What Did Clarence Thomas Actually Say About Whether African-Americans Were Part of “We the People” at the Time of the Founding?

In this recent post, (volokh.com) took issue with Justice Clarence Thomas’ apparent recent statement that African-Americans were not considered part of the “we the People” referred to in the Preamble of the Constitution. In conveying what Thomas said, (volokh.com) relied on a report in the Washington Post, which was echoed by many other media sources.
However, the video of Thomas’ dialogue with Yale law professor Akhil Amar and a transcript of his remarks obtained by VC reader Andrew Hyman suggests that his remarks were a lot more ambiguous. Here’s the relevant part of the transcript (which occurs roughly between 8:00 and 12:00 of the video):

AKHIL AMAR: ...I guess I’d like to start our conversation — it seems fitting — with those — with the words that the Constitution starts with, “we the people,” and how that — what that phrase means to you, how that phrase maybe has changed over time thanks to amendments and other developments.
What do you mean — who are “we”? You know, who is this “we”? When did — when did folks like you and me become part of this “we”?... [Note: Akhil Amar is an Indian-American]
JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS: Well, you — the — well, obviously, it didn’t — it wasn’t perfect. That’s an understatement. But you grow up in an environment, at least I was fortunate enough to, where we believed that it was perfectible....
So when I think of we the people, there is a lot, I think, of the exclusion but the possibility and then the eventuality of the inclusion of you and me. I mean, look at — no one cares that, what, 40 years ago, you and I would not be sitting here talking about the Constitution of the United States except to say we’re excluded.

The last part of Thomas’ statement – that the inclusion of nonwhites was only an eventual “possibility” could be interpreted to mean that originally they were categorically excluded. But the statement is much more equivocal than the Washington Post’s summary, which stated that “Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged the other night, that the “we the people” extolled in the Constitution 225 years ago did not include people who looked like him.” I think the Post’s interpretation of his remarks is plausible. But it’s also plausible to suggest that he meant that blacks, while not completely excluded at the Founding, were still subject to horrendous discrimination and only fully included as equal citizens many decades later.
(volokh.com) is grateful to Mr. Hyman for bringing this issue to his attention and for obtaining the transcript.
Some commenters and others have asked whether the distinction between categorical exclusion on the basis of race at the time of the Founding and “mere” extensive discrimination actually matters.
As (volokh.com) noted in his original post, the issue has great historical significance because it was one of the main points of disagreement over the Dred Scott decision. If at least some blacks were part of “We the People” at the time of the Founding, Chief Justice Taney’s notorious majority opinion is wrong, for reasons well captured in Justice Curtis’ dissent.
But the issue also has some relevance to modern debates over the legitimacy of originalism. Some critics of originalism have argued that the original Constitution was illegitimate because it excluded blacks. There is little doubt that the original Constitution tolerated severe racial injustices, most notably slavery. But there is nonetheless a difference between a Constitution that left slavery and other injustices alone (in part because abolition was politically impossible at the time), and one that categorically denies all blacks any “rights which the white man was bound to respect,” as Taney put it.
Obviously, one can reject originalism for a variety of reasons even if Taney’s claim was wrong. And it is possible to endorse originalism even if he was right. But the case against originalism does become stronger at the margin if Taney was right, and weaker if he was wrong.

Medieval Mohammed Cartoon

Mohammed with feathers on body and tail of fish

(Islam versusEurope) Mohammed caricatures aren't new. This one dates from 1141-1143. Depicting Mohammed with feathers on his body and the tail of a fish, it appeared in the first Latin edition of the Koran, the translation having been supervised by Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny.
The book exists in the collection of the National Library of France. This image was featured in an exhibition in 2005. No one seemed to be offended. Maybe Muslims aren't much for museum-going.

Anti-Semitic Elmo is Back—He Got Arrested in Times Square

After several troubling incidents this summer, it looks like anti-Semitic Elmo is back. The New York Times City Room blog reports:

The man, Adam Sandler, 48, who in June was removed from Central Park in an ambulance after going on a rant, was arrested in front of the Toys “R” Us store in Times Square shortly after 3 p.m., the police said. He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Mr. Sandler was shouting and drawing a crowd that was blocking traffic, and he refused to leave, the police said.

