known for his wit and colorful oratory, Farage addressed the EU's European Parliament more than a year ago on the economic turmoil and folly of what was happening then, and what would happen in the future. His prophetic remarks about the EU's financial troubles could have been delivered yesterday.

In criticizing a European common currency, Farage has said that countries with structurally different economics -- Germany and Greece, for example -- can't handle a "one-size-fits-all interest rate."

"You can ignore the markets if you want to but in time the markets will not ignore you," he has said. Early on, he predicted the need for bail-outs of troubled eurzone countries.

Referring to financially troubled eurozone countries Greece, Portugal, and Spain, Farage -- more than a year ago -- told the European Parliament: "Just how much do these countries have to suffer in the pursuit of this European dream?" He added: "I wonder how much longer will the Germans go on paying the enormous bill."

Farage's prophetic comments may be see on this YouTube clip, below, during which he also demolished the idea of a "European identity." Or as Henry Kissinger asked in a similar vein: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?”

And for some more entertainment, enjoy some of Farage's colorful performances in the European Parliament, more than a year ago, as shown on two YouTube clips:

*Click here for Farage attacking the anti-democratic proclivities of EU members and particularly of EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy: Farage derided the unelected Rompuy for getting paid more than President Obama and of having the "appearance of a low-grade bank clerk." Farage was fined 3,000 euros for the insult. He later apologized -- to bank clerks!

*And click here to see Farage suggesting that Van Rompuy, a Belgian politician, ought to be the "pinup boy for the Euroskeptic movement" because of how the EU's best intentions have produced results that undermined Europe's economy.

He added: "It's even more serious than economics because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that."

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-09-09T12:51:00.005-05:00

Clinton, Bush, and Osama bin Laden: The WikiLeaks Cables

By David Paulin

In the months leading up to the September 11 terror attacks, the Bush administration had Osama bin Laden on its radar. He was not a household name in America yet, but top administration officials regarded him as a mortal enemy. Secretary of State Colin Powell was among those deeply concerned about Bin Laden's ability to launch or provoke serious terror attacks – and to influence large swaths of the Muslim world, where many admired him and were drawn to his hate-filled anti-Americanism.

Secret diplomatic cables just released by WikiLeaks show that ten years ago, just months before 9/11, top Bush officials were attempting to bring Bin Laden to justice for outrages that included his role in the truck-bombing attacks of U.S. Embassies in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. However, Washington was getting nowhere with the Taliban.

The Bush administration like the Clinton administration was getting stalled, stonewalled, and lied to by the Taliban in response to repeated queries and demands about Bin Laden's whereabouts and the Taliban's pledges to close terror-training camps, according to diplomatic cables classified as “secret.”

The subject line of one secret cable: “Taliban claim Bin Laden out of their territory.” Dated February 19, 1999, it was written by President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, based on information provided by a top Taliban figure, Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, who was considered a “moderate” Taliban.

Sounding upbeat, Talbott wrote: “Mujahid has long indicated his own opposition to UBL and support for better relations between the U.S. and the Taliban. It was clearly gratifying for him to deliver the news that UBL had left tall ban territory. Mujahid was more emotional during this session than in any previous encounter.”

The diplomatic back and forth between Washington and Taliban officials over Bin Laden's whereabouts, up until the eve of 9/11, is eerily similar to Washington's negotiations over the years with North Korea and Iran about their nuclear weapons programs.

Read in the hindsight of 9/11, the cables provide a fascinating and sometimes comic and even depressing glimpse into the minds of officials in the Clinton and Bush administrations as they tried, during the late 90s and early 2001, to find common ground and shared interests with the Taliban – with the aim of neutralizing Bin Laden or bringing him to justice (though not necessarily kill him) and to shut down Bin Laden's terror-training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

During the Clinton years in particular, some diplomatic cables give the sense that State Department officials viewed Taliban leaders as people who would listen to reason; or who could be shamed or pressured into doing the right thing in respect to their famous guest, Osama bin Laden, and his terror-training camps.

It's the only thing to conclude from a secret cable sent by Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on February 26, 1998. Its subject line: “Usama bin Laden's statement about jihad against the U.S.”

Albright noted her cable was responding to Bin Laden's recent statement “calling for all Muslims to engage in a holy war against Americans.”

Sent to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, it contained helpful “talking points” for Embassy officials. Per Albright's instructions, they were to convey the following to the Taliban:

*“We find statements of this kind, open invitations to carry out terrorist attacks against innocent people to be outrageous and totally unacceptable.”

*“We have discussed our concerns about Usama bin Laden's inflamatory (sic) remarks and anti-American rhetoric before. We were given assurances that negative actions like this would be curbed.”

*“You should convey to bin Laden and his supporters in Afghanistan that this advocacy of violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

*“These kinds of statements by Bin Laden also reflect poorly on the Taliban, as he enjoys your hospitality.”

How might the Taliban have reacted to the talking points in Albright's February 26 cable? It should have been obvious to her and anybody who knew what they were doing, and had already done. In Kabul, for instance, they demonstrated their Islamo-facist credentials in February, 1998 -- just like Germany's Nazis had demonstrated their thug credentials in November, 1938, with Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), the nationwide attacks on Jewish homes, business, and synagogues. The Taliban's religious police, for their part, were clearing women from Kabul's streets and beating them up for failing to wear head-to-toe chadors, a violation of Sharia law. Months later, the Taliban turned Kabul soccer stadium into an execution ground, shooting untold numbers of men and women in the heads or stoning them to death for petty crimes and adultery. And despite international protests, they later destroyed colossal Buddhist statues carved into a mountain, considering them idolatrous and offensive to Islam.

This is who the Taliban were. Not surprisingly, Albright's talking points failed to persuade them to clean up their act regarding Bin Laden and the terror camps. Albright was flummoxed. And so she ratcheted up the diplomatic pressure by enlisting the help of a formidable alley: the Europe Union. In a secret cable dated March 27, 1998, Albright contacted U.S. Embassies in the European Union – and in her “action message” directed U.S. envoys to invite E.U. states to join Washington in condemning the Taliban; she hoped the diplomatic pile on would persuade the Taliban to close their terror camps and withdraw their support for Osama bin Laden. The cable's subject line: “Approach to EU on Taleban support for Usama bin Laden.”

Albright wrote: “The U.S. is concerned by the so-called fatwa recently issued by terrorist patron Usama bin Laden that calls on all Muslims to kill Americans. We have raised this issue with the Taleban both in Kabul and in New York. We are confident that EU member states share this concern. We believe that there is merit in the Taleban realizing that this concern is not limited to the U.S.” (“Taleban” is an alternative spelling to the more commonly used “Taliban.”)

Albright warned: “The Taleban must share responsibility for Usama bin Laden's terrorist actions and inflammatory statements as long as he remains a guest in Qandahar.” (Qandahar is the Persian spelling of "Kandahar," the more commonly seen Pashto version.)

How might the Taliban and Bin Laden have reacted to Albright's diplomatic efforts? In all likelihood, her talking points achieved the opposite of what she'd intended – providing evidence to Bin Laden and the Taliban that America was a “weak horse”; or as Bin Laden had famously declared: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."

Interestingly, just six months after Albright's first "talking points" cable, she got an answer of sorts – the U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa in which Bin Laden had a hand. Hundreds died and thousands were wounded; 12 Americans were among the dead. In retaliation for the suicide bombings, President Clinton thereupon established his own credentials as a “weak horse” – ineffectual cruise missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In the minds of the Taliban and Bin Laden (and their cheerleaders in the Middle East), the cruise missiles strikes offered more evidence that they had nothing to fear from the pitiful American giant.

Months before September 11, 2001, the Bush administration was itself utilizing fruitless diplomatic channels to bring Osama bin Laden to justice – and a U.S. courtroom. By then, the terror master was on the FBI's “Ten Most Wanted” list. And his Taliban hosts were feeling the sting of a force that surely struck fear into their hearts – the United Nations Security Council. At the Clinton administration's urging, it had authorized financial sanctions on the Taliban; demanded they stop allowing territory under their control to be used for terrorist training; and ordered that they turn over Osama bin Laden to “appropriate authorities.”

Appropriate authorities? It was an ambiguous phrase, of course, one apparently exploited by the Taliban to yet again give Washington the run-around, buy time, and protect Bin Laden. This was underscored by a secret cable dated April 7, 2001 – five months before 9/11 – and sent by Secretary of State Colin Powell as an “action request” to U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth McKune in Doha, Qatar. The subject line: “Taliban Proposal for bin Laden Islamic Tribunal.”

As Powell explained: “There have been reports from various sources that during the Taliban delegation visit to Qatar, the Taliban and Qataris may discuss a tribunal of Muslim scholars to try Usama bin Laden in Qatar. Reportedly, under this formula, if the U.S. offered sufficient evidence at the trial, then UBL could conceivably face a sentence by the Islamic tribunal. If the tribunal does not find him guilty, then UBL would presumably be considered by many to be exonerated.”

Powell's cable nevertheless stressed that Washington opposed an “Islamic trial” for Bin Laden -- and so McKune should convey this to the Taliban if the issue came up. “Without studying the details of any such proposal, we seriously question whether a third country trial would meet the requirements the Security Council has laid down,” Powell wrote.

“As you know, Bin Laden is under indictment in the U.S., and our position is that we want him for trial in the U.S. If the Taleban have a serious proposal, they should present it to the U.S..”

Know Your Enemy

If some U.S. officials miscalculated regarding Bin Laden, perhaps it was because they were naïve; or perhaps because they simply didn't know their enemy. Nearly eight months after Albright's first talking points cable, a secret cable dated October 13, 1998, was transmitted from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: It contained a detailed biography of Osama Bin Laden. Signed by U.S. Ambassador Wyche Fowler Jr., it was distributed to a number of U.S. Embassies and officials as well as to military and intelligence officials: CIA, NSA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Its subject line: “Saudi Arabia: Usama bin Ladin” (sic).

What did Bin Laden want? As the cable explained: "Bin Ladin's (sic) immediate stated objective is the expulsion of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, the Arabian peninsula, and all Muslim countries.” It's a goal that, interestingly, explains the timing of the U.S. Embassy suicide bombings in East Africa. They occurred on the eighth anniversary of American troops arriving in Saudi Arabia.

The cable continued: “Beyond that goal, in March 1997, Bin Ladin (sic) told a Pakistani journalist that 'Muslims need a leader who can unite them and establish a government which follows the rule of the caliphs. The rule of the caliphs will begin from Afghanistan. It will adopt interest-free banking. The rule of Allah will be established. We are against communism but we are also against capitalism. The concentration of wealth in just a few hands is unislamic (sic).'" Interestingly, this neatly sums up why radical Islamists get along so well with members of the international left.

As for Bin Laden's objective of expelling American infidels from the Arabian peninsula, there is an irony here. The Americans were military personnel, enforcing the United Nations-mandated no-fly zone in Iraq under the terms of the case-fire with Saddam Hussein; and so in one sense, 9/11 was blow back from the first Gulf War.

Fowler's cable also touched on the issue of Bin Laden's popularity among many Muslims, stating: "According to Jamal Khashoggi, an Islamic movement specialist for "Al Hayat" newspaper, many people consider Ysama bin Ladin (sic) as the 'Che Guevara' of the Arab world. He said that some hope that Usama will die in battle so that people will not have to suffer the 'humiliation' of seeing him transported in handcuffs to the U.S.”

How ironic that President Obama, in authorizing Navy Seals to kill Bin Laden rather than capturing him, ended up giving many Muslims their fondest wish. But ultimately, killing Bin Laden was preferable to taking him to Guantanamo (unacceptable to Obama's far-left political base) and putting him on trial in New York City, a trial that would have been a political circus and mockery of a criminal-justice system that's unsuited for trying terrorists captured on foreign battlefields.

The Obama administration now has another terror master on its radar -- or to be precise, in its cross-hairs. Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaeda commander, lecturer, and former Imam, is thought to be hiding out in Yemen, from where his parents immigrated to America. He has inspired a number of terrorists and would-be terrorists, including the Fort Hood shooter, Christmas day bomber, and Times Square bomber. At least three of the 9/11 hijackers attended his sermons at a mosque in the Washington, D.C. area.

The Obama administration, however, has no interest in bringing him to an American courtroom. It has issued an order to kill him, one that withstood a legal challenge brought by an ACLU lawyer in behalf of al-Awlaki's father.

America has come a long way since its pre-9/11 days – acquired an understanding of how decent men and women must, regrettably, sometimes function in brutish parts of the world: the real world.

It's one of the legacies of 9/11.

2011-08-11T03:10:00.006-05:00

Why is Britain Burning?

You can thank the postmodern welfare state for that. "Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalized youngsters " -- so says Max Hastings in London's Daily Mail.

Regarding the the youthful thugs in the streets, he observers:

They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong...

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.

Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.

Read the whole piece, here.

And below is a BBC interview with two young people who elaborate on why they enjoy looting -- it's to show the "rich" and the police what they can do.

2011-08-10T05:49:00.022-05:00

In riot-torn Britain, AP Bureau Chief Paisely Dodds injects her lefty views into news coverage

By David Paulin

In an article about how social media is helping to energize Britain’s youthful rioters, the left-leaning views of AP's London Bureau Chief Paisley Dodds were on display -- yet again.

Dodds, the American-born daughter of hippie parents, is known for her sharp-elbows and "attitude" among AP colleagues. And in past articles about Britain, Dodds has been clear about one thing. The country, she firmly believes, is brimming full of "white male privilege" and class-conscious "elites." Writing about the role of social media in fueling the riots, she injected her political views -- from out of the blue -- into her reporting in order to put the rioting into context. She wrote:

"Britain is full of contrasts between the haves and have-nots, where areas of soot-stained apartment buildings are a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace. It is also a place where the class system is imprinted on the country's social fabric, seen clearly in the political and business elite.

"Prime Minister David Cameron, known for his posh accent and privileged education, is thought to have lost votes in last year's election because he was seen as too much of an elitist who couldn't understand the common man."

Those are pretty sweeping statements -- and just how true they are in Britain today is highly debatable, especially in respect to Britain's "class system." But no doubt, those statements say much about Dodds and the agenda she is perusing as a journalist, not to mention her ego.

Before her London gig, Dodds was news editor in the AP's Caribbean bureau in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There, she and long-time gal pal Michelle Faul, who was bureau chief, pushed a common theme in their Guantanamo reporting: The people imprisoned there were innocents being held illegally -- "without charges"! Or as Dodds said on MSNBC in 2005: "The biggest issue is that you have about 550 men who are presumed innocent, who have been held at the prison camp for more than three years."

Presumed innocent? Held without charges? Hey, Paisley, maybe you can explain something: If any Japanese pilots had been shot down and captured during the attack on Pearl Harbor, would you have insisted that they be tried as common criminals in America's court system?

As London and other cities in Britain burn, be on the look out for Dodds to subtly inject into her reporting the notion that the thugs in the street are rebelling against Britain's "elites," "white male privilege," and various social "injustices."

Dodds, incidentally, is more than 40 years old, but the only AP photo that's available of her is one in which she appears to be in her mid 20s.

Also see a related post at this blog: "A Story the AP Plays Down: Released Guantanamo Inmates Return to the Battlefield." And see this post as well: "Kuwait's Gitmo solution: Kill them!"

