Terrorism
April 15, 2013 — John Hinderaker
It is too early to say much about today’s terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon, but one thing struck me when I watched this video, which Steve posted earlier today, as well as other videos and photos of the aftermath of the explosions: The response to the bombs by the crowd at the finish line was, I think, exemplary. Sure, many people fled from the explosions, and reasonably so. But
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April 15, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yes. Explosive devices don’t go off in crowds by accident. Someone was trying to kill indiscriminately, which is the hallmark of terrorism. So was President Obama wrong not to call it terrorism in his briefing, using instead the words “senseless loss” due to “explosions”? No. Until we know more, there’s no point in presidential labeling. Calling this terrorism would suggest different things to different people. To most, it would suggest
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April 15, 2013 — Steven Hayward
There’s no good purpose in adding to the half-informed speculation on the TV news outlets about what has taken place in Boston. So far only the NY Post is reporting a Saudi national in custody, but I recall how the authorities rounded up the first Middle Easterner they could find after Oklahoma City in 1995, not to mention the rush to judgment about Richard Jewell after the Atlanta Olympics bombing.
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April 15, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Eliana Johnson at NRO is providing updates on the Boston Marathon massacre. It appears that more than 100 people have been admitted to local hospitals for treatment for the effects of the explosions. The Boston police reports two deaths. The New York Post puts the number at 12. Another explosion at the JFK library appears not to have caused any injuries. The New York post reports that a Saudi national
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April 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Extending the theme of personal testimony this morning a little further than it should go, I want to turn to the IDF Blog for a report you won’t catch in the mainstream media: On September 23, 2011, Asher Palmer, 25, was driving with his infant son, Yonatan, on Route 60 near Kiryat Arba. He was headed towards Jerusalem to visit his pregnant wife. Driving in the opposite direction was former
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April 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Wall Street Journal published a book review by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey yesterday. Judge Mukasey (as I will refer to him here) is one great American. He was the trial judge in the case of the Blind Sheikh and a man who answered the call of duty by resigning from the bench to take the position of Attorney General for the last two years of the Bush administration.
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April 2, 2013 — Scott Johnson
As I note below, the New York Post broke the story today that Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin has landed an adjunct professorship at the Columbia School of Social Work and is also a “scholar in residence” at NYU Law. In his book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and Overlawyered America (Encounter, 2011), Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson writes about the propensity of sixties extremists (Bernardine Dohrn, Angela Davis,
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March 31, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Last year the New York Times Magazine featured a cover story by Tom Robbins (not that Tom Robbins) on one of the fanatic leftists who participated in the infamous Brink’s robbery in New York. As George Russell recounts in “The other Rosenberg case,” the October 1981 robbery, which ended in a careening series of car chases and a bloody shootout, left two policemen and an unarmed Brink’s employee dead and
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March 29, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Elliott Abrams wonders where the hard core jihadists currently fighting in Syria — an estimated 5,000 of them — will go when/if the fighting ends there. Israeli officials naturally are asking the same question. According to Abrams, the Israelis identify the following possibilities: They may go west to Lebanon, to fight the Shiite group Hezbollah. They may go south to try to cross into the Golan, and fight the Israeli
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March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The President of the United States had some incredibly foolish things to say during his trip to the Middle East. Some of them were said during his press conference with Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the PLO and the President of the Palestinian Authority, now serving out the ninth year of his four-year presidential term. The Wall Street Journal has posted a transcript of the press conference here. Standing under
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March 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama said some good things in Israel. The good things he said contradicted the thesis of his first-term approach to Israel. In the style of what might be called Obama knows best — knows best what is good for you — he also said some foolish and patronizing things that represented continuity with his first-term approach. In his speech to Israeli students, for example, Obama gave the impression that
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March 21, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Remember the Fort Hood massacre? It occurred in early November of 2009, when Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people on a military base. Three and half years later, the military still has not tried Hasan. Not that a trial of his guilt or innocence is necessary. Hasan asked, through his attorney, to plead guilty to 13 counts of premeditated murder. However, Army rules prohibit a judge from
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March 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
BBC Middle East editor Paul Danahar happened to be on hand in Gaza for the opening of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. When the son of Danahar’s BBC Gaza colleague Jihad Masharawi was killed at the outset of the operation this past November, Danahar all but accused Israel of murder. Via his Twitter account @pdanahar, Danahar tweeted his reaction to young Masharawi’s death: “Questioned [sic] asked here is: if Israel
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March 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Paul Danahar is the BBC Middle East editor and the subject of part 3 of this series, which I will wind up tomorrow. When the son of Danahar’s BBC Gaza colleague Jihad Masharawi was killed at the outset of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense this past November, Danahar all but accused Israel of murder. Via his Twitter account @pdanahar, Danahar tweeted his reaction to young Masharawi’s death: “Questioned [sic] asked
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March 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
BBC Middle East editor Paul Danahar was on hand in Gaza at the outset of Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s attempt to suppress the firing of rockets by Hamas on Israeli civilians. Danahar was therefore close to hand around the time that the son of BBC Arabic picture editor Jihad Masharawi’s son was killed by a munition that Danahar described as a shell landed in Masharawi’s home, which Danahar visited
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March 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Recently, Iran has been expelling al Qaeda officials who holed up there for years. Bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, is only the latest example. U.S. officials and terrorism experts tell the Washington Post that these expulsions suggest growing tension between Iran’s Shiite clerics and al Qaeda’s Sunni terrorists. Yet officials and experts also believe that Iran still permits al Qaeda to use Iranian territory as a transit route to
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March 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A few years back the Daily Mail reported on the BBC’s “impartiality summit.” The story discussed the political correctness that suffocates the BBC. Only a few years earlier, the BBC was publicly disgraced in the Hutton Inquiry. The Hutton Inquiry failed to prompt the kind of historical examination of the BBC that it richly deserves. The institutional rot at the BBC is generations old. Biographies of Winston Churchill note mostly
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