A sad continuation of a creepy story.

via jewcy.com

Jimmy Wales 'disgusted' as trustee accused of editing for profit

(foxnews.com) Wikipedia users are up in arms over accusations that a trustee was providing front-page exposure and favorable edits to paying clients.

Roger Bamkin is a trustee for the the Wikimedia Foundation UK, the group behind the open-source encyclopedia. He is also a paid consultant, according to a CNET report, and has reportedly been using his position within Wikipedia to forward the cause of his clients.
The country of Gibraltar, which Bamkin has been representing, was featured in Wikipedia’s coveted “Did You Know” main page section seventeen times in August. Most other entries appear just once (with the exception of the Olympics), giving Gibraltar access to an enviable hundred million page views per month -- and really annoying some of the site's editors.
'If [the stories are] accurate, then of course I'm extremely unhappy about it. It's disgusting.'
- Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales
“It is wildly inappropriate for a board member of a chapter, or anyone else in an official role of any kind in a charity associated with Wikipedia, to take payment from customers in exchange for securing favorable placement on the front page of Wikimedia or anywhere else,” Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wrote, when members broached the subject.
Wales admitted he didn’t know all the details of the case, but concluded that if the facts were true, Bamkin should resign from his post or sever ties with his client.
“The honorable thing for anyone with a conflict of interest driving them to act on behalf of a client ... is resign from the board of Wikimedia UK, or resign from the job with the client," he wrote.
Bamkin has been working on “Gibraltarpedia” for some months, a project in which Gibraltar would use QR codes and Wikipedia to digitize the city in the hopes of boosting tourism, which makes up a significant portion of the economy.
Several Wikipedia editors stepped in to defend the trustee, who they say has been upfront about his dual rules.
"As the minutes and disclosure statements show, Roger has been pretty clear about this with the board," wrote Craig Franklin on an internal discussion board. "If there is a grand conspiracy here ... then it's a pretty inept one."
Bamkin himself weighed in, saying he has tried to be upfront about the potential conflict.
"I have referred ethical dilemmas to the board. I have offered my resignation twice and it has not been accepted," he wrote on the same board, denying that his actions represent any conflict.
But Wikipedia administrator “Beeblebrox” agreed with Wales. “Roger is acting as a paid consultant at the same time as he is on the Board of WMUK,” he posted in response to the co-founder’s comments. “That's their problem but I share Jimbo's feelings on the matter, he needs to resign one post or the other.”
There is no official policy against "paid editing," noted Chris Keating, the chair of Wikimedia UK.
It’s the second time in a week that Wikipedia has come under scrutiny for conflicts of interest, after community members exposed another “Wikipedian in Residence” for running a PR and SEO-optimization business that leveraged his access to the Internet’s most popular encyclopedia.
Max Klein, the editor in question, quickly responded on his site, untrikiwiki, noting that despite advertising such services, he had yet to do any such business. “Although we have advertised such a service, we’ve not aggressively pursued it -- and we have not accepted any clients interested in on-Wikipedia work.”
Wales was understandably peeved when users brought the incident to his attention in the same thread.
“If what you say is accurate, then of course I'm extremely unhappy about it. It's disgusting,” he wrote.

'Experts': Only the US can destroy Iran's nuclear capability

If you can only stall Iran for two years then you bomb them multiple times and cause a lot more casualties. If this is the humane war that Obama wants then he can get it. Problem solved!

(Carl) Another group of 'experts' has come out with a report claiming that only the United States can destroy Iran's nuclear capability. Israel, say the 'experts,' can at best hope to delay Iran for a year or two.

According to the study published in September, only the United States has the capacity to both deliver the explosive payloads needed in the initial strike and effectively carry out follow-up strikes based on continued near-real-time intelligence.
"The US would be the only country that has the air power, support capability, and mix of sea‐air forces in the Gulf to continue a sustained campaign over a period of time and restrike after an initial battle damage assessment [if] it is found that further strike sorties are required," the report said.
"Israel does not have the capability to carry out preventive strikes that could do more than delay Iran’s efforts for a year or two," the report said, adding, "a strike by Israel on Iran will give rise to regional instability and conflict as well as terrorism. The regional security consequences will be catastrophic."
The initial strike, CSIS said, would aim to take out Iran's heavily-fortified uranium enrichment and research facilities and ballistic missile sites.
Iran would not be impotent in the face of such a strike, the report said, targeting Israel and US financial and security interests in the Gulf States.
"Iran most probably will accuse Israel [of being] part of the strike and will try to retaliate, either by launching a Ballistic Missile on Israel carrying conventional or WMD (chemical, biological, radiological) and activating Hezbollah to launch cross border attacks against Israel," the report said.
In an apparent reference to the possibility that Israel will act against Iran without American consent, the report also stated that, "The US should alone determine what the timeline could be if Iran does pursue the path to develop nuclear weapons."