No comment....Dodd's Twitter photo:

2011-08-05T01:25:00.004-05:00

Church Bombers Handed Death Sentences; A Victory for Iraq On Anniversary of Steven Vincent's Murder

By David Paulin

Iraq achieved another milestone this week: the three masterminds of last year's bloody church siege, involving al Qaeda suicide bombers, were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court.

Sixty-eight people died in one of the worst attacks ever against Iraq's Christian minority on Oct. 31. Worshipers were held hostage in a Baghdad cathedral, until al Qaeda suicide bombers detonated their explosive vests.

Coincidentally, the death sentences were issued on Tuesday, August 2, exactly six years after freelance journalist Steven Vincent, 49, was kidnapped and murdered in Basra, Iraq.

Vincent was one of the most gifted American journalists in Iraq -- and unlike most Western reporters, Vincent, an art critic-turned war reporter, was not a cynic. He believed that remaking Iraq into a decent country was possible.

Tuesday's death sentences provide more evidence that Iraq has a functioning rule of rule -- even when it comes to seeking justice for crimes committed against its Christian minority. The death sentences follow two successful parliamentary elections held after the U.S.-led invasion and liberation of Iraq in 2003.

During the U.S-led occupation of Iraq and the subsequent war, most Western reporters focused endlessly on the issue of Iraq's supposedly nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Vincent, on the other hand, dealt with a more interesting aspect of that controversy: It was a non-issue to most Iraqis.

Vincent, to be sure, had in the last months of his life grown increasingly uneasy about how the war was going

"America rid us of one tyrant, only to give us hundreds more in the form of terrorists," he quoted one man as saying in Umm Qasr, a port city near Kuwait, in an article in National Review.

In his book "In the Red Zone," he elaborated: "Were we wrong in Iraq? Yes, in one major sense, beyond even the shortage of troops, failure to anticipate the Baathist-led insurrection and Abu Ghraib: we did not, and still don't understand the regressive, parasitical, unreasonable presence of tribal Islam -- the black hole in Iraqi and Arab cultures that consumes their best and most positive energies. Because of our blindness, we find ourselves fighting an enemy we do not see, comprehend, or even accurately identify."

He nonetheless argued that much still depended on America's willingness to "stay the course."

Vincent's translator, Nour al-Khal, was kidnapped with him -- then shot and left for dead. Vincent's widow, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, later brought Nour to America, making a home for her in her Manhattan apartment. She thereby honored her husband's pledge to remove his translator, an aspiring poet, from harm's way in Iraq.

Interestingly, the story about Iraq's conviction of three Al Qaeda terrorists was reported only in a article by the Associated Press. This reflects the fact that major news outlets have cut back their staffs in Baghdad. The reason, of course, is that Iraq is no longer considered a major story. Curiously, The New York Times' online edition ran just a two-sentence version of the AP's 430-word article; The Times apparently didn't regard this as a significant story.

Vincent's murder occurred just three days after he published an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, "Switched off In Basra," which criticized the increasing infiltration of the Basran police force by Islamic extremists. Amid Basra's repressive religious atmosphere, he wrote, most police officers were putting their faith in the mosque, not the state. In his Op-Ed, he blamed British troops who had secured the city.

"Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society," wrote Vincent, whose murder remains unsolved.

It was a dreadful example of nation building. Since then, Iraq's success stories have outweighed such failures -- as was underscored by Tuesday's death sentences which were welcomed by Iraq's Christian community.

Increasingly, Iraq appears to be the country where an "Arab Spring" is truly occurring. It's sad that Steven Vincent didn't live to see it.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog. Below is a response from Lisa Ramaci-Vincent to this blog article, as published at The American Thinker:

David - A heartfelt "Thank you" and deep gratitude for your continuing to remember and write about Steven. You have no idea what it means to me and his family (to whom I forwarded this post) that attention is still being called to him, to his fate, by people such as yourself. Today is my birthday, and this is the best present I could have gotten. Again, thank you so very, very much.

2011-08-01T04:15:00.003-05:00

Learning the Work Ethic Young

By David Paulin

In America's rural Midwest, an annual ritual is underway in the vast cornfields that stretch to the horizon. Tens of thousands of American teenagers, in a rite of passage, are doing the kinds of farm work more commonly performed by visitors from south of the border.

The teens are detasseling seed corn.

Going from one stalk to another under the blazing sun, they yank off the uppermost tassels in various rows. Some detasselers walk their rows. Others ride in baskets extending from tractors.

It's exhausting work -- dirty and sweaty. But poor and uneducated migrant laborers are nowhere to be found in most fields. Rather, it's fresh-faced rural teens, usually 13 to 15. They do this work to earn extra money over their summer vacations. What's more, in the rural Midwest detasseling is regarded as a character-building experience.

Scrapes, sunburns, and twisted ankles are the worst things that usually befall the young detasselers, boys and girls employed by subcontractors for giant seed companies. It's unheard of to have serious accidents. But last Monday, a freak accident in Illinois claimed the lives of two 14-year-old detasselers, Jade Garza and Hannah Kendall, both of Sterling, Illinois. They were electrocuted near an above-ground irrigation system. Two fellow female detasselers, both sisters, also were injured in the water-soaked field by an electrical current.

Jade Garza and and Hannah Kendall were best friends, and their tragic deaths are getting prominent news coverage in newspapers in the Midwest. A Facebook page set up for the girls quickly received 11,000-plus tributes to the teens.

The accident also has called attention to the epic effort each summer to detassel seed corn that, due to culture and custom in the Midwest, is reserved exclusively for young teens.

In some parts of the country, many middle- and upper-middle-class teens spend their summers doing fancy internships. But not in the rural Midwest. There, large numbers of teens eagerly work as detasselers, a job they proudly list in their resumes, and that many of their parents also did as teens.

Not long after dawn, the young detasselers cheerfully ride in buses that take them from staging areas to outlying cornfields. By 6 or 7 a.m., they're in the thick of dew-covered stalks. To stay dry, they wear ponchos or cut-out plastic garbage bags over their heads, removing them as the sun burns off the dew and the fields heat up.

It's a ritual that's now in high gear. By detasseling some rows of corn, other rows planted with different seeds will cross-pollinate the detasseled stalks, producing hybrid seeds commanding high prices.

The detasseling season lasts a few short weeks -- but the pride and work ethic it instills in rural youngsters benefits them for a lifetime, say current and former detasselers.

To be sure, rural youngsters detasseling corn are nothing like the migrant laborers one might associate with grueling agricultural work. On the contrary, they are middle-class kids. And they are overwhelmingly white, a fact reflecting rural America's demographics.

Detasseling is the first job many rural teens have, and they're proud of that fact. The CEO and executive vice president of Country Financial, Barb Baurer, proudly lists her very first job in high school: corn detasseling.

"Fancy internships don't reflect the work ethic that you learn in a cornfield," wrote Mary Gustafson in an article fondly recalling her days of detasseling as a young teen. When not working in the cornfields, she worked in her family's True Value hardware store. Her father pushed her into corn detasseling for her own good, brushing aside her desire to spend the summer writing a novel.

Detasselers earn up to $1,300 or more for a few weeks of work -- a small fortune for young teens in junior high or high school. Most couldn't earn that much money at other jobs available to teens who are less than 17. Fast-food restaurants, after all, don't generally hire kids who are 13, 14, and 15. Rural teens who work as detasselers are thus getting their first taste of financial independence and pride in hard work. In many cases, the young teens are supervised by college students who themselves started working as detasselers as young teens.

For the thousands of teens now working the fields in America's corn belt, the deaths of two of their own has darkened a detasseling season that is normally filled with camaraderie and good times, as is reflected in the amusing YouTube clips some make to celebrate a special time of their lives. In one, detasselers dance in the corn fields to pop music; another features a busload of detasselers enjoying an impromptu drum solo from a fellow detasseler.

Writing on the Facebook page dedicated to the two teenage detasselers and best friends who died in an Illinois cornfield, Sheri Reimers-Smith wrote: "My thoughts and prayers go out to all family and friends due to this accident. An accident that will never be forgotten and a community that has pulled together to comfort one another. R.I.P. sweet angels. You are both in wonderful hands! Praying for strength to help deal with such a tragedy."

For the teenage detasselers now in the fields, this season will be bittersweet.

Below is a 3 minute YouTube video on detasseling which evokes a certain charm.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-08-01T03:27:00.007-05:00

First McDonald's in Bosnia Drawing Huge Crowds

By David Paulin

Whatever happened to the Ugly American? He exists in President Obama's mind, and in those of anti-American elites at home and abroad -- but he's nowhere to be found on Marshal Tito street in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

That's where Bosnia's first McDonald's just opened -- and the fast-food restaurant is now drawing huge and adoring crowds of ordinary Bosnians, most of them young people under 40.

First Lady and diet scold Michelle Obama must be having fits.

It's been 16 years since U.S.-led NATO air strikes were carried out over Sarajevo to stop a brutal civil war in Europe's backyard. Now, all-American McDonald's is providing Bosnians with a oasis of American culture -- not to mention jobs and a sense that the country has taken a major stride forward with the arrival of the golden arches and Big Mac.

It's an inspiring story; yet outside of Bosnia it has gotten little news coverage in the mainstream media. One exception is an excellent article by Rusmir Smajilhodzic of Agence France-Presse (AFP), which is worth reading in its entirety.

Here's an excerpt:

"It took four years, a lot of red tape and a little local jealousy but the Big Mac is the new hero on Marshal Tito street in downtown Sarajevo and, for many, a milestone in Bosnia's post-war recovery.

In the week since the country got its very first McDonald's, crowds -- mainly young people under 40 -- have poured non-stop into the gleaming new franchise of the US food giant. [snip]

The splashy opening last week drew hundreds of eager Sarajevans who lined up on the main thoroughfare named after the late communist dictator to get a taste of the West, via American-style hamburgers and fries.

"We are becoming a part of western Europe, of a world from which we were cut off," local politician Aner Begic, 32, said as he munched on his meal. [snip]

EU hopeful Bosnia is one of the last countries in Europe to get McDonald's. Only Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo are still without, while Serbia and Croatia have had it for years.

The head of the three-member presidency, Zeljko Komsic, US Ambassador Patrick Moon and Sarajevo Mayor Alija Behmen were all on hand, with Behmen given the honour of buying the first burger in what not long ago was a rundown, two-storey university restaurant.

Ambassador Moon, in comments sure to rankle the First Lady, was quoted at the U.S. Embassy's website as saying:

"The opening of McDonald's is a visible symbol to the rest of the world that Bosnia and Herzegovina is open for business. McDonald's represents a U.S. tradition of entrepreneurship, innovation, quality, efficiency, and corporate social responsibility.
"The McDonald's story is a true testament to entrepreneurship - one that I hope inspires other entrepreneurs in Bosnia and Herzegovina to move forward with their own unique and innovative ideas."

The Sarajevo restaurant is just the start for Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's, which says it's looking for new franchise partners to set up its golden arches elsewhere in Bosnia.

In its most recenl quarterly statement, incidentally, McDonald's yet again reported strong earnings at home and abroad. The fast-food giant has more than 32,000 restaurants in 117 countries, and employs 1.7 million employees worldwide. Fifty-six percent of McDonald's restaurant are overseas.

Interestingly, McDonald's over the years has reported some of its strongest sales in former cold war enemies China and the former Soviet Union -- and it has been a big hit in anti-American France, too.

To the alarm of French bakers, McDonald's is now adding baguette sandwiches at its French outlets -- a move intended to boost sales by appealing to potential customers who don't want an all-American meal. "The French love the baguette. We are just progressively responding to a natural demand," said McDonald's senior Vice President for France and Southern Europe, Nawfal Trabelsi.

Click here for a charming YouTube clip set to soft piano music of Bosnia's first McDonald's, made during a quiet moment at the restaurant. It apparently is from an independent filmmaker who is a McDonald's fan.

And below is a must-see local television report of McDonald's big opening night, including ribbon-cutting ceremonies in which Ambassador Moon (the man with the beard) participated. It's nice to see a career foreign service officer like Moon doing such a great job representing the United States abroad.

Photo credit: United States Embassy, Bosnia

Originally published at The American Thinker blog.

2011-07-26T22:11:00.003-05:00

Obama Redefining 'Poverty'

By David Paulin

Originally published at The American Thinker

What does it mean to be poor in America today? For typical "poor" households -- as defined by the government -- it means cable television, two color television sets, and two or more cars.

As for housing, it means living in air-conditioned comfort -- in decent accommodations with even more space than "average" Europeans have. (Not poor Europeans, to be sure, but "average" Europeans.) Moreover, most "poor" Americans get the medical care they need, and they eat enough -- in fact, they eat too much.

In short, the lifestyles of most "poor" Americans are vastly at odds with dire government statistics about poverty in America -- statistics that invariably send liberals and media pundits into hand-wringing fits and moralistic outrage. Now comes an antidote to this absurdity -- a report released by the Heritage Foundation that is appropriately titled: "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?"

According to the Census Bureau, more than 30 million Americans (one in seven) live in "poverty." Yet the Heritage Foundation's report underscores that being poor in America today actually has little to do with what most Americans regard as deprivation.

Even so, the Obama administration is nevertheless poised to expand these absurdities -- making the definition of poverty even more divorced from reality than it already is, according to the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield. Ultimately, they point out that the president will further sever the connection between poverty and "deprivation" -- by reclassifying poverty as being all about "inequality." As they explain:

Under the new measure, a family will be judged poor if its income falls below certain specified income thresholds or standards. There is nothing new in this, but unlike the current poverty income standards, the new income thresholds will have a built-in escalator clause. They will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the living standards of the average American.

The current poverty measure counts (albeit inaccurately) absolute purchasing power (how much meat and potatoes a person can buy). The new measure will count comparative purchasing power (how much meat and potatoes a person can buy relative to other people). As the nation becomes wealthier, the poverty standards will increase in proportion. In other words, Obama will employ a statistical trick to give a new meaning to the saying that "the poor will always be with you."

The new poverty measure will produce very odd results. For example, if the real income of every single American were to triple magically overnight, the new poverty measure would show no drop in poverty because the poverty income standards would also triple. Under the Obama system, poverty can be reduced only if the incomes of the "poor" are rising faster than the incomes of everyone else. Another paradox of the new poverty measure is that countries such as Bangladesh and Albania will have lower poverty rates than the U.S.'s -- even though the actual living conditions in those countries are extremely low -- simply because they have narrower distribution of incomes, albeit very low incomes.

Ultimately, "[t]he new measure is a public relations Trojan Horse, smuggling in a 'spread-the-wealth' agenda under the ruse of fighting significant material deprivation -- a condition that is already rare in American society," they point out.

Most troubling, they point out that "grossly exaggerating the extent and severity of material deprivation in the U.S. will benefit neither the poor, the economy, nor society as a whole."

Of course, the Heritage Foundation's report is hardly news to many middle- and upper-middle-class Americans who have ever stood in line at the grocery store -- right behind a shopper using a food-stamp card to buy bottled water, junk food, and soft drinks -- a shopper who then loaded up an SUV with a basket full of groceries. Recently, an article in the Wall Street Journal seemed intended to cast sympathy on food-stamp recipients at a Walmart. But it inadvertently did the opposite -- suggesting some food-stamp recipients do not seem all that needy.