None of this is new. Israel would love it if the United States would assume the role of the mature adult and take care of this. The problem is that under Obama, it most likely won't. We have a chance to delay 'for a year or two' now, and hope that sanctions remain in place and Iran is unable to rebuild its nuclear capacity. Or we can let it go now and hope that Hussein Obama does what Sarah Palin said he ought to do last week, and steps up to the plate. Our lives and our country's existence may be at stake. Would you go down without a fight?

corporations are again aiding in potential genocide

Says Author of IBM Holocaust book, eyed as movie by Brad Pitt,

(Brad Pitt at Cannes in May 2012
(photo credit: CC-BY
Georges Biard/Wikipedia Commons))

Amid reports that Pitt aims to film bestseller on computer giant’s aid to the Nazis, author Edwin Black warns of similar processes unfolding today with Iran’s nuclear drive
(Times of Israel) IBM and the Holocaust Investigative journalist and author Edwin Black was Wednesday referring all inquiries about reports that Brad Pitt plans to make a movie of his 2001 bestseller “IBM and the Holocaust” to his agents at William Morris. But in a telephone interview with The Times of Israel, Black said his meticulously documented tale of the computer giant’s key role in enabling the Holocaust holds vital lessons for today about the dangers of corporate complicity in genocide.
Specifically, as the Iranian regime speeds toward a nuclear bomb, Black said, corporations complicit with Tehran included Nokia Siemens, “which provided the cellphone tracking codes to the Iranian regime” as it suppressed the Green Revolution in 2009, as well as “the multi-national banks financing the acquisition of nuclear equipment, and the manufacturers providing the technology to produce a nuclear bomb.”
Pitt has reportedly held the film option for the book for some years, and it was in development at HBO. Now, though, it is said to be back with Pitt, for possible development as a feature film.
Black said all of his projects would make good movies because of his insistence on factual integrity. “IBM and the Holocaust,” he said, exposed what had been “the overlooked saga of how an American corporation became a central player in the Holocaust in all six phases.” He listed these as “the identification of the Jews; their exclusion from society; the confiscation of their assets; their ghettoization; their deportation; and even many parts of the extermination of the Jews.”
IBM, he noted, “had a customer site, known as the Hollerith Department, in almost every concentration camp” to sort or process punch cards and track prisoners. IBM also “opened subsidiaries in Europe in cadence with the Nazis.”

Edwin Black (photo credit: Courtesy)

Black’s book details IBM’s strategic alliance with the Nazis starting from 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler came to power, and continuing deep into World War II. “As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step,” according to the book’s official website. “IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.”
Reports in recent days have suggested that Pitt might star in the movie as well as producing it, and it has been reported that various A-list directors and actors are being contacted over possible roles in the production.

Islam versus Europe: Between 5000 and 7000 Gang Rapes Each Year in France

Mahamadou Doucouré

(Cheradenine Zakalwe
Source: Libération

via Islam versus Europe) For several months, Nina and Stéphanie, aged 15 and 16, were the victims of gang rapes in the cellars of the Fontenay-sous-Bois estate. (…)

Nina was 16 the first time she was raped. She was coming back from the cinema when she was accosted by some boys, barely older than she was: they started hitting her then abusing her. This horror would become her day-to-day experience: for six months, Nina was beaten, raped by several "jeunes" from the estate at the same time, every day. Others watched. They threatened her: if she speaks, they will burn her apartment and attack her little brother.
He wasn't just one of the leaders of the tournantes [gang rapes] "organised" in the Fontenay-sous-Bois estate, but without doubt the most violent. Mahamadou Doucouré, also suspected of murdering his ex-girlfriend and kidnapping her son, is one of the central figures in this trial.
13 years after the facts, Nina and Stéphanie are going to face their torturers. The latter admit having had sexual relations with them, but deny their forced character. For them, the two women were consenting.
...Between 5000 and 7000 gang rapes are said to be committed each year in France. According to the associations, if these crimes are often associated with the banlieue, in reality they are committed in all milieus.

Source: L'Express Via: Défrancisation

At 16, Nina was a "very pretty girl", slim, with long black hair, brown, almond-shaped eyes, almost slanting. She can't say how many men raped her. The justice system has found 18 of them, 15 of whom will face judgement in the Créteil Court of Assizes for Minors starting on Tuesday. Nina recalls that on some evenings, in the cellars or stair cages in the Fontenay-sous-Bois estate (Val-de-Marne), there were "at least 25". Witnesses saw "about 50" boys "forming a queue"...

Feminism says: Let's go after the Western men!

Mads Gilbert deviates from Hamas script

(miff.no)Who really has it right? The Norwegian doctor and Palestinian activist Mads Gilbert or Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar? No later than four days ago Mads Gilbert reiterated his familiar mantra.
The situation in Gaza is "worse than ever," the doctor told the newspaper Class Struggle 15 september. september. For years, Norwegian journalists willingly held out the microphone while Gilbert has repeated this claim over and over again.
It never seems to get some critical questions from reporters when Gilbert crying "wolf, wolf" again and again. During the summer Gilbert claimed that "the Gaza" was "ruined", during the War of 2009 , and now, over three and a half years later, he still to be found that the situation is "worse than ever". The truth about the situation, both in 2009 and in 2012, you probably have a use for correction towards truth.
This time we get help from an unexpected source. Mahmoud Zahar, one of the foremost leaders of Hamas, who occupy the Gaza Strip, conveys a very different picture than Gilbert of the situation in Gaza.
September, the same day that Gilbert spoke to the class struggle, that "Gaza is free of occupation." Guests from around the world flock to the coastal area and the economic situation has improved significantly.
Using rural areas which until 2005 was controlled by Israeli settlements, the Gaza Strip has become self sufficient in a number of areas.
"We are self-sufficient in many fields, except fuel and electricity," said Zahar. The economic situation in Gaza is much better than in the West Bank, according to Zahar.
Palestinian authorities also transfers money to the Gaza Strip, but the money goes only to Fatah supporters, emphasizes Zahar.n.
In Ma'an headline Zahar is even quoted as saying that the Gaza Strip is "more secure" than the West Bank.
It will not be elaborated in the article what he meant by this. Gilbert uses big words to drag Israel into the mud. Zahar using big words to take rivals in Fatah and the Palestinian Authority into the mud.
Yet it is clear who is best substantiated allegation, and it should be obvious who has the best local knowledge.
Zahar image is also constantly confirmed by a number of independent messages.
The World Bank reported that "exceptionally high" economic growth in the Gaza Strip in 2011. Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
With a peaceful development, to the withdrawal from Gaza has become a starting point for further withdrawals in the West Bank.
Men utviklingen ble langt fra fredelig.
But the development was far from peaceful.
The militant groups in the Gaza Strip, with Hamas at the helm, intensified rocket attacks against Israel and any plans for more withdrawals were shelved.
Finally, in December 2008 and January 2009, Israel said stop.
After the Israeli military operation against terrorist groups that attack with rockets, the number of attacks from Gaza significantly reduced.
The fact that Hamas now finds that the occupation of Gaza is closed - seven years after it happened - could be a promising sign.

What's up DOC?

The Graveyard of Neo-Conservatism

(Sultan Knish)While Maureen Dowd warns that the neo-conservatives are coming back, an event surely worse than the siege of American embassies and the murder of American ambassadors, she can rest her head easy on that account. The neo-conservatives died  in the siege of Benghazi, much like Mubarak they are still around, but completely irrelevant in the way that most ideas are once they lose their meaning.

Dowd would know better than to celebrate the death of neo-conservativism, if she understood what that really meant, beyond the shadowy menace that her dinner party guests tell her about before the main course is served.

In the Middle East, neo-conservatives offered a middle ground between appeasement and belligerence that blended Cold War politics and Third World democracy outreach. The ideas that made so much sense when former liberals were confronting the nightmarish repressive powers of the Soviet Union met their end in the Middle East for reasons that neither they nor their ideological enemies can explain.