If you want to see real poverty, don't go to Walmart. You should visit one of the shantytown slums surrounding Latin America's major cities. And while you're at it, visit a solidly middle-class neighborhood. By American standards, those neighborhoods would be poor -- and yet they are neat and orderly. Their residents are thrifty, hardworking, and well-mannered -- and they're determined to give their kids a good education. In those neighborhoods, people don't park their cars on their front lawns and young men don't walk around with pit bulls. There are no gangs or drug-dealing.

Liberals are loath to admit it, but poverty is not about income "inequality." More often than not, it's about culture and values -- and that's especially the case with poverty that's handed down from one generation to the next in the same families. That said, American is unique in another way in respect to its "poverty."

It's the only country in the world where poor people are fat -- another absurdity that liberals are loath to acknowledge.

2011-07-18T16:28:00.004-05:00

Hugo Chavez returns home amid reports of 'botched' surgery in Cuba

Originally published July 5 at The American Thinker blog

By David Paulin

Hugo Chavez made a surprise return to Venezuela on Monday, helping to ease political uncertainty that he will be unable to govern as he battles cancer.

"Now I'm going to get some rest," Chavez said.

How much rest? And how serious is Chavez's cancer? Well, neither Cuba nor Venezuela's governments have said much about that; not surprising given that authoritarian regimes are invariably closed-mouthed regarding the health of their leaders.

Meanwhile, a Spanish daily newspaper claims to have gained access to a Venezuelan medical report that sheds light on Chavez's medical treatment -- or mistreatment -- in Cuba for what it said turned out to be colon cancer.

In a July 2 article, El Periodico reported that a Cuban physician botched Chavez's first surgery -- "erroneously" treating him only for a "pelvic abscess" instead of for a cancerous tumor. A "few days later, the injury to his (cancerous) tumor fistulized," spreading an infection to the rest of his body, El Periodico explained. With Chavez in serious condition, Cuba then flew in a Spanish surgeon from Madrid to perform a second surgery.

According to El Periodico, Chavez's "colon cancer...has perforated the intestinal wall and provoked an abdominal infection." It added: "The president, for a minimum of three months, will have to have a colostomy."

Chavez's Spanish surgeon may have been José Luis García Sabrido, chief of surgery of Gregorio Marañón Hospital of Madrid, El Periodico said; however, the paper noted it could not confirm that. García once operated on Fidel Castro -- surgery that apparently was needed after Cuban physicians botched an earlier surgery on Castro, according to some accounts.

Most ominously for Chavez, El Periodico said he "will be unable to receive chemotherapy because the first (surgical) intervention prevents it." Chavez's condition is "serious" because of the possibility that the tumor has produced a metastasis" (spread cancer cells) due to the first, inappropriate surgery.

Despite El Periodico's remarks about chemotherapy, Chavez nevertheless hinted he was indeed receiving it -- during remarks he delivered during a TV appearance on Venezuela television last Thursday. Chavez admitted for the first time he had cancer but failed to elaborate on the type or stage of his cancer.

In Venezuela, Chavez will reportedly be treated in a military hospital. It's not surprising the 56-year-old Chavez would prefer a military hospital over a public hospital. Under Chavez, Venezuela's public health-care system has undergone a major "Cubanization," leading to what has been described as a collapse of public health care. (For more on that, see an American Thinker article that was based on U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.)

Venezuela, of course, has private hospitals, and I can attest that the ones I visited, when living in Venezuela during the 1990s, were first-class. However, many of Venezuela's top physicians -- perhaps including my own -- have no doubt left Venezuela as the country's economic and political situation has deteriorated during 12 years of Chavez's mismanagement and introduction of "21 Century socialism" -- during which large segments of the economy have been nationalized. No doubt, Chavez's anti-Semitism also drove off many of Venezuela's top physicians who are Jewish, perhaps including my own.

Some political observers speculate that Chavez will now be undertaking a shake-up of his cabinet. Since Chavez surrounds himself with "yes men," he might want to find a credible successor to take over -- in case he's unable to return to his regular TV and radio addresses that often ramble on for hours.

For a rough English-language translation of the article in El Periodico, click here. Below is a YouTube clip from the Associated Press showing Chavez returning home from Cuba.

2011-07-18T15:37:00.003-05:00

How bad is Hugo Chavez's cancer? Very bad, say Physicians

By David Paulin

Hugo Chavez probably has colon cancer. He is clearly a sick man -- very sick. And he could be facing treatment for eight to nine months. That's the consensus of physicians who watched a video that Chavez made in Cuba, and that was broadcast to stunned Venezuelans on Thursday evening. In it, Chavez confirmed widespread suspicions about his health, saying he'd undergone two surgeries in Cuba to remove a pelvic abscess and cancerous tumor. He hinted that he was receiving chemotherapy. But Chavez failed during his 20 minute address to reveal the type or stage of his cancer -- or say when he'd return to Venezuela. The country's political situation is growing more uncertain the longer Chavez is gone.

"My first duty as a revolutionary is to fully regain my health," said the former coup leader and paratrooper.

Normally, the garrulous Chavez speaks without notes during television and radio addresses that are long and rambling -- sometimes lasting hours. But in Thursday's address, he read from a prepared statement and seemed like a shadow of himself -- nothing like the talkative, high-energy Chavez that Venezuelans are used to. It was something physicians familiar with Chavez couldn't help but notice.

According to an article in the Miami Herald by reporter Frances Robles, physicians in Venezuela and Florida who watched Chavez's address agree his cancer is serious:

"What struck me is that at one point during his announcement, he misspoke and said 'evolution' instead of 'evaluation.' He corrected himself, but it was odd that in a video that was so staged - complete with props of the Venezuelan flag and a painting of Simon Bolivar - they did not do a retake," said Douglas Leon, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation. "What does that say? To me, it says he can only stand up for about 20 minutes, and they couldn't let him stand for the time it would take to do it over."

Based on what Chavez revealed, his prognosis does not look good, according to other physicians quoted in The Herald's article:

"The presence of an abscessed tumor is not a good sign, said Dr. Thomas J. George Jr., an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Florida and a specialist in gastrointestinal cancers.

"This is usually because the cancer is fairly aggressive,'' he said. "This could be a variety of different cancers -- none of them good."

The top possibility, he said, would be colorectal cancer, followed by prostate, bladder, or perhaps a sarcoma -- a soft tissue cancer.

"Prostate would probably be the best option in terms of prognosis," George said.

He also said it's possible that the original abscess drainage procedure itself could have contaminated the area with cancer cells. Treatment, doctors agreed, would be aggressive radiation and chemotherapy.

"Prostate tumors normally do not cause this kind of abscess," said Leon Lapco, president of the Venezuelan-American Doctors Association and a surgeon at Mercy Hospital. "I would say it's his colon, the large intestine. It's the most likely to cause diverticulitis, perforations and abscesses."

Chavez has been in Cuba for three weeks. In Venezuela, he surrounds himself with "yes" men and has has no credible successor to take his place should his health continue to deteriorate. All of which throws his vision of "21st Century socialism" for Venezuela into doubt.

Chavez admitted during his television address that he'd failed to take care of his health -- a trait that could perhaps be expected in a man widely described as a narcissist -- a vain glorious strongman who believed he was on a divine mission to lead Venezuela for most of his life. In the end, the seeds of Chavez's destruction may, ironically, have been contained in his own personality.

Believe it or not, Al Jazeera seems to have the best news report on YouTube regarding Chavez's television address to Venezuelans:

Originally published at The American Thinker blog.

2011-07-15T02:14:00.006-05:00

Confusing Headlines: Reporters for WSJ and Dow Jones Newswires provide different tales of Hugo Chávez's medical condition

By David Paulin

Does Kejal Vyas, who recently joined Dow Jones Newswires in Caracas, read the paper for which he sometimes writes, the Wall Street Journal? It's a question that alert Journal readers may be asking after reading a story by Vyas in Thursday's newspaper. His story contradicts reporting in last week's Journal.

In his article, "Chávez Says His Cancer Could Need Treatment," Vyas makes a seemingly questionable claim that got past his own fact-checking and the WSJ's copy editing. He wrote: "Two sources close to the president say he has colon cancer, but that hasn't been confirmed." (Emphasis added)

Well, that's an interesting statement because just last week, veteran WSJ reporters José de Córdoba and Ezequiel Minaya announced in another article ("Chávez Is Believed to Have Colon Cancer") that Chavez's cancer had, it seemed, been confirmed. They wrote: "President Hugo Chávez appears to be suffering from colon cancer, according to two people with direct knowledge of the president's condition." (Emphasis added)

Am I missing something here?

Of course, maybe the problem here is that the "two people with direct knowledge of the president's condition" are not such great and knowledgeable sources after all. Or maybe the weasel word “appears” means that de Córdoba and Minaya have in fact not confirmed what their writing suggests they have confirmed. One thing is certain: de Córdoba and Minaya probably got their asses chewed out for having failed to get a story that other media outlets had reported days earlier.

Stay tuned in the coming days for an article about media coverage of Chavez's medical condition (at this blog or The American Thinker) -- and the WSJ's sometimes problematic and even dishonest use of unnamed sources.

2011-07-06T16:07:00.006-05:00

In a Death Penalty Case, Texas battles Mexico, Washington (and the World)

By David Paulin

Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., a 38-year-old Mexican national, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday, July 7, in the Texas death chamber. He was convicted for the 1994 rape and murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda in San Antonio, Texas -- a crime that was particularly sordid as far as rapes and murders go.

Leal, however, isn't your typical death row inmate found guilty of an unspeakable crime. He has friends and supporters, mostly liberals: anti-death penalty advocates, law professors, and myriad others with various agendas. All have an international outlook -- and misplaced confidence in the efficacy of international law. One of them is President Obama.

Leal is now the object of a tug-of-war: Gov. Rick Perry and his Republican administration are on one side -- and on the other are Mexico's government, President Obama, and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. With the clock ticking down on Leal's life, this is a standoff between what liberals might call the forces of enlightenment (Obama and friends) and a gang of right-wing Christian zealots in Texas led by Gov. Perry.

At issue are lofty legal technicalities concerning international law: specifically, whether Texas violated the 1963 Vienna Convention in respect to Leal and is ignoring an edict from the International Court of Justice in The Hague on how it ought to be treating Mexicans accused of serious crimes in the state. Last Friday, lawyers for the Obama administration went to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a stay of execution for Leal. Gov. Perry is determined not to grant it.

The case revolves around an alleged slip-up made by law-enforcement authorities in San Antonio. After arresting Leal, they failed to tell him that as a Mexican national, he had a right to contact Mexico's consular officials. Supposedly, Leal would have exercised that right -- and then Mexico's government would have provided him the best defense Mexico could buy.

Predictably, the mainstream media has given lots of sympathetic coverage to Leal in a case pitting Texas against Washington, Mexico -- and the world. As The New York Times recently put it: Leal "was denied his rights under the Vienna Convention to consult Mexican consular officials" (emphasis added). In fact, Leal wasn't denied anything. He simply wasn't told what his rights were under an obscure provision of the Vienna Convention concerning consular relations; it was often overlooked at the time by local police departments. The convention is signed by some 183 nations, including Mexico and the United States.

Why wouldn't Leal think to ask about seeing a consular official -- something most Americans would do if arrested in Mexico or other foreign country? Perhaps it was because Leal had been in the U.S. since he was 2 years old and regarded himself as an American. Or perhaps like many poor and uneducated Mexicans, Leal would be shocked to know that Mexico's government -- in spite of its notoriously corrupt and inefficient criminal justice system -- would be eager to provide him with top-notch defense lawyers.

Or perhaps San Antonio's police were caught in a Catch-22 situation. In many parts of Texas, police are forbidden to ask criminal suspects about their immigration status -- doing so is regarded as racist "profiling." Accordingly, police couldn't very well ask Leal if he was a Mexican and perhaps in the country illegally. Mexico's government has protested loudly against such outrages.

Of course, Mexico's sudden interest in citizens like Leal smacks of political grandstanding, motivated by the feeling that Texas and other parts of America have essentially become appendages of Mexico.

The lawyer whom Mexico has provided to defend Leal is Sandra L. Babcock, a law professor at Northwestern University. She seems to think that in another trial, she could raise enough doubts about her client's guilt that a jury would give him a life sentence. Among other things, she claims a Catholic priest raped Leal when he was a boy. But given the weight of evidence against Leal, it's inconceivable he'd be found innocent in another trial.

In coming to Leal's defense, the Obama administration claims that if the U.S. fails to do right by Leal, Americans abroad could be denied access to consular access when accused of crimes. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief that executing Leal "would place the United States in irreparable breach of its international-law obligation to afford [Leal] review and reconsideration of his claim that his conviction and sentence were prejudiced by Texas authorities' failure to provide consular notification and assistance under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations."

In another effort to save Leal, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has asked Gov. Perry to commute his death sentence to life in prison.

In Mexico, ordinary citizens can expect little from their country's criminal justice system; it's not a place where they can count on receiving justice. So it is surprising that Mexicans on death row in the U.S. can expect so much from their government. Americans, moreover, have always fared badly when caught in Mexico's criminal justice system; it's one of the risks of going to Mexico, and international law does not seem to offer additional guarantees of safety to visitors going there. Yet in this case and others, Mexico presents itself as a paragon of virtue, committed to the lofty ideals of international law that Texas and other U.S. states are ignoring.

In 2004, Mexico sent its top legal talent to the International Court of Justice in The Hague -- and complained about 51 of its citizens being on death rows in various U.S. states; none, they complained, had been advised that their government was prepared to offer them top lawyers for their defense.

That Hague court ruled that the U.S. was indeed bound by the treaty -- prompting President George W. Bush to ask the states to apply it and review cases involving Mexican citizens awaiting death sentences. However, Gov. Perry was unimpressed. He refused to grant a stay-of-execution for Jose Medellin, 33, an illegal immigrant from Mexico found guilty in the 1993 rape-strangulation of two teenage Houston girls, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña. Instead, Medellin was executed, despite having never been informed that Mexico was ready to provide him with a great lawyer.

Jennifer's father, Randy Ertman, was outraged that international law was evoked in behalf of his daughter's killer. "It's just a last-ditch effort to keep the scumbag breathing," he said. "I don't care, I really don't care what anyone thinks about this except Texas. I love Texas. Texas is in my blood."

Gov. Perry was on firm legal ground in not ordering a stay-of-execution for Medellin to allow his case to be reviewed another time. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled Congress needed to ratify the treaty, as the Senate had done, for it to become binding on U.S. states.

Earlier this year, the Council of Europe, the continent's highest human rights body, called for U.S. legislation to shore up the Vienna treaty -- thus making it binding on U.S. states. Of course, passing such legislation could become a political liability for lawmakers who care about what their constituents think about them -- rather than what a human-rights court in Europe thinks about them.

Ultimately, the Obama administration hopes Congress will ratify the Vienna treaty in the coming months -- and that granting Leal a stay-of-execution will buy him time. This could save him from the death chamber and possibly get him a new trial -- or commutation of his sentence to life.