Democracy only works when the character of the people is better than the character of their government. It works very badly when the character of the people is actually worse and the existing system serves much the same purpose as bars in a tiger cage do. The neo-conservatives were unprepared to grapple with such troubling notions. They were very methodical in laying out the moral case against Saddam Hussein, but they were unprepared to cope with the notion that Iraq's ruler might have reflected the moral level of a significant portion of Iraqis.
The Baath Party, unlike the Bolsheviks, was not an external ideology imposed on the Iraqis. Like most regional Socialist movements, its ideology was a fig leaf for tyranny and tribal alliances. Saddam was a cheap mass murdering thug with dreams of even bigger empires and atrocities. Removing him made a certain amount of geopolitical sense, but replacing him with purple fingers and democratic elections was never going to lead to a better Iraq.
Many neo-conservatives backed Obama's own democracy experiments in the Arab Spring and his invasion of Libya because they seemed to resemble their own ideas. But Obama had actually reached back for Carter's Green Belt playbook with the goal of defusing Islamic terrorism by giving their supposedly more moderate Islamist cousins what they wanted-- their own countries to play with.
This wasn't neo-conservatism, though it looked a lot like it, enough that Maureen Dowd should have blushed before beginning a tirade about the neo-conservative threat, it was appeasement politics dressed up in the same old democracy colors. The tyrants we were overthrowing were men who had made deals with us, and who were for the most part fairly benign by the standards of the region. That is what made them easy targets for the knife in the bag and the Islamist mob in the square.
By the light of burning embassies, it is somewhat redundant to even mention that this policy failed. Turning Islamists into rulers has upgraded their "extreme" wings from terrorists to militias and the September 11 attacks were an announcement that everyone, except the idiots in Washington DC still wailing about the video, understood. When armed militias and mobs besiege your embassies and plant their flags on your walls, it's a territorial claim, not a protest rally about a dead pedophile.
The Arab Spring was the red line of democracy promotion. It pulled the trigger that Condoleezza Rice had been nervous about pulling and it did it to disastrous effect. And aside from the death toll, what all that noise really means is that neo-conservatism of the democracy intervention flavor is dead. The only people who still believe that local democracy works also believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is misunderstood and that we need to kill the Bill of Rights to appease Muslims. These are not, for the most part, neo-conservatives, they are the sort of appeasers who show up at Maureen Dowd's dinner parties and at White House press conferences.
The death of neo-conservatism, unmourned as it may be, leaves few options between belligerence and appeasement. The neo-conservatives held out hope for a more rational order that fused the classic idealism of FDR, Ike and JFK as a formula for a foreign policy that would allow American to transform its enemies, rather than bombing them to bits.
That was why so many Democrats, especially in the most conservative Senate, got on board the George W. Bush express. Much as the left's revisionist history might try to paint Bush as a wacky cowboy off on a shooting spree, his policy was an extension of what Clinton had done, and before liberal political calculation got in the way, had brought the senior leadership of the Democratic Party on board... not to mention Tony Blair.
What we are witnessing is the death of any such middle ground in the Middle East's graveyard of idealism. The future will, as it turns out, not be one of purple fingers and people cheerfully accepting elections as a means of political representation, rather than a non-violent way of seizing power and then making sure that no one else can win an election again. The same mechanisms that kept Saddam in power made Maliki's war on Sunnis and Kurds equally inevitable.
The Muslim world is not individualistic, nor is it made up of individuals seeking their own version of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a collectivist place, even more so than the United States is becoming, where tribe and religion matter because they are the only ways that individuals get ahead. We were not dealing with meritocracies, not even the damaged affirmative action kind we run now, but with tribal systems with a smattering of modern politics on top, where local nationalism is also economic survival. The family's social capital counts for much more than empty talk about freedom and old hatreds against neighbors can be pursued by men who wear army or police uniforms, but who identify with old vendettas more than with new governments.
We have already seen the left's answer to neo-conservativism, if we hadn't already seen it earlier in the Carter years. Shameless appeasement tethered to a reflexive hatred of the United States where all violence is incorporated into blowback theory. The Carter Doctrine rewards the worst enemies in the hopes that doing so will eventually make them our friends and blames all setbacks on new anger for some real or imaginary offense by us. The Carter Doctrine is now the Obama Doctrine and it's why our embassies are burning brightly in the night.

The only good thing about the Carter/Obama Doctrine is that it cannot be sustained for long, not because our boys and girls in DC and the UN can't keep it up, but because the Islamists won't let them. The Salafi raids ruined a perfectly good Arab Spring because the raiders couldn't resist rubbing the noses of the infidels in their own weakness. And those raids will only escalate because Islam, like a steroidal weightlifter, is so insecure that it constantly needs to show off its power.
But that doesn't leave much of an alternative on the conservative side. Republicans liked neo-conservativism because it was idealistic, and by the standards set by the decaying left, had become conservative. It allowed Republicans to cheer American Exceptionalism as the solution to all global problems, without understanding that its aggressive good cheer was completely misplaced.
Exceptionalism is exceptional. If American Exceptionalism can be plonked down in Iraq or Afghanistan, then it isn't exceptional anymore. And in fact, it can't be. The United States has conquered and reconstructed several countries before, and only the ones with a tradition of democracy that predated the need to conquer them, are worth mentioning today. And none of them are little Americas and have, at best, a conflicted relationship with the United States.
Romney is still echoing vaguely neo-conservative talking points, but it's doubtful that he, or anyone, besides McCain, really wants to invade Syria for the Muslim Brotherhood. Americans didn't want the Libyan War, and aside from some of senate fixtures like McCain, few Republicans really want to do it either.
The second set of September 11 attacks may have finally begun convincing Republicans that Muslims really don't want to be Americans and they aren't going to be turned into Americans any time soon. It has not quite led them to the logical conclusions to be drawn from that, but it still might. The death of the middle ground of neo-conservativism leaves few options but appeasement and belligerence, not democracy belligerence, but plain old fashioned saber rattling.
If Muslims can't be taught to be nice people and won't leave us alone, then there are two alternatives. Give them what they want or give them hell. Obama has tried the former with the expected results. The window on giving them hell is slowly starting to creak open, though I wouldn't expect many prominent Republican politicians to start talking like Patton any time soon.
The Israeli example has demonstrated that Muslims never miss an opportunity to sabotage their own appeasers. It's why the Israeli left has a death grip on unelected government positions, but is about as popular with the voters as cholera on a stick. The American left could learn from its example, but if it could learn from examples, it wouldn't be the left. Instead it banked its political capital on appeasing Muslims and it if gets a second term to do so, it will be that much closer to becoming completely unelectable-- especially when Muslims decide to celebrate another September 11 in an even flashier way and with a larger death toll.
The Israeli left did everything possible to appease Muslim terrorists and the terrorists repaid them by politically destroying them with constant violence. Now Obama is on the receiving end of the same treatment and had he been as familiar with the Muslim world as he claimed to be, then he would have known to expect that. And the same process will likely kill Eurabia in its own cradle.
The ball is in the court of the right. It can choose between fake moderation and assertive action. It can rediscover the military as a force for defending the country, rather than a means of introducing Muslims to the concept of elections, and it will be pursuing the popular course. But to do that it will have to believe in America, rather in the universal goodness of human nature and the other pablum that led us into this mess.

People are not interchangeable, apart from the governments. Governments reflect the people. No country will last for very long under a government that does not reflect its national character unless that government is backed by foreign armies. It is best to treat other governments as reflective of their peoples and to treat their peoples as reflective of their government. And it is best to keep a wary distance from any people and country that are under a system too different from our own for our own safety.
Above all else, it is important to make clear to our own people and to theirs, that we have borders and nations for a reason. That if foreign nations and peoples would like to use force to tell us what movies we can make, then we will use force to tell them what protests they can have, and that in a contest of force, we will win.
It is time for a new way, a way in which Muslims will no longer have to learn about America and Americans will no longer have to learn about Islam, where we will give up on winning each other's hearts and minds, and stick to watching each other's property lines. That is the argument that needs to be advanced in the face of Obama's catastrophic Arab Spring failures and the alternative to it is four more years of terror and appeasement.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

Ed Koch Reverses Position, Slams Obama’s “Weakness” on Muslims

he's as senile as all the other Jewish social liberals. he appears to flip flop cuz he can't deal with something existential that puts everything he believes into question. He'd like to ignore it, but it keeps creeping up on him. Romney put it best in Jerusalem. There are some cultures that are inferior to to others.