Meanwhile, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently introduced legislation to help Leal and other foreign nationals who are facing death sentences -- but who were "denied" consular assistance. The bill would provide for an automatic federal review of their cases and, most importantly, require a stay of execution if necessary. Mexico must be a big fan of the Democratic senator from Vermont.

Leal's crime, of course, has been long forgotten amid the high-minded debate about his rights under the Vienna treaty. Sauceda, his victim, had been at a party the night she died, and alcohol and drugs were being passed around. She got drunk. Eventually, she ended up being gang-raped as young men took turns over her.

Leal, claiming to party-goers that he was Sauceda's friend, offered to give her a ride home. Later, Sauceda was found nude and bloodied in a field -- her head bashed in and bite marks over her body. To rape her, Leal used a stick about 15 inches long. He left it inside her when he'd finished. The stick, according to medical evidence, was used while she was alive -- and hence the rape charge.

Leal has had myriad legal motions and appeals filed in his behalf. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stated that Leal was "overwhelmingly" guilty. Bite marks, DNA evidence, confessions Leal made to various people -- all helped to convict him. Ultimately, the court determined that whatever mistakes Leal's lawyers made, if any, were insignificant -- and that he got a fair trial. A new one would produce the same outcome.

How does the family of Adria Sauceda feel about how the case against Leal has evolved -- going from a heartbreaking rape and murder case to one in which Leal has become something of an international celebrity, a victim himself? Nobody in the mainstream media has ever thought to talk to them until the San Antonio Express-News ran a long front-page story last Sunday.

The family declined to talk about the controversy over Leal, but instead talked only about Adria. "It's like it was yesterday," said Rene Sauceda, her father. "The pain, it's like it just happened." What might the judges in The Hague think about that?

All in all, the case of Humberto Leal Jr. vs. Texas must be a fun subject for Professor Babcock to pontificate upon in the faculty lounge at Northwestern University.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-06-28T23:06:00.003-05:00

In Rose Bowl, Mexico is 'Home' Team as U.S. Soccer Team is Booed

By David Paulin

Yet another example of Mexico's reconquista of America's Southwest was displayed at the Rose Bowl in the prestigious Gold Cup Final between the U.S. and Mexico's soccer teams.

Mexico was the “home team” for the largely Hispanic crowd. America's national anthem got no respect: Air horns blared. And once the game started, the U.S. team was constantly booed. Every goal by Mexico's team drew shouts of “Ole!”

So what does the Los Angeles Times think about this unsettling spectacle? Sports reporter Bill Plaschke likes it and says so in an article, “In Gold Cup final, it's red, white and boo again.”

He writes:

"How many places are so diverse that it could fill football stadiums with folks whose roots are somewhere else? How many places offer such a freedom of speech that someone can display an American flag on their porch one day and cheer against the flag the next? I hated it, but I loved it. It felt as if I was in a strange place, and yet I felt right at home.”

He loves it?...But hates it? And gets a warm and fuzzy feeling because it's all about “diversity.” Well, this certainly sounds like a nasty case of liberal cognitive dissonance – an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas in one's mind at the same time.

To be sure, the sort of thing that Plaschke and L.A. Times regard as an all-American display has been going on for years in Los Angeles. Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington was particularly appalled by what he considered the anti-American displays evident in the Rose Bowl in 1998.

In his famous essay “The Hispanic Challenge” in Foreign Policy magazine, Huntington saw the disrespect for American's national anthem and the booing of the U.S. soccer team as harbingers of things to come – a country split in two as Mexicans and other Latinos failed to assimilate into American culture.

Referring to Mexican-Americans booing America's national anthem and even assaulting U.S. soccer players, Huntington wrote:

“Such dramatic rejections of the United States and assertions of Mexican identity are not limited to an extremist minority in the Mexican-American community. Many Mexican immigrants and their offspring simply do not appear to identify primarily with the United States.”

That a Los Angles Times writer approves of the most recent Rose Bowl spectacle underscores yet again that many in the mainstream media are out-of-step with what most Americans believe.

Incidentally, one Mexican-American quoted by the L.A. Times said that booing the U.S. team was a natural thing to do. Victor Sanchez, 37, was apparently brought to the U.S. as a boy. Dressed in a Mexico jersey, he explained: "I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I'm proud to be part of it. But yet, I didn't have a choice to come here, I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be."

He added: "We're not booing the country, we're booing the team. There is a big difference." Yea, right.

Samuel Huntington, who died in 2008, would not be surprised.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

2011-06-28T22:55:00.003-05:00

Hugo Chavez in 'Critical' Condition in Havana Hospital – Socialism or Death?

By David Paulin

Hugo Chavez is in “critical condition” in a Havana hospital. That's according to unnamed U.S. “intelligence officials” whom Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald, sister newspaper of The Miami Herald, quote on Saturday in an article being picked up by myriad news outlets and web sites.

According to El Nuevo Herald's sources, Chavez is in "critical condition, not grave, but critical, in a complicated situation."

It's the most tantalizing information yet about the Venezuelan strongman's mysterious health problems, which have dominated Venezuela's headlines for weeks. Cuba and Venezuela's information ministries have said next to nothing about what's going on, other than announcing that Chavez underwent surgery on January 10 for a “pelvic inflammation.” In Venezuela, speculation has been rife that Chavez suffers prostate cancer. More ominously, within the past 72 hours Chavez's daughter Rosines and mother Marisabel Rodriguez have “urgently” flown to Havana aboard a Venezuelan Air Force jet.

Chavez was last seen in public on June 9, and Venezuelans last heard him talking on June 12, during a phone call aired on Venezuela state television. Venezuela must seem pretty strange these days without the loquacious Chavez -- given his propensity for breaking regularly into television and radio programs to deliver a rambling monologue about current events or anything that pops into his head -- from the evils of American imperialism to the latest CIA plot to kill him. Not long ago, during a TV and radio broadcast from a Caracas slum, Chavez even said he "would not be surprised if a civilization had flourished on Mars, and capitalism arrived, and imperialism arrived and finished off the planet."

That Chavez may be close to death in a Havana hospital bed is a subject rich with ironies. Chavez, after all, is just a 45 minute flight away from a Miami hospital bed via a chartered jet ambulance and a quick helicopter flight. It would be a few hours to a hospital bed in New York City.

If you believe Michael Moore, Chavez is getting great medical care in Havana. But even if that's true, Chavez could nevertheless get the world's very best medical care in the United States. Of course, doing that would mean forsaking a popular slogan that's shouted at communist party rallies in Cuba: “Socialism or Death!" It's the sort of revolutionary fervor that Chavez has tried mightily to import to Venezuela.

When I visited Havana in 1996 and walked through the city's best hospital – one reserved for communist elites – I was reminded of the sorts of small hospitals found in backwater towns in Florida – okay for minor surgery and such, but not places where you'd want to go for sophisticated cancer treatment, especially prostate cancer in its later stages. Even so, at least the physicians at those small hospitals were likely to be trained at the best medical schools in the world – American medical schools. Does Havana even have the very latest MRI machines or world-class cancer-treatment centers? It's doubtful.

Speaking of which, is Chavez being treated by Cuban-trained physicians? If so, El Presidente may have reason to worry. In Florida, physicians trained in Cuba have flunked the state's medical exam in large numbers over the years -- and that included a watered-down exam created especially for them at the behest of the state's Cuban-American lobby.

What sort of advice is Hugo getting from his pal Fidel? In 2006, Fidel Castro apparently suffered a botched surgical procedure in Havana. Cuba's government then chartered a jet and flew in a prominent Spanish surgeon, Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, to treat their aging leader. It was perhaps an example of that old anti-communist motto: "Socialism for the masses, capitalism for the classes!"

Socialism or death?

To be sure, Spain is a modern country with excellent medical care. On the other hand, if you're a rich European with a life-or-death medical condition, you're probably going to fly to New York City – not Madrid. But at least one of Spain's top surgeons was good enough for whatever problem Castro had. But what about sophisticated cancer surgery and subsequent treatment?

In the U.S., Chavez would be under the care of miracle workers: brilliant physicians utilizing the most sophisticated equipment, and carrying out the most dazzling medical procedures -- heart transplants, face transplants, and all manners of sophisticated cancer treatments, including for prostate cancer. And such medical care is available at major cities across the country: Washington, New York, Cleveland, Houston, Phoenix; they're just a few names that come to mind with legendary medical centers.

Ironically, this high-quality care is possible thanks to something that Chavez, Fidel, Michael Moore, and other leftists won't admit -- it's due to American capitalism. Free-enterprise is why we have the medical miracles that we do – from cutting-edge technology and pharmaceuticals to medical centers staffed by the world's best physicians.

Interestingly, Chavez also could get First World medical care in Caracas at a few top-notch medical clinics, including at the venerable Clinica de Caracas. That's the where I went for routine care (and once for stitches to my forehead) when working in Venezuela as a foreign correspondent; this was during the years Chavez came to power. My personal physician was trained at a top-notch U.S. medical school – Ivy League or something in that category. And like more than a few of the clinic's able physicians he was Jewish. To Chavez, however, Clinica de Caracas is bourgeois, and given his anti-Semitism he probably wouldn't be keen on visiting a medical center he considered too Jewish. No, Chavez wouldn't be caught dead at Clinica de Caracas; no pun intended.

Whether Chavez lives or dies, it's likely his medical condition will always remain a mystery. It would be out-of-character for Venezuela and Cuba's information ministries to be transparent -- tell the truth as in a democracy. Even when President Jimmy Carter had hemorrhoids, it was a matter of public information -- and the butt of jokes on “Saturday Night Live.” But authoritarian governments don't announce that sort of thing. It's because at bottom they are not strong but insecure. Cuba never reveled anything about the medical condition afflicting Fidel Castro; it was regarded as a "state secret." Cubans couldn't be trusted with such details.

Speaking of political insecurity, there's plenty of it in Venezuela right now due to uncertainty over Chavez's health – and what the future holds if he dies. Chavez surrounds himself with "yes" men and has no credible successor. In true narcissistic fashion, he always fancied that he would rule forever – and to ensure that happened he pushed through constitutional changes ending presidential term limits. "I need more time in the presidency to finish this,” Chavez gushed, when campaigning for the end of term limits so that he could bring full-blown socialism to Venezuela. “We are only beginning. Maybe until 2020 or 2027. I'd be old if I'm still alive."

Finally, if Chavez dies don't expect a timely announcement of his passing from Caracas or Havana. Before making any announcement, they'll be scrambling to determine how they'll maintain their grip on power in Venezuela, where thousands of Cuban security agents are operating.

A story comes to mind about what happened in the Soviet Union after Stalin died. Before an official announcement was made, a Western journalist had learned about Stalin's death. He phoned his editor with the news. But when he mentioned the name “Stalin,” the line immediately went dead. He tried again, and again: click.

Finally, he got creative and started his call with a question: “Guess who died?”

“Stalin!” replied his editor. Click – the line went dead.

The same sorts of intrigue will no doubt occur if Chavez dies -- and Venezuela and Cuban officials try to figure out how to respond. No matter how the saga of Chavez's hospital stay ends, he will at least have gotten great medical care – the best that Havana could provide. Or fly in from Spain.

Socialism or death.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

2011-06-28T22:21:00.006-05:00

Mobster 'Whitey' Bulger's Arrest and the Mitt Romney Connection

By David Paulin

Notorious mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, now 81, got away with murder – at least 19 alleged killings during his years in the 'Irish mob' in South Boston in the 1970s to mid-1980s. And one of the Bay State's most prominent Democrats almost certainly helped Bulger, on the run since 1974, evade capture for so long.

Therein lies a story about how Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romey stood up to that Democrat – Bulger's brother Billy: He was a major player in the Bay State's Democratic political machine and president of the University of Massachusetts.

Soon after the FBI captured Bulger in Santa Monica on Wednesday, Romney spoke out about Bulger's arrest, saying in a statement: "I hope the capture of Whitey Bulger brings some measure of relief to the families of his numerous victims. It brings to a close a sad and sordid chapter in recent Massachusetts history."

Indeed, that story is detailed in a fascinating Los Angeles Times article: "'Whitey' Bulger arrest: The Mitt Romney connection." Reporter Christine Mai-Duc describes how Republican Gov. Romney did the right thing during his early years as governor -- waging a "crusade" against the Democratic machine and Billy Bulger in an effort to oust Bulger from his post at the University of Massachusetts.

To Gov. Romney and others, it was obvious that Bulger had some contact with his brother; and yet he failed to help law enforcement apprehend him -- a situation that was unacceptable to Gov. Romney. He resolved that having Bulger as president of the University of Massachusetts was unacceptable -- but getting Bulger out was not easy. As Mai-Duc explains: "The battle between Romney and Billy Bulger, a seemingly invincible figure in the Bay State's political machine, was fierce, and Romney did not back down even after being rejected by the university's board of trustees."

She notes:

"Billy Bulger had admitted to a grand jury, under protection of immunity, that he'd spoken to his brother after he'd become a fugitive in 1995. 'I do have an honest loyalty to my brother, and I care about him,' said Bulger, in a grand jury testimony that was leaked to the Boston Globe. I don't feel an obligation to help everyone to catch him.'"

Eventually, Romney "introduced an overhaul of the education system, which included the elimination of Bulger's position. Later, he called on Bulger to resign, saying the episode was casting a shadow on the university."

The FBI is portraying the arrest of Bulger as a great victory for law-enforcement. In fact, his belated capture is a great and embarrassing defeat -- both for the FBI and the Bay State's Democratic machine. Bulger is now an old man, and reportedly he's in ailing health. Essentially, he spent his retirement years in peace, enjoying the good life in Santa Monica with his girlfriend, and enjoying millions of dollars he'd apparently stashed away during his mob days. Essentially, he got away with murder.

He can apparently thank his brother Billy for that, along with a corrupt FBI "handler" who tipped him off that he was about to be arrested, after an indictment was issued charging him with murder, racketeering, and other crimes. But at least there is a positive story here – the one about Gov. Romney's battle with Billy Bulger and the Bay State's formidable Democratic machine.

A version of this was originally published at The American Thinker blog.

2011-06-23T01:17:00.004-05:00

Appeals Court's Decision Could Expand Affirmative Action, Warns Chief Judge

By David Paulin

A Federal appeals court has rejected a challenge made by two white students against a controversial affirmative action program at the University of Texas in Austin -- a decision that could justify the expansion of race-based admissions nationwide, according to a dissenting judge in the case. The case, Fisher v. the University of Texas in Austin, may head to the U.S. Supreme Court, say some observers.

On Friday, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 9-7 not to rehear a three-judge panel's decision last January that upheld the university's consideration of race and ethnicity in its admission policies.

At issue was a complaint filed in 2008 by two white students, Abigail Fisher and Rachel Michalewicz. They contended the University of Texas in Austin had violated their constitutional rights by rejecting their applications because of their race. They'd wanted the full appeal's court to rehear their complaint.

Recently, The American Thinker focused on admissions policies at the University of Texas in an article, "Obama Wants Engineering Students and 'Diversity'."

In her powerful dissent, Chief Judge Edith H. Jones -- a Republican whom President Ronald Reagan appointed to the 5th Circuit in 1985 - criticized the court for failing to undertake a "strict scrutiny" of the university's affirmative action program; it instead gave "total deference to university administrators," she wrote.