(Via Israpundit) Former NYC Mayor, Democrat Ed Koch, on Rosh Hashannah: “No one understands what ‘we have Israel’s back’ means”. By Mark Langfan, INN
At Park East Synagogue’s Rosh Hashannah High Holiday service, September 17, 2012, Former Mayor Ed Koch during his annual “sermon” from the pulpit, in front of over a thousand worshippers, said “I’m distressed.”

“President Obama is refusing to publicly make clear to Iran that ‘If you get the bomb, we will take you out.’”
Mayor Koch previously had publicly boasted of his close ties to President Obama. Mayor Koch also said “Nobody understands what ‘We have your back’” means. We shouldn’t have Israel’s ‘back’ we should have Israel’s ‘front’.

Elaborate »

Abu Mazen: Cancel the bluff?

Over the holiday, it was announced that 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen proposed canceling the bluff known as the Oslo Accords (Hat Tip: Memorandum).

Palestinian Authority head, Mahmoud Abbas, proposed cancelling the Oslo Accords with Israel at a weekend meeting of the PA leadership, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) told AFP on Tuesday.

PLO Executive Committee member Wassel Abu Yusef said Abbas raised the idea of "cancelling the Oslo agreement as well as the associated economic and security arrangements," at the meeting on Saturday and Sunday.

Abu Yusef said that "members of the Palestinian leadership had mixed opinions on the issue, and it was decided to postpone any decision until their next meeting," due to be held after Abbas's return from the UN General Assembly later this month. "It was the first time the Palestinian leadership put the issue of the Oslo agreement on the table since it was signed in 1993," Abu Yusef added.

Well, so much for having a 'permanent' agreement with the 'Palestinians.' Does this mean that they expect us to reassume control over all of Judea and Samaria? I'm game. Send the IDF back in to control them.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Muslims chant “slit the throats of Jews” on the streets of Paris.

(HT:TundraTabloids via mfs-theothernews.com)

Grandson of former president Jimmy Carter said he helped leak a secretly recorded video

Former President of the United State of America,
Jimmy Carter, visits at the Arab neighborhood of Si

Israel news photo: Flash 90

 ...The grandson of former president Jimmy Carter told NBC News that he was motivated by Republican attacks on his grandfather's foreign policy record to help leak a secretly recorded video that has become the most recent setback for the Mitt Romney campaign.

The video, which was originally provided to the liberal magazine Mother Jones, shows Romney telling wealthy donors that “47%” of the country “who are dependent on government” and “who believe they are victims” will vote for Obama no matter.

While Romney was attempting to argue that his campaign strategy must be to focus on swaying “the 5 to 10% in the center that are independents,” his words prompted the Obama camp to accuse the GOP presidential candidate of being opposed to half the electorate.
James Carter IV, who is 35 and unemployed, said he helped persuade the person who filmed the May 17 fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida, to leak the video to the press. Carter described himself as a “partisan Democrat” devoted to getting president Obama reelected.
“It gets under my skin — mostly the weakness on the foreign policy stuff," Carter told NBC. "I just think it's ridiculous. I don’t like criticism of my family."
While Jimmy Carter is notorious for his blatant anti-Israel stance, Romney is seen as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state.
Former President Carter recently addressed the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, despite opposition from the Republican Jewish Coalition as well as the National Jewish Democratic Council and many others.
Among the countless examples of President Carter’s viciously anti-Israel sentiments, his 2007 book, titled “Peace Not Apartheid,” contains numerous falsehoods about Israel, including the insinuation in its title that Israel resembles the apartheid regime of South Africa.

via israelnationalnews.com

There wasn't anything controversial on those tapes. Shows how disingenuous the Carter family is.

The Rape of Christopher Stevens

Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com
By obsessing over the 14-minute YouTube Muhammad video and its maker, the mainstream media ultimately exonerates the inexcusable and murderous response of the Islamic world.
There is only one question: did those who make this movie break any law? No, they did not—and so the matter should end there, and the media should move on. Focusing on those who did not break any American laws as a way to take the focus off those who murdered and initiated an act of war against the United States is not only misleading; it validates and gives Islamic blasphemy laws precedence over American freedoms.
Worse, even if making movies deemed offensive to Muslims was illegal in the U.S., the fact is, these embassy attacks, which "coincidentally" began on September 11, have nothing to do with the movie. On September 10, I wrote an article titled "Jihadis Threaten to Burn U.S. Embassy in Cairo." The demand that the U.S. release its imprisoned jihadis, including the Blind Sheikh, was behind these threats. There was no mention of "offensive movies." My source, El Fagr, an Arabic website, reported all this on September 8.

In other words, several days before Muslims were angry about this movie they were threatening to burn down the U.S. embassy in Cairo. I had even seen sporadic Arabic reports, from months back, talking about "extremist elements" threatening the embassy. The movie is just a pretext—aided and abetted by the media, not to mention the Obama administration: Hillary Clinton called the video "disgusting and reprehensible," wording which is more befitting those who murdered (and possibly raped, see below) Americans; the U.S. embassy itself apologized for those who "hurt the religious feelings of Muslims"; and the administration asked YouTube to remove the 14 minute trailer.
Thus the U.S. administration validates Islam's blasphemy laws and, once again, aligns itself with America's jihadi enemies.
Seventy-year-old, retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) put it well, when he suggested that the administration's response to the embassy attacks was akin to a court asking a rape victim for an apology, saying: "It's like the judge telling the woman who got raped, 'You asked for it because of the way you dressed.'"
Nor is the rape entirely allegorical. According to the Arabic website Tayyar, "the American ambassador in Libya [Christopher Stevens] was sexually raped before being killed by the gunmen who stormed the embassy building in Benghazi last night [Tuesday, September 11], in protestation of a film insulting to the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him."
Sexual abuse and degradation is a common tactic used against non-Muslims, especially women, as the repeatedly raped Lara Logan found. For example, a report in Arabic media that just appeared discusses how Christian women—identified by wearing crosses around their necks or simply not wearing a hijab—are subject to sexual harassment, verbal abuse, and even threats of rape on the streets of Egypt. This has only "become much more blatant and terrifying [after the embassy attacks]—and has even reached the point of threats of genocide and purging the land of Egypt of infidel Christians," writes one female Christian in Egypt.
Nor are men immune from such rapes. In fact, the photos of Ambassador Stevens—stripped of clothes, bloodied and tortured right before he was killed—very much resemble the photos of Gaddafi right before he was killed. One U.S.-supported "freedom-fighter," for example, can be seen sodomizing Gadaffi with a rod as others dragged him along.
The al-Qaeda affiliated men who sexually abused and killed Gaddafi are the same sort of men who sexually abused and killed America's ambassador. We were told that the late Libyan dictator was killed because he was an evil oppressor of his people. Why was the American ambassador killed, who had hailed the revolution and was there helping to "build a better Libya"?
These are the questions the media and the Obama administration need to be answering—not obsessing over a second-rate YouTube video and questioning hard-won American freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment. They should be explaining why it is that, after four years of appeasing the Islamic world in ways unprecedented, including by helping oust America's longstanding allies like Egypt's Mubarak to empower Islamists, all we have to show for it are dead and violated Americans, stormed embassies, burned U.S. flags, and greater anti-American sentiment than ever before.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

(via docstalk.blogspot.com)
It is a safe bet that the nature of the tragic event in Libya will be kept as hazy and unrecognizable as the feminism that guides our present government. I noticed the final analysis of our diplomat Stevens has been muted. There were some attempts by the AFP to claim Stevens was not raped, when the Libyan Free Press contradicted those claims. Certainly if our government had a close examination of the body at this point, then if there was evidence that he had not been sodomized they would know by now. Of course it would not help the Obama administration to admit that such an ending occurred so they have made it appear as though nothing had been talked about. On the other hand perhaps the Obama administration would like to deny the greater ugliness to Stevens death, but that would be refuted by the family of Stevens who would of also seen those final reports. Apparently the State Dept is dealing with this by keeping the public in a fog. This is the nature of a feminism. This is the nature of our foreign policy. This is the nature of what is running America. We are getting RAPED IN THE ASS and YOU CAN FEEL YOU ARE GETTING RAPED IN THE ASS, but like FEMINISM even though your ass hurts there will be some snarky FEMINIST claiming you can't prove you are FUCKED because they will ask you to define FEMINISM!