Most significantly, Jones said the court's decision was potentially precedent-setting and could expand affirmative action program's in the nation's public universities. "This decision in effect gives a green light to all public higher education institutions in this circuit, and perhaps beyond, to administer racially conscious admissions programs without following the narrow tailoring that Grutter requires," she wrote, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger.

In that landmark decision, the court ruled in favor of the "narrowly tailored" affirmative action policy of the University of Michigan Law School. The court nevertheless stressed that "race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time," perhaps running their course in 25 years.

Jones, writing for five judges in her dissent, also raised questions about the constitutionality of the University of Texas's affirmative action policies and poked holes in those program's absurdities. Some of her comments are worth quoting at length.

Regarding the potentially absurd outcomes of the affirmative action program, she wrote:

"The pernicious impact of aspiring to or measuring "diversity" at the classroom level seems obvious upon reflection. Will the University accept this "goal" as carte blanche to add minorities until a "critical mass" chooses nuclear physics as a major? Will classroom diversity "suffer" in areas like applied math, kinesiology, chemistry, Farsi, or hundreds of other subjects if, by chance, few or no students of a certain race are enrolled? The panel opinion opens the door to effective quotas in undergraduate majors in which certain minority students are perceived to be "underrepresented." It offers no stopping point for racial preferences despite the logical absurdity of touting "diversity" as relevant to every subject taught at the University of Texas."

Regarding the problems with classifying people as members of groups, she wrote:

"Texas today is increasingly diverse in ways that transcend the crude White/Black/Hispanic calculus that is the measure of the University's race conscious admissions program. The state's Hispanic population is predominately Mexican-American, including not only families whose Texas roots stretch back for generations but also recent immigrants. Many other Texas Hispanics are from Central America, Latin America and Cuba. To call these groups a "community" is a misnomer; all will acknowledge that social and cultural differences among them are significant. Whether the University also misleadingly aggregates Indians, Pakistanis and Middle Easterners with East "Asians" is unclear, but Houston alone is home to hundreds of thousands of people from East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. In Texas's major cities, dozens of other immigrant groups reside whose families have overcome oppression and intolerance of many kinds and whose children are often immensely talented. Privileging the admission of certain minorities in this true melting-pot environment seems inapt. But University administrators cherish the power to dispense admissions as they see fit, which might be reasonable except for two things: the Texas legislature has already spoken to diversity, and the U.S. Constitution abhors racial preferences. Because even University administrators can lose sight of the constitutional forest for the academic trees, it is the duty of the courts to scrutinize closely their "benign" use of race in admissions."

Edward Blum, director of the Project on Fair Representation, told the Austin American-Statesman on Wednesday that, "The plaintiffs are analyzing the powerful dissent from Judge Jones and the other four judges and will make a decision about the case soon." The group is helping to pay the plaintiffs' legal bills, noted the Statesman.

Patti Ohlendorf, University of Texas's vice president for legal affairs, told the Statesman that, "This denial of the plaintiffs' motion for rehearing -- as well as the previous favorable rulings and all of the effort we have put into defending this case to date -- put the university in a good position from which to respond if the plaintiffs petition the U.S. Supreme Court."

According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fisher v. the University of Texas is indeed likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Richard Kahlenberg wrote:

"Although the plaintiffs in the case, Fisher v. Texas, have not yet announced whether they will appeal, a source close to the case indicated to me that the U.S. Supreme Court is a likely next stop. If the Supreme Court accepts a petition to hear the case, the oral argument could take place in the spring, with a decision likely a year from now -- smack in the middle of the presidential campaign."

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-06-19T15:32:00.001-05:00

Obama's Homeland Security SNAFU

By David Paulin

In Miami, a major embarrassment for President Obama's Homeland Security Administration is being revealed. An illegal immigrant from Guyana is in jail -- accused of committing forgery and identify theft to land a flight attendant job with American Eagle, American Airlines' commuter carrier.

After 9/11, the airline industry and Federal government supposedly implemented extra-rigorous security checks to keep airline passengers safe. Yet Jophan Porter, 38, slipped past all of them.

As The Miami Herald reports:

Jophan Porter, 38, whose last known address was a basement apartment in the Bronx, N.Y., was hired earlier this year by American Eagle, a sister carrier of American Airlines, as a flight attendant, even though he applied for the job as Anthony Frair, a 40-year-old Bronx resident who swears he never met or heard of Porter.

The deception came to light several days ago when Frair, a man with a criminal rap sheet in Florida, attempted to apply for food stamps in New York. He was rejected because records showed he was gainfully employed by the airline.

Porter, an immigrant from Guyana who was based out of Miami International Airport, was arrested on Friday when he returned to MIA from a personal trip to London. Charges include six counts of possessing false government IDs, three counts of forgery and three counts of possessing stolen driver's licenses -- all three from Florida and each one in Frair's name.

Porter was being detained on an immigration hold, Ivan Ortiz-Delgado, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Saturday.

The agency intends to deport him once his legal case plays out, Ortiz-Delgado added.

Obviously, Porter made a big mistake in stealing Frair's identify because of Frair's unsavory criminal history -- one that somehow got past American Eagle's employee screening and whatever Homeland Security checks that were in place. As the Miami Herald noted: "Frair was arrested four times in Largo, in Pinellas County, between January and October 2008 on charges of criminal mischief, domestic battery, witness tampering and battery with a deadly weapon."

A SNAFU indeed. Meanwhile, hardly a week goes by that another story doesn't go viral about overzealous TSA agents harassing innocent airline passengers - passengers who, incredibly, may have flight attendants serving them who are illegal immigrants and have criminal histories.

Republicans are sure to have lots of fun with this one, as they raise embarrassing questions about who is in charge at Homeland Security and Immigration and Naturalization.

Originally published in The American Thinker.

2011-06-18T22:41:00.005-05:00

Obama Wants Engineering Students and 'Diversity'

By David Paulin

President Obama wants America's universities to graduate 10,000 more engineers annually than they're now turning out. He wants more college students to major in math and science. But as universities embrace affirmative action and "diversity" programs supported by Obama and liberals, problems arise. These programs at bottom are aimed at creating a liberal vision of "social justice" -- yet they ultimately dumb down education as merit and excellence are sacrificed for liberal social engineering. In the end, they undermine the very "competitive edge" that Obama says America must maintain.

Consider what's happened at the top-ranked University of Texas, Austin, under an ad hoc affirmative action program called the "top 10 percent rule." It was adopted in 1997 by the state legislature after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state's affirmative action policy at state universities. Yet the rule has dumbed down higher education in Texas, even as universities in other states look to it has a model that allows them to create "diversity" while avoiding reverse discrimination lawsuits.

The original premise of the "top percent rule" was straightforward: Graduating seniors in the top 10 percent of their high school classes were granted automatic admission to the state school of their choice.

Among some perverse outcomes: Students with top grades and high SAT scores (mostly whites) have had their applications rejected by the flagship University of Texas in Austin, yet less qualified students (mostly Hispanics and blacks) have gained admission to that popular and top-ranked school.

This has happened because Hispanics and blacks at poorly performing inner-city high schools are now put on equal footing with whites and Asians at high-performing suburban schools. Grades, SAT scores, and extracurricular activities -- all are less important than class rank under the rule.

Another perverse outcome: Students at top-performing high schools have sought to transfer into poorly performing ones to ensure they graduate in the top 10 percent of their classes.

In 2009, Texas lawmakers scaled back the "top 10 percent rule" for the University of Texas in Austin -- deciding too much "diversity" wasn't such a great idea after all. The previous fall, 81 percent of freshman had been admitted under the 10 percent rule. Now, the university limits freshman admitted under the rule to three-quarters of the class; Republican lawmakers had wanted the limit set at 50 percent.

Even so, the rule over the years achieved what university administrators and liberals had intended: creating a study body whose racial and ethnic makeup reflected the state's demographics, which have become heavily Hispanic in the last decade or so. Whites now make up slightly less than 50 percent of the state's population, thanks in part to illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America and soaring Hispanic birthrates.

Last year, the University of Texas in Austin announced that, for the first time in its history, less than half of freshman were white -- a total of 47.6 percent.

Not surprisingly, Texas universities now offer remedial courses to large numbers of underachieving students; obviously, they would have been better off if they'd started out at junior colleges or less competitive universities. Equally troublesome, students admitted under the "top ten percent rule" at the top-ranked University of Texas in Austin tend to take easy or "popular" subjects -- not science, technology, engineering, and math (the so-called "STEM" courses that, as Obama has observed, are needed for America to maintain its competitive edge).

In another perverse outcome, Texas is suffering a "brain-drain." Many high-achieving white students have gone to out-of-state schools after failing to gain admission into the University of Texas in Austin.

Supporters of the "top 10-percent" rule point out that many freshman admitted under the program earn grade points comparable to fellow students who were admitted under criteria other than the 10-percent rule. It's a fallacious argument. For one thing, it overlooks the types of classes the two groups are taking. More importantly, the correct comparison should look at students admitted under the rule and those from top-ranked high schools who were denied admission -- even though they'd earned better grades and SAT scores than minority students from dysfunctional inner-city high schools who'd graduated in the top 10 percent of their classes. Of course, it would be impossible to make that comparison.

Obama is a beneficiary of affirmative action. He's committed to the political ideology of "diversity." Accordingly, he's unlikely to be disturbed by the travails of diversity efforts in Texas, which even The New York Times has been unable to ignore, even as university administrators, liberals, and ethnic lobbies call the program a success and soft-peddle its perverse outcomes.

So what's Obama's solution for inspiring more students to become engineers and major in STEM courses? It's not to attract the best and brightest. Last Monday in Durham, North Carolina, he proposed a government-private educational initiative to "promote STEM education, to offer students incentives (emphasis added) to finish those degrees, and then to help universities fund those programs." Of course, if smart and well-prepared students were being admitted in the first place to the nation's top schools, it's doubtful this program would even be needed and that students would need "incentives" to graduate.

Obama's speech at least got one thing right. "Today," he said, "only 14 percent of all undergraduate students enroll in what we call the STEM subjects -- science, technology, engineering and math. We can do better than that. We must do better than that. If we're going to make sure the good jobs of tomorrow stay in America, stay here in North Carolina, we need to make sure all our companies have a steady stream of skilled workers to draw from."

"We're falling behind in the very fields we know are going to be our future."

Obama, incidentally, was speaking at the headquarters of Cree, Inc. The company has been a beneficiary of the administration's crony capitalism when it comes to its quixotic "green" programs that are supposed to wean America from its addiction to foreign oil and lift it out of its economic mess. Cree uses LED technology to produce fuel-efficient lighting, and in 2009 it got $39 million in tax credits from the Recovery Act (or taxpayers) to develop clean energy technology.

Regarding Cree's employment, Obama failed to mention one embarrassing little detail about its employees. Cree used its "stimulus" money to among other things open a manufacturing plant in Huizhou, China. Now, more than half of its employees work there.

If Obama's example of a "stimulus" success story is anything like his solution for creating future engineers and scientists, Americans have good reason to be very worried about whether America is on track to maintain its competitive edge.

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-06-18T22:22:00.005-05:00

In Texas, lawmakers lectured by open-borders activist...in SPANISH!

By David Paulin

In Texas, a Republican lawmaker has run afoul of the political correctness police. They're calling him ignorant and intolerant, after he bluntly criticized an open-border's activist opposed to legislation outlawing sanctuary cities.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called passage of the bill a top priority. It would outlaw cities like Austin, the capital, from establishing themselves as sanctuary cities. In Austin, police are prevented from asking suspects about their immigration status -- even if they have reason to believe the person is, say, an illegal immigrant from Mexico or Central America. The bill has passed the Senate and is expected to pass the House.

On Monday, lawmakers heard from Antolin Aguirre, an opponent of the bill who is a member of the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Aguirre has been in America for 23 years, and became a naturalized citizen in 2001 - and yet he addressed Texas lawmakers in Spanish.

"We are 100 percent opposed to SB 9, which impacts our families and our communities," Aguirre said during a brief statement to members of the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. As he spoke, a Spanish interpreter translated his remarks into English.

Hearing the committee addressed in Spanish was too much for Sen. Chris Harris, a Republican from Arlington, who --as the Statesman reported -- asked the interpreter to clarify one of Aguirre's remarks.

"Did I understand him correctly that he has been here since 1988?" he said.

"Yes, sir, that's correct," Aguirre replied in English.

"Why aren't you speaking in English then? Twenty-three years. You've been here for 23 years?"

Aguirre explained that Spanish is his "first language and since it is his first time giving testimony he would rather do it in Spanish."

Harris' remarks have outraged the liberal editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman. An editorial, "Curb the intolerance, por favor," said that Aguirre's reason for speaking Spanish "seems reasonable to us." Besides lambasting Harris for his "intolerance and ignorance," the paper said he was "un-Texan."

Harris, for his part, told Aguirre and others that being addressed in Spanish in the Senate "is insulting to us. It is very insulting. And if he knows English, he needs to be speaking in English."

Perhaps Harris could have been more diplomatic; yet he was on target in expressing the frustration that many Texas feel over what's happened in their state -- the establishment of Spanish-speaking enclaves by immigrants who appear to have little love for America's culture, language, and traditions.

In his famous essay in Foreign Policy magazine, "The Hispanic Challenge," Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington put it this way:

"The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves -- from Los Angeles to Miami -- and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril."

If anybody doubts that, they need to visit Austin, where such large Hispanic enclaves are common. Mexican flags even fly in some parts of the city.

The Statesman's editorial also took aim at Tea Party member Rebecca Forest, co-founder of Women on the Wall which wants to see immigration laws enforced.

While at the state Capitol, Forest -- according to the Statesman -- showed her intolerance and ignorance when she identified a major obstacle to immigration enforcement -- Hispanic lawmakers.

"If you want to know why we can't pass legislation in Texas it's because we have 37, no 36, Hispanics in the Legislature," she said. "So that's part of the problem, and we need to change those numbers. We need to do something about it."

She went onto suggest that these lawmakers were to tied up with identity politics; and that their main allegiance is to their ethnic roots.

Perhaps Forest was misquoted or perhaps she needs to be more careful in her comments. In fact, a handful of Hispanic lawmakers in the Texas legislature are Republicans -- and in the past they have taken decidedly different positions than Hispanic Democrats on immigration and other hot-button issues. It took political courage. One example was their support earlier this year of legislation requiring voter ID to ensure integrity at the ballot box.

And then there's Rep. Larry Gonzales, a Republican from Round Rock who supports the sanctuary cities bill. Recently, he brushed aside claims from Democrats and ethnic lobbies that it will encourage profiling.

"Racial profiling is illegal in Texas and has been illegal since 2001. This bill does nothing to change that," said Gonzalez, legislative director of Hispanic Republican Conference. "Racial profiling is illegal in Texas and will remain illegal once this bill passes."

Explaining the rationale for the House's passage of the sanctuary cities bill, he said it "provides for the implementation of a consistent standard across the state in setting illegal immigration policies. This bill will be the core of a renewed spirit of cooperation and trust between law enforcement and the citizens of Texas."

Expect lots more fireworks when Texas passes landmark legislation aimed at shutting down the state's sanctuary cities.

Originally published at The American Thinker

UPDATE...

Defiant Spanish Language lecture of Texas legislators goes viral with video

By Thomas Lifson

Video of the testimony of immigrant rights activist Antolin Aguirre, who chose to lecture Texas legislators in Spanish Monday, despite living in the United States for 23 years and taking naturalized citizenship in 2001, was posted on YouTube, and has gone viral after being posted by Drudge. David Paulin brought the shocking display of arrogance to national attention on Thursday on AT. Here is the brief video, demonstrating that Aguirre speaks fine English...

For the video and rest of the article, go to The American Thinker.

2011-06-13T21:30:00.003-05:00

In Florida, anti-gun physicians claim right to ask patients about their guns

By David Paulin

What's happening to the medical profession? In Madison, Wisconsin, lefty pro-union physicians wrote bogus medical excuses to striking school teachers -- so they wouldn't be disciplined for failing to show up for their classes. Now in Florida, a coalition of physicians with an anti-gun bent are insisting they have the right to ask patients whether they own guns and are storing them safely.

To most gun owners, of course, the fact that they own firearms and how they store them is a private matter - and certainly not the business of their physicians. So it was not surprising that some Florida gun owners went ballistic when, not long ago, they went in for checkups - and had their physicians instead peppering them with questions about their guns and where they keep them.

"We pay doctors to be doctors and give us medical care," Florida NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer told Capital News Service. "Instead, they are trying to be social workers and bring their gun-ban politics into the examining room."

Complaints from gun owners and the NRA eventually reached Florida's lawmakers. Last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, signed legislation restricting the ability of physicians to ask patients about guns in their home. Lawmakers passed the bill largely along party lines.

But the controversy isn't over just yet. Now, the anti-gun physicians are fighting back. In an article about the controversy, the Orlando Sentinel reports:

Attorneys with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and two other law firms are seeking to block enforcement of the law on behalf of three South Florida doctors as well as the Florida chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians.

The bill passed after lobbyists for gun-rights groups and the Florida Medical Association cut a deal that removed the original bill's fine of up to $5 million and jail time for doctors and weakened other restrictions. But other physicians groups -- most notably, pediatricians -- have continued to fight it, saying that they ask about guns to ensure that parents keep them safely locked up and away from children.

By severely restricting such speech and the ability of physicians to practice such preventative medicine, the Florida statute could result in grievous harm to children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly," according to the lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Miami.

Interestingly, some anti-gun physicians apparently considered their queries about gun ownership to be protected under the First Amendment - yet they did not consider that their patients had a First Amendment right not to answer their questions. Or as the Miami Herald reported: The legislation restricting physicians from inquiring about firearms ownership "appears to have originated after an Ocala couple complained that their doctor had told them to find another physician after they refused to disclose whether they owned guns and how they were stored."

Some might call this an example of the Nanny State. But the more apt term for it is police state. How do you suppose these physicians feel about Obamacare?

2011-06-13T16:18:00.006-05:00

'Miracle on Hudson' survivors united (and saved) by shared values

By David Paulin

The crew and passengers of the "Miracle on the Hudson" flight have a lot in common. It's not just that they survived a harrowing near-death experience together -- the ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after the jet hit geese on take-off from LaGuardia Airport.

It's that they're very much alike -- middle and upper-middle class Americans with shared values: Values, you might say, that played a critical role in saving their lives.

On Saturday, the crew and more than a dozen passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 gathered for a reunion in Charlotte, North Carolina; it was the destination for the ill-fated jet nearly two-and-a-half years ago. Recently, the salvaged Airbus was trucked to Charlotte where it will have permanent home at Charlotte's Aviation Museum. Passengers on Saturday were seeing the jet for the first time since it splashed down in the Hudson on January 15, 2009.

"It's one thing to read about history or to hear about history, but it's another to see it up close and personal," said Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. Putting Flight 1549 into deeper perspective, he added: "It served as a reminder when we very much needed one, of the goodness that exists not only in the world, but within each of us."

Indeed, the orderly evacuation of the jet was credited to a large extent with the fact that all 150 passengers and five crew members survived. Why did things turn out as well as they did?

Captain Sullenberger, now retired, has in the past played down his own role as a hero, a man whose skillful piloting and grace under pressure saved the day. He was merely part of a "team effort," he said -- one involving his copilot, cabin crew, and the impromptu rescue effort by a flotilla of ferries and other boats.

First Officer Jeffrey Skiles, for his part, credited the passengers with being a big part of that team effort. "The passengers did their jobs. They very orderly evacuated the airplane after we touched down," he said during the "Charlie Rose" show. Passengers, in other words, didn't let a survival-of-the-fittest mentality to dictate who got out first. They behaved as they were brought up to behave --waiting their turns to get out of the jet as it filled with cold water. The same may be said of crew members. They did their jobs thanks to the values of self-discipline and sense of duty, traits that went hand-in-hand with their training.

Who were Flight 1549's passengers? Just ordinary middle and upper-middle class folks. Many were young professionals. Presumably, they grew up with the values of civic responsibility, courtesy, and self-discipline. Among them were 23 Bank of America executives and three from Wells Fargo.

They and fellow passengers were not the kinds of folks you expect to see trampling over one another at Wal-Mart in their zeal to snap up discounted electronics and CDs.

Speaking at Flight 1549's reunion, First Officer Skiles said, "The airplane itself really doesn't stir up any emotion for me. But coming back to an event like this, where the passengers and crew are reunited, and I can revisit the relationships that I've made with them over the last two and a half years, that's really what's important."

It's common for people who have a near-death experience to thereafter have a far greater appreciation for what's important in life. For Flight 1549's passengers, Saturday's reunion is, at bottom, a celebration of the values that unite them -- and that saved them.

Originally published at The American Thinker blog

2011-06-05T17:37:00.006-05:00

In a Sanctuary City, an Illegal Immigrant Gets the Death Penalty

By David Paulin

Areli Carbajal Escobar, a violent 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, had a long rap sheet. Over the years in the sanctuary city of Austin, Texas, police and prosecutors had many contacts with him.

Yet Escobar was never deported.

Now, immigration problems are the least of Escobar's worries. Last week, a Travis County jury sentenced him to death for the brutal rape and murder of a high school honor student.

Texas may lead the nation for executions, but most condemned murderers aren't from Austin, the capital, and surrounding Travis County -- for both are enclaves of liberal Democrats in an otherwise red state. In Travis County, murderers aren't often sentenced to death.

But an exception was made for Escobar -- given the brutality of his crime, lack of remorse, and long criminal history. As a reader of the Austin American-Statesman observed in an online comment: "When a latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, NPR-listening Travis County jury straps you down, you know you've earned it!"

The trial of Areli Carbajal Escobar captivated Austin and provided a glimpse into the world of sanctuary cities and illegal immigration. According to court testimony, he was born in Central Mexico to poor and illiterate parents; when he was six his father immigrated illegally with him to Texas. But Escobar didn't grow up to be a poster child for the DREAM Act. A gang member, he was fond of beating up and terrorizing women, including his wife -- facts known to Austin's police. In one incident, he shoved a friend of his wife's against a wall and held a screw driver against her neck. He was involved in organized crime relating to car burglaries and had a long list of other offenses: drunk driving, driving with a suspended license, and other such offenses.

Yet despite numerous brushes with the police and courts, Escobar's immigration status never apparently raised eyebrows. Nobody should be surprised: Austin is a sanctuary city. Police there invariably turn a blind eye to the immigration status of suspects and illegal immigrants who aren't causing major problems. By doing this, police claim they're better able to fight crime, because illegal immigrants will supposedly be more comfortable dealing with the police and report crimes. It's a questionable law-enforcement philosophy, however. And it's undercut by what seems to animate it -- an open-borders philosophy and politically correct notion that immigration enforcement amounts to "racial profiling."

In 2009, Escobar committed a crime that was too much even for open-borders Austin and its touchy-feely criminal-justice system. He forced his way into an apartment near his own, then brutally raped and murdered a 17-year-old single mom and high school student named Bianca Maldonado. She put up a struggle, but died of blood loss from a terrible beating and 47 stab wounds. Her 1-year-old son, Cesar, suffered a cut hand and bruised eyes.

Why did Escobar do it? A forensic psychologist for the defense testified that Escobar was in a "psychotic state" and animated by a rage he felt for his girlfriend. "I think he spun out of control," said Matthew Ferrara. He added that Escobar had a "borderline personality disorder" and there was a "98.2 percent" chance he wouldn't commit a violent crime in prison -- if sent there instead of going to the death chamber. The jury didn't buy any of it. Nor was the jury moved by testimony from Escobar's loyal family members who called him a good man. "To me, he's the most wonderful person in the world," said Escobar's 21-year-old sister Nancy.

Escobar was tied to the crime through DNA evidence and fact that he briefly answered his cell phone during the assault, and his girlfriend at the time heard some of what was happening -- a woman's screams, grunts, and groans. Escobar was separated at the time from his wife with whom he'd had five children. The children are receiving counseling.

Escobar didn't know Maldonado. When he raped and killed her, he was unemployed, separated from his wife, and, according to his girlfriend at the time, "stressed out." He also was in trouble with the law again; a Travis County judge had released him on a "personal recognizance bond." In Travis County, such bonds are approved more often than anywhere else in Texas.

Maldonado was a sympathetic victim. The Statesman continually reminded readers that she was not just another Latina who, like so many others in Austin, had a baby as a teen and dropped out of high school. Rather, she was getting her life together. She was described as an honor student who had a "B" average -- all while caring for her baby and working a part-time job at a Jack in the Box managed by her mother. She was destined to go to college, her teachers said.

Escobar's trial got prominent news coverage, but Austin's news media tiptoed around Escobar's immigration status. As is often the case, one had to read between the lines in newspaper and television coverage to figure it out; or check a web site operated by the Travis County Sheriff's office: It shows an "immigration hold" for Escobar.

Illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America -- mostly poor and uneducated -- have free run in Austin. Escobar is one example. His home in Mexico had a dirt floor; there was no indoor plumbing or electricity. The abject poverty of his early years and illiterate parents were introduced during his trial's penalty phase -- part of an effort by defense lawyer to win the jury's sympathy and spare Escobar from the death penalty.

The trial had some strange moments. One of Escobar's lawyers suggested that wounds made by a "hard object" to Maldonado's vagina and anus were inflicted after her death. It was an important legal technicality. As the Statesman explained: "Because sexual assault is a crime on a live person, if the jury finds that there was no sexual assault, then Escobar could only be found guilty of murder and would not qualify for the death penalty."

Why wasn't Escobar deported years ago after first attracting the attention of Austin's police, prosecutors, and judges? It's a question that even Austin's liberals are now asking, including Statesman columnist Alberta Phillips. "Law enforcement officials need to explain to Bianca's mother -- and this community -- why Escobar, with a rap sheet of serious crimes, was not in jail or sent back to Mexico," Phillips wrote. Her column's title aptly summed up Escobar's life: "A History of Violence." Phillips was outraged that Austin's police didn't do more to keep Austin's "Latinas" safe from Escobar.

But at least Maldonado's mother, Jaqueline Hernandez, was satisfied that Escobar got the death penalty. Speaking in Spanish, she said: "I feel good. I feel like it's justice." She'd discovered Bianca's mutilated body when she and a second daughter came home from a job delivering newspapers.

One of Republican Gov. Rick Perry's priorities has been to pass legislation to essentially outlaw sanctuary cities. But two separate bills that passed the House have stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democratic lawmakers who say the bills would lead to "racial profiling" and undercut the relationship between the police and Latino community.

Racial profiling, however, wouldn't occur if police had a reason to check on a suspect's immigration status. And it's also questionable that the bill would hamper the police by undermining their relationship with the Latino community. For one thing, many unassimilated Latinos are reluctant to cooperate with the police anyway, even when it's in their interest to do so. It's not because they're afraid of being deported. It's become of their culture, a fact that's well known to police.

According a Berlitz-style guide on Spanish language and culture used at a local police academy, unassimilated Latinos "will most likely side with each other than an outsider. An individual will assist family members and friends regardless of the consequences, and expect the same in return. A sense of honor is so important in Latino culture, that it may keep an individual from cooperating with the police against a friend or family members, even though he or she may not condone any of the actions."

Interestingly, some Latina women did phone Austin's police about Escobar, but then failed to do the necessary follow-up with a detective -- and detectives failed to follow-up with the women who'd filed the initial complaints. So much for the desire of Austin's police to have splendid cooperation from the Latino community in order to fight crime. Escobar thus continued his rampage, until raping and murdering Maldonado.

Austin's police and prosecutors have much explaining to do regarding Escobar -- and liberals for a change are demanding answers in a city where the large Hispanic subculture will, thanks to changing demographics, be the prevailing culture in not too many years.

Editor's Note: For more on the sanctuary city of Austin, Texas, see two previous articles at The American Thinker: "Hit-and-Run: Death in a Sanctuary City" and "Uproar Over Illegal Charged with Vehicular Homicide in Texas."

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-06-04T07:41:00.004-05:00

'Racial Incident' in Texas School Plunges City into Turmoil

By David Paulin

It's being called an ugly "racial incident." As a consequence, Bastrop, Texas, a city of about 8,000 near the capital of Austin, is in turmoil. And a school principal's career is in jeopardy.

There were no racial epithets used in this incident, however. There was no "hate crime." And nobody was discriminated against. Rather, the well-intentioned principal of Bastrop Middle School, Teri Watson, did what liberal lawmakers and government bureaucrats have done for years. She tried to help some of her students by identifying them as members of an underachieving racial group -- rather than as underachieving individuals.

Not long ago, Watson became alarmed upon noticing a troubling trend: Black students as a group were doing far worse academically than other racial and ethnic groups at Bastrop Middle School. Watson, to be sure, had a very good reason for analyzing academic achievement and underachievement based on racial and ethnic groups. That's one way the state itself defines how public schools are performing. Indeed, under the state's own criteria, all racial and ethnic groups must be performing above a certain level. And if one groups falls below acceptable levels, then the entire school's certification and funding are put in jeopardy.

What to do about her badly performing black students whose poor grades posed potentially negative consequences for her school's accreditation? One day last February, Watson took action. Over the school's intercom, a number of eighth grade students were summoned by name to the library. All had one thing in common: They were black.

Facing the group, Watson, who is white, reportedly gave them something of a pep talk. She said "they need to pull together and help each other study to improve their schools," said Catina White-Higgins, a parent whose daughter Felicity was in the group. Watson "had a chart to show them where their scores were low. ... [My daughter] said it made her feel like she was nothing, that she was in trouble. It made her feel bad," she told the Austin American-Statesman, a daily newspaper.

Felicity Higgins told a local television station, "I didn't know what was going on and I was already embarrassed" at being summoned to the library. "Then when I got in there and she started talking about test scores and then she holds up a poster board and that's supposed to mean something to me? It doesn't at all. It doesn't mean anything to me."

Another black student had another complaint -- that she wasn't called to the library because officials mistook her for being white. "They didn't blame me because I was white? Made me feel upset; I was pretty mad," said Hailey Meeks.

The day after Watson's pep talk, the school sent letters to parents apologizing for her conduct. In addition, the school district's superintendent wrote a letter of apology to the community, published in The Bastrop Advertiser, which said Watson had acted improperly, had "apologized profusely," and he indicated that black students were doing poorly due to the "school's academic shortcomings."

It wasn't enough for aggrieved black parents and students in Bastrop. The city is now experiencing the sort of turmoil that inevitably arises when such "racial incidents" occur in post-racial America.

Responding to angry black parents, the school board is implementing a "diversity plan" that among other things will affect future hiring and training. "What we're trying to do is ... put a diversity plan in place in order to address some of the concerns that are out there," Bastrop school district spokesman Donald Williams told the Statesman. He added that the idea is "to move forward and to be able to help our students and our families."

Watson, a veteran educator, is a native of Bastrop and active in community affairs. Yet the hurt she inflicted upon her black students -- all for telling them the truth -- may prove her undoing. Some black parents are calling for Watson's head. White-Higgins said she "has lost a lot of trust [in Watson]. It's kind of like once you severed that trust, it's hard to gain it back."

Last Tuesday evening, black parents and their children held a protest march, walking from a local church to a school board meeting, with some repeating calls for Watson's dismissal. She remains on the job, however.

Would there have been any black outrage if Watson had not been white but black? Better still, what if somebody else had taken Bastrop's black students to task for their lousy grades -- say Bill Cosby, Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, or even President Obama? It's doubtful any "racial incident" would have occurred if such black role models had told Bastrop's black students the truth -- they were academic losers and needed to get their acts together.

One wonders what new "diversity" programs Bastrop's school district will implement. If they're anything like the social engineering programs created by liberal lawmakers and bureaucrats over the years, they may end up creating more problems than they solve.

And unfortunately, the victims of such programs may well be well-intentioned educators like Teri Watson -- and her poorly performing black students.

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-05-18T02:41:00.005-05:00

'Perp Walk' of IMF Big Shot Outrages French Lefties

By David Paulin

Many in France are embarrassed and ashamed at the arrest of IMF big shot Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a prominent French socialist seen as the most likely candidate to defeat center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But what's got some French lefties really upset is that New York's police put the accused sex offender through a traditional "perp walk” – paraded before TV cameras in handcuffs just like, well, a common criminal suspect!

Eva Joly, leader of the French Green Party, called the perp walk a "violent image." And she had some harsh words for America's justice system – complaining it “doesn't distinguish between the director of the I.M.F. and any other suspect."

In an amusing article about how the “perp walk” has shocked the French – and particularly French lefties -- the New York Times noted that Joly is "a well-known French magistrate who once brought charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn for corruption (of which he was later acquitted)." She's expected to run in next year's presidential election.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, has been denied bail, having been deemed a flight risk. He is accused of attempted rape, a criminal sex act, and unlawful imprisonment – all for his alleged sexual assault upon a 32-year-old chamber maid in his $3,000-a-night New York City hotel suite. His alleged victim is an immigrant from Africa who lives in the Bronx.

Meanwhile, other women are coming forward about nasty encounters with Strauss-Kahn, a communist-turned socialist who's known in France as the “great seducer” because of his reputation as an out-of-control womanizer. One French journalist complained of an encounter in which Strauss-Kahn, whom she was trying to interview, pawed at her like a "chimpanzee in heat."

France's right-wing politicians, meanwhile, are calling Strauss-Kahn a name that's perhaps worse than being called a sex offender: a "champagne socialist!" Among the incriminating evidence: A photo of Strauss-Kahn and his wife getting into a Porsche costing more than $100,000. The car didn't actually belong to Strauss-Kahn but to a friend. But no matter. The photo “sparked sneers on the Internet and from the Right,” noted London's conservative newspaper, The Telegraph.

The paper added that "Brice Hortefeux, (France's) former interior minister and a close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, quipped that the Left had abandoned the symbols of the workers' struggle used when Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand, first took power.

"Back in 1981, it was the rose and the clenched fist. Today it's a Porsche at the wheel," Mr. Hortefeux said.

"The jibe was aimed at proving Mr. Strauss-Kahn is out of touch after four years with the IMF, and sought to stoke tensions within the French Left, where traditionalists already see Mr Strauss-Kahn, a former Socialist finance minister, as too Right-wing."

During the French Revolution, the guillotine was introduced as a form of punishment symbolizing the revolution's highest ideals: It treated rich and poor exactly alike -- giving them an equally quick and painless death. Obviously, France has come a long way since those lofty ideals. Disgust among some lefties over the "perp walk" -- and view that it should be reserved only for common criminal suspects -- is testimony to that.

Originally published in The American Thinker

2011-05-16T03:16:00.004-05:00

Police Raid Florida Mosque in Politically Correct Fashion

By David Paulin

In an early-morning raid on Saturday, dozens of Federal agents and police surrounded a mosque in west Miami-Dade County. They were after suspected jihadists – Pakistani-born American citizens who'd allegedly been providing material support to the Pakistani Taliban and who hoped for the deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan. They wanted to see Sharia law established in Pakistan as well.

Accordingly, police weren't taking any chances. They were heavily armed. And they showed up just after 6 a.m. to ensure they had the element of surprise.

“Open up! Police!” they shouted.

But, alas, police encountered a pesky little problem: Religious ceremonies were being conducted by their prime target – a 76-year-old iman named Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan. Accordingly, 25 to 30 law-enforcement officers respectfully waited for prayers to end – and then obligingly took off their shoes upon entering the mosque, according to an article in Sunday's South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

What evidence might have been destroyed before police finally got inside the mosque to handcuff suspects? Drug dealers, mafia dons, and KKK members are never accorded such courtesies – police quickly break down their doors and arrest them. So why are suspected Muslim terrorists given such respect? Well, there's a two-word answer for that: political correctness. But at least the respectful way Saturday's raid was carried out can help President Obama prove to Muslims that America respects Islam!

Aside from the raid's troubling example of dhimmitude, the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force appear to have done a splendid job; their indictment was based on a three-year investigation involving wiretaps and the analysis of suspicious wire transactions. Khan and five accomplices -- including two of his sons -- were accused of providing at least $50,000 to America's enemies -- an amount prosecutors called the "tip of the iceberg." The money was allegedly used to buy guns for the Pakistani Taliban, support terrorism, and to operate an Islamic school in Pakistan with terrorists ties.

Kahn, after hearing the mujahideen in Afghanistan had killed seven American soldiers, also was reported to have boasted that he wished that God kill 50,000 more of them.

As the Sun Sentinel also reported:

One of the imam's sons, Izhar Khan, a 24-year-old North Lauderdale resident, was arrested in the parking lot of the Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen mosque in Margate, where he is imam, just before the 6 a.m. prayer.

Agents also seized computers from the mosque office.

The other son, Miami resident Irfan Khan, 37, was awakened by agents at a hotel in Los Angeles at 3 a.m. Pacific time and taken into custody there.

All three men are American citizens who are originally from Pakistan, authorities said.

"Despite being an imam, or spiritual leader, Hafiz Khan was by no means a man of peace,'' said U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer. "Instead, as today's charges show, he acted with others to support terrorists to further acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming."

Three others named in the indictment remain at large in Pakistan. They were identified as Ali Rehman, also known as Faisal Ali Rehman; Amina Khan, also known as Amina Bibi, who is the daughter of Hafiz Khan; and her son, Alam Zeb, Khan's grandson.

Fortunately, the arrests had absolutely nothing to do with Islam or the two Florida mosques that were raided. As the Sun-Sentinel reported in a separate article:

Yazid Ali, the board president of the Margate mosque, said those who know Izhar Khan were "very surprised" by news of his arrest.

"We are in full cooperation with all of the authorities involved in this case," he said. "We would like everyone to know that Margate mosque Al does not support terrorism, for this is a forbidden act in Islam."

Mosque secretary Fazal Deen said, "I never, ever heard anything that came close to militancy from him."

The indictment does not charge the mosques themselves with any wrongdoing. The U.S. Attorney's Office said they are charging the individual defendants based on their support to terrorism, not on their religious beliefs or teachings.

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-05-15T03:54:00.002-05:00

Outraged Texas Lawmakers Seeking to Stop TSA Abuses

By David Paulin

Little girls, grandmothers, beauty queens – all are unlikely terrorists. Yet all have been victims in recent months of invasive Transportation Security Administration pat-downs at the nation's airports. The searches have sparked public outrage -- despite claims from the Obama administration that they're needed to stop would-be terrorists.

Now, Texas lawmakers are seeking to end this insanity after a former Miss USA complained last month that TSA agents "molested" her at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. On Thursday, House members passed a bill banning pat-downs in the Lone Star State in which a TSA agent "touches the anus, sexual organ, buttocks, or breast of another person including through the clothing, or touches the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable person."

Moreover, TSA agents who conduct such pat-downs could be found guilty of sexual harassment and official oppression. They could be charged with misdemeanor crime and be subject to a $4,000 fine and one-year in jail under the measure, according to news reports.

"Indecent groping searches when innocent travelers are seeking access to airports and public buildings would be outlawed under this bill," the measure's author, Republican David Simpson, was quoted as saying.

"This has to do with dignity in travel," he said. The House must take a final vote on the bill and it must then be approved by the Senate.

Of course, there's another side to this story -- whether TSA agents ought to be able to carry out invasive pat-downs on certain travelers who fit a profile that, well, nobody in the Obama administration dares to talk about. Israeli airline El Al does do profiling that's based on a variety of criteria. It has a stellar safety record.

Speaking of profiling, here's a YouTube clip of a TSA agent groping a little girl -- apparently checking for, ah, plastic explosives or box cutters. At least it's all very politically correct; the 6-year-old, after all, is not wearing a burka or from the Middle East.

Imbed of video clip

Originally published in The American Thinker

2011-05-07T01:38:00.001-05:00

Jay Leno Does Osama: 'The Pakistani Hillbillies'

By David Paulin

Americans have a sense of humor, even when confronting abject evil. The "Tonight Show's" Jay Leno, for instance, has been finding lots of humor this week in the death of terror master Osama bin Laden. One gem from Leno's show was a skit called "The Pakistani Hillbillies" -- starring none other than Osama bin Laden.

Americans during WW-2 loved poking fun at two larger-than-life and goose-steeping manifestations of fascist evil -- Hitler and Mussolini. So it's perhaps no surprise that Islamo-fascists should be good for plenty of laughs, too.They may be terrorists and existential enemies, but in the end they're also a bunch of squares -- or hillbillies if you well.

Enjoy the show.

Originally Published at The American Thinker.

2011-05-04T18:12:00.001-05:00

Iraqi TV Commentators Trade Blows While Discussing Saddam Hussein

By David Paulin

In Iraq, two television commentators on a show called "The Democratic Club" recently came to blows when their discussion turned to Saddam Hussein's legacy.

"I will chop off your tongue if you talk about Saddam!" shouted one.

"Eat Shit! I will talk about Saddam!" shouted the other.

That's when the two jumped out of their chairs, exchanged blows, and began grappling. They stumbled out of camera range -- but their political discussion continued.

"Come here, you son of a bitch!" shouted one.

"You dog, you low life!" shouted the other.

"You're sister is a whore!" one said at another point.

Iraq is a much better place today than it was under Saddam Hussein, even if things there can, well, get a bit raucous. Iraq's government also is far more in line with America's interests than it had been. Even so, perhaps the Obama administration ought to reconsider plans to disengage from the country. You can see the whole segment of "The Democratic Club" here:

Hat Tip: Robert J. Avrech at Seraphic Secret.

2011-05-02T23:52:00.004-05:00

So Long Bastard. Have A Nice Trip To HELL!

By David Paulin

It wasn't supposed to be like this. President Obama was going to make the world love us -- all while fighting the war on terror with Marquess of Queensberry rules. No more "torture" such as Bush-area waterboarding, during interrogations of 9/11 suspects. No more Guantanamo. Our foreign policy would be based on "mutual respect."

Yet there was Osama bin Laden, mastermind of 9/11, hiding in practically plain sight in Pakistan, a supposed ally. He was in a resort town just down the street from a military academy. No doubt Pakistan's intelligence service knew all about it.

Now Osama bin Laden is dead, and millions of savages in the Middle East and elsewhere are enraged – going into anti-American fits because America defended itself and sought justice for 3,000 murdered civilians on 9/11. How ironic that information used to track down bin Laden came from the Bush administration's waterboarding of some of the 9/11 conspirators.

The war on terror is far from over. This is simply a pivotal stage in a long war -- one pitting Islamic extremists and their cheerleaders in the Muslim world against American, Israel, and the West. These jihadists, of course, have their friends in the West – sympathizers and facilitators in the international Left, a fact that complicates the war on terror.

So long bastard. Have a nice trip to HELL!

2011-04-29T02:05:00.004-05:00

Members of Society of Professional Journalists Seeking to Rehabilitate Helen Thomas

By David Paulin

You can't say journalists don't take care of their own.

Members of America's most hallowed journalism organization -- the Society of Professional Journalists -- are embroiled in a nasty food fight over disgraced journalist Helen Thomas and efforts by some SPJ members to rehabilitate her. But in this fight, it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

At issue for the SPJ is whether it did the right thing by retiring its prestigious "Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement." Some SPJ members believe the journalism organization did the wrong thing. Accordingly, they intend to put forth the case for reinstating the prestigious award at the SPJ's national meeting this September.

The battle over whether to in effect rehabilitate Helen Thomas has pitted members of the SPJ against one another, resulting in an unseemly "baseball food fight," according to an article in Wednesday's Editor & Publisher by Rutgers University journalism professor Allan Wolper.

Sadly, however, it's hard to tell who the good guys are in this fight. Leaders at the SPJ who voted to retire the Helen Thomas award apparently did so for all the wrong reasons; her anti-Semitism about Jews getting out of Israel, and Zionists controlling America, was the least of their worries, according to Wolper's eye-opening account about the controversy at embroiling the SPJ -- an organization that he points out is "the keeper of a Code of Ethics that is a template for journalism behavior."

Ethics aside, the SPJ is apparently a forgiving bunch when it comes to anti-Semitism. It gave Thomas the benefit of the doubt after her first anti-Semitic outburst outside the White House last May during which she called for the Jews to get out of Israel and go "home."

Why was the SPJ so forgiving?

As Wolper tells it, it's because "the allegedly anti-Semitic remarks attributed to" Thomas were regarded as "a one-time misstep or slip-up resulting from 'questionable interview tactics,' according to an internal report by Joe Skeel, SPJ's executive director."

Then came Thomas' remarks in December at a conference of Arab journalists. She said that "Congress, the White House, and Hollywood are owned by Zionists. No question."

"That did it," Wolper relates. "The SPJ executive committee in January voted 6 to 1 to retire the award, and the full board of directors went along, 14 to 7."

Incredibly, though, the SPJ leadership wasn't upset at Thomas' anti-Semitism. As Wolper explains: "The rationale was stunning: There was a fear that future recipients would have to answer questions about Helen Thomas instead of talking about their lifelong accomplishments."

Wolper also relates that the SPJ's "decision (on Thomas), and the way it was handled, infuriated Christine Tatum, a former president of SPJ, and Ray Hanania, a Chicago columnist and coordinator of the National Arab American Journalists Association. Hanania sees the decision as an example of SPJ's alleged bias against Arab journalists, a charge SPJ fiercely denies."

Incredibly, the conduct of the SPJ's Thomas apologists gets sleazier. Wolper says they're convinced the SPJ's leadership "buckled under pressure from Jewish organizations led by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. They cite as proof a letter he wrote to SPJ castigating Thomas, which was printed online and in Quill magazine, SPJ's monthly publication."

Wolper also writes that Thomas' SPJ apologists "whisper that Hagit Limor, the Israeli born president of SPJ, is Jewish, a not-so-nice way to hint that she might not have been as fair as she could have been. I have found no evidence to support that notion. Meanwhile, Limor, an investigative reporter for WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, has been bombarded with angry telephone calls from non-journalistic Thomas supporters."

None of this should surprise anybody who's noticed an anti-Israeli bias in the mainstream media over the years -- an issue that more than a few articles at this publication have addressed.

The SPJ, incidentally, is no stranger to controversy. Less than a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, it passed a controversial resolution at its national convention in Seattle telling SPJ members how to cover the war on terror. Among other edicts, it advised against using the word "jihad" and said that stories should "portray Muslims, Arabs and Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans in the richness of their diverse experiences."

On the other hand, the SPJ offered no edict about portraying Jews, Israeli-Jews, or American Jews in the richness of their experience.

No surprise there.

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-04-29T01:56:00.002-05:00

Second Amendment Culture Wars: Eastern Elites vs. Gun-friendly Red States

By David Paulin

America's gun-rights debate has moved into some new territory that highlights the ideological divide separating gun-hating Eastern elites from Americans in fly-over country.

Recent events in New York City, Washington D.C., and in gun-friendly fly-over states (mostly red) demonstrate how profoundly the nation's Second Amendment debate is wrapped up with its culture wars.

Consider how Americans on opposite sides of the liberal-conservative divide are viewing the gun-rights debates underway in at least nine state legislatures. According to Eastern elites, lawmakers are doing the unthinkable: They're debating whether to eliminate so-called "gun-free zones" on public college and university campuses; such zones exist in 22 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Texas is considered the most likely to pass such legislation, with a vote possible this March. Only Utah allows concealed carry holders on its campuses.

Conversely, 25 other states leave it to colleges and universities to allow or ban concealed carry holders; and so a handful of schools in the Midwest and West actually do allow concealed carry holders on campus to varying degrees. They include Michigan State, Colorado State, and the University of Colorado, schools where no concealed carry holders are reported to have been involved in campus massacres or robbery sprees. Nine of those states nevertheless introduced legislation last year to ban concealed carry on campuses, a response to shootings like the Virginia Tech massacre.

Besides gun-friendly Texas, states that may do the opposite and ban gun-free zones on campuses include Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, Michigan, New Mexico, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. To be sure, abolishing gun-free zones wouldn't involve handing out Glocks to boozed-up college kids, as gun-haters fear. Rather, it would to varying degrees allow gun owners with concealed carry permits, including students, to bring handguns on campus.

In gun-hating New York, getting a carry permit involves a nightmare of red tape. But not so in Texas and most states, where it's relatively easy for law-abiding adults to obtain concealed carry permits after passing a course and undergoing a background check. In Texas, one part of the 10-to-15 hour course includes instruction in "non-violent conflict resolution" - to help ensure people only use their weapons for legitimate self-defense purposes.

Gun-hating liberals may be surprised to hear it, but it's virtually unheard of in Texas for people with carry permits to commit crimes or be involved in unnecessary shootings. They don't hold up convenience stores; don't get involved in shoot-outs at bars or after traffic accidents. Nor do they shoot people whom they feel have "dissed" them -- a common occurrence in gritty parts of Chicago and Detroit. It all underscores a fact that gun-hating liberals overlook: Culture plays a big role in gun violence. Switzerland, after all, is armed to the teeth, with members of its large citizen militia keeping military-issued weapons at home -- yet gun-related crimes in Switzerland are rare.

In the guns-on-campus debate, reasonable people might disagree about the wisdom of allowing undergraduates to keep handguns in dorm rooms. But what about college professors and staff members? Consider a strange inconsistency in Texas. In Austin, a short drive from the University of Texas' gun-free zone, is the state capitol. It's a part of the real-world: Concealed carry holders are allowed to bring handguns into the legislature and capitol building. Security guards wave them through after they present their carry permits. To date, no shoot-outs have occurred among gun-toting legislators, lobbyists, and visitors during heated debates.

Yet at the University of Texas, professors, staff, and students with concealed carry permits are prohibited from carrying their guns on campus when, say, they must walk to and from a night class and a dark parking garage. The absurdity of campus gun-free zones prompts the National Rifle Association to ask: "Should you have less freedom and safety than anyone else simply because you go to college?" Besides personal protection, gun-rights advocates note that a person with a carry permit could stop a Virginia Tech-style massacre in its tracks.

Recently, legislative initiatives to abolish gun-free zones were the subject of an article in the New York Times, an agenda-setting paper for liberal elites. It soft-peddled the obvious: Gun-free zones don't make anybody safer -- except for gun-toting criminals. If the Times thinks otherwise, it should disarm the security personnel who presumably guard the New York Times Building. Then it should put up a sign that sanctimoniously proclaims: "Gun-free Zone." But don't count on that happening; even Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. wouldn't be so stupid. Yet gun-hating liberals nevertheless portray gun owners in fly-over country as bubbas and hayseeds: people who cling to their guns and religion as President Obama put it.

Speaking of Obama, the Senate Judiciary Committee is now considering the President's controversial nomination to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Andrew Traver, 47, is being vigorously opposed by gun-rights advocates. The veteran ATF agent, among other things, has likened automatic black-market weapons to legal semi-automatic assault weapons and is involved with the anti-gun International Association of Chiefs of Police. "You might as well put an arsonist in charge of the fire department," said Chris Cox, an NRA spokesman.

Traver was based in Chicago, a city without gun shops; and yet it's got a high crime rate and well-armed gangs that Trevor, to his credit, went on the offensive against -- treating them as criminal organizations instead of neighborhood thugs.

'Outing' Gun Owners

As the gun-rights debate has heated up, the New York Times recently launched an anti-gun crusade -- running a full-page article that "outed" well-known New Yorkers who own handguns. It portrayed them as members of a strange and troubling subculture; and it was published not long after another anti-gun piece -- a female reporter's amusing account (by red-state standards) of her visits to some New York gun shops.

Not surprisingly, getting a handgun permit in New York is hard if not almost impossible, whether it's to carry a handgun in the street or keep at home. Even so, many well-heeled New Yorkers have actually managed to get such permits. So who are these crazies? To find out, The Times culled through thousands of names of gun owners that it got from the police after filing lawsuits and freedom of information requests. It was amazed to learn that some of the city's leading citizens were handgun owners and even had carry permits. According to The Times, the list included: "Men and women. Democrats and Republicans. Doctors, lawyers, merchants and moguls. A remarkable, if relatively small, cross-section of New Yorkers."

In all, more than 37,000 New Yorkers keep handguns in their homes or carry them in the street, according to the full-page article: "Armed in New York, and Carrying Well-Known Names." The article's print edition was dominated by a photo of a shooting target: a human silhouette. And around it were 15 photos of high-profile New Yorkers with handgun permits: actors, public officials, journalists, and other celebrities.

In its quest for accountability from the city's gun-toting subculture, The Times then contacted a number of gun owners. Some were apparently outraged at being outed -- and told reporter Jo Craven McGinty to go screw herself. Others, apparently embarrassed at being outed, proceeded to blurt out some incredibly dumb comments; things no gun-toting bubba or hayseed in fly-over would ever be so naive to utter.

Consider not-too-bright Alexis Stewart, 45, a radio and television talk-show host. She was among a surge of New Yorkers who bought handguns after 9/11. Obviously embarrassed at being outed, the daughter of classy Martha Stewart gushed: "I keep it in my apartment unloaded in a safe. Wait. I probably shouldn't say that. It's under my pillow and ready to go." (Readers who don't know why it's dumb to say such things are obviously not among American Thinker's conservative readers.)

Then there was gun owner William Rosado, an illustrator. He all but apologized for enjoying his regular visits to a shooting range with his 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson. "In a weird way, it's kind of a stress reliever," he confessed. "It's something completely different than what I do for a living."

Most of the gun owners told the Times they'd never pulled their guns in self-defense; no surprise there. And nor did the paper mention that any New Yorkers had abused their concealed carry privileges -- and you can be sure such anecdotes would have been mentioned if the Times had found them. One example was nevertheless provided of a New Yorker who'd actually defended himself with a handgun. You have to wonder: How many other such cases did the Times find but fail to mention?

The case of John A. Catsimatidis, 62, was nevertheless interesting. The owner of a supermarket chain, he once used his Walther PPK to stop an armed robbery. Upon entering one of his stores, three armed robbers rushed past him, one by one. Each carried a sawed-off shotgun. (Shotguns are easier than handguns to obtain in New York City and surrounding metropolitan area.)

"Be cool, man!" the first thug told Catsimatidis. Then the second one rushed past, also saying, "Be cool, man!" As the third emerged, Catsimatidis was ready. He related: "I intertwined my arm into his arm, and I put my gun to his head, and I say: 'Drop your gun or I'll blow your head off'." When the police arrived, a sergeant told Catsimatidis: "You couldn't have shot the guy anyway; your safety is still on."

It was the perfect anecdote with which to end an anti-gun story -- one making a gun owner look like a bumbler.

Interestingly, the same edition of the Times also featured a long story with a self-defense angle -- of sorts. "It Ended in a Suitcase," as it was titled, dealt with a "strung-out" 28-year-old hooker who called herself "Jackie" and the violent 55-year-old man who killed her, a drifter with a long criminal history named Hassan Malik. It was an utterly banal crime story, the stuff of New York's lowbrow tabloids; and it certainly wasn't what the Times normally gives its upscale readers. But apparently Times' editors felt more "diversity" was needed in its crime coverage -- and so they offered up "It Ended in a Suitcase" -- an in-depth story about two losers from the city's low-life culture.

The fates of Malik and "Jackie" (real name: Betty Williams) were completely predictable given the lives they had led. Yet reporter Alan Feuer was clearly intrigued, and he naively wrote: "Why had things turned violent? And, most important, how, in 21st-century New York, was it possible for a strangled woman to be stuffed inside a suitcase and summarily deposited on the street?" Of course, no gun-toting bubba or hayseed in fly-over country would have trouble answering that question.

Malik, incidentally, didn't dispatch Williams with a gun. He used a frying pan and a VCR cord - and he claimed he acted in self-defense. A likely story. One that raises a question: "When frying pans and VCR cords are outlawed, will only outlaws have them?"

Originally published at The American Thinker

2011-04-26T16:16:00.002-05:00

'Therapy-Dog' Sessions For Yale's Liberal Law Students

By David Paulin

A "therapy dog" named "Monty" will be offered next week to students at Yale Law School, part of a pilot program to help them relieve their "stress." All of which raises a question: What kinds of horrific stress do students suffer at Yale Law School, a place noted for its touchy-feely legal education and its overwhelmingly liberal students and faculty?

Indeed, Yale Law School has for decades been an Ivy League school offering a kinder and gentler education -- a response to student unrest and demands in the 1960s. Yale Law School was definitely not the high-pressure school portrayed in the movie "The Paper Chase;" that was Harvard Law School.

Unlike other law schools, Yale does not do mean, stressful things like officially "ranking" its students. Nor does it offer traditional grades; instead, first-semester students get credit or no-credit. And during the remaining two-and-a-half years, students are graded on a system that gives them marks such as "honors," "pass," "low pass," and "fail." Students take only one semester of required courses, whereas most other law schools have a full year of required courses.

Yet Yale's privileged law students can expect to get just about any job they desire. Interestingly (though perhaps not surprisingly), a relatively large number of Yale law grads go on to teach or work for the government. Only 49 percent become honest-to-goodness lawyers who really practice law.

So perhaps it's no surprise that Yale's law students are now getting therapy-dog sessions to help them get through the day.

Curiously, news of Yale Law School's therapy-dog program has not been well publicized, according to an article in The New York Times. "I'm surprised to hear of it," law professor John Witt was quoted as saying. "I've always found library books to be therapeutic. But maybe that's just me."

Spoken like a true academic.

Originally published at The American Thinker.

2011-04-26T15:53:00.002-05:00

Male Cartoonist Poses as Woman to Get Work

By David Paulin

It's not only in America that political correctness and affirmative action have run amok. From Europe comes a wacky story that calls up the amusing cross-dressing and role reversals in the Hollywood movie "Tootsie."

In this case, it's not a down-on-his-luck male actor (Dustin Hoffman) pretending to be a woman to jump-start his career. It's a down-on-his-luck political cartoonist in Austria named Markus Szyszkowitz. Deciding he could turn his country's political correctness to his advantage, Szyszkowitz reinvented himself as a political cartoonist named "Rachel Gold" -- a young and attractive Jewish immigrant from Israel.

And incredibly, he became much more successful as Rachel Gold than as himself.

Posing as Gold, Szyszkowitz produced cartoons with a different style. They also had a hard-hitting liberal viewpoint, one that Szyszkowitz believes neither editors nor readers would have as readily accepted had he done them himself. He thinks this was due more to the fact that Rachel Gold was Jewish than female, owning to Austria's terrible history regarding its Jewish citizens.

Among other benefits of being Rachel Gold, Szyszkowitz became one of Austria's top cartoonist. "Rachel Gold" even took over the old job he'd lost for having offended a politician who later became Austria's chancellor.

The story of this hilarious farce is the subject of an article, "Secrets of a Woman," by American cartoonist Daryl Cagle at his website "The Cagle Post." Interestingly, it's a story that Cagle said he can relate to as an American cartoonist.

As he explains:

There are very few women editorial cartoonists, and I'm not sure why. At this time, there is only one woman who has a full time job drawing editorial cartoons for a print newspaper, out of about 75 newspaper cartooning positions in America. The disparity extends to the unsolicited submissions I get from aspiring cartoonists, who are 99.9 percent male; the same is true among the almost-all-male cartoonists around the world. Naturally, a rare woman editorial cartoonist gets special attention, just because she is a woman.

When discouraged political cartoonists sit behind a beer and complain, sometimes the talk turns to the idea of pretending to draw as a woman, to take advantage of affirmative action minded editors who might prefer cartoons by a woman, and affirmative action minded award juries who might be more inclined to give awards to a female cartoonist - but I had never heard of a cartoonist actually going through with the scheme.

Until, of course, Rachel Gold.

As Cagle notes, editors eventually caught onto Szyszkowitz's subterfuge and fired him. But he landed on his feet and today continues to do political cartoons under his own name and as Rachel Gold. Most readers in Austria remain clueless as to what's going on.

Alas, Cagle doesn't say if Szyszkowitz has became a better man for having successfully pretended to be a pretty Jewish woman in the way Dustin Hoffman's character in "Tootsie" supposedly became a better man for pretending to be a woman.

One thing that's certain: Szyszkowitz has become more successful after reinventing himself as Rachel Gold.

Hat Tip: Editor & Publisher

Originally published at The American Thinker.