One of my favorite Facebook groups is “2nd Amendment Hotties,” and apparently more than a few other people like it too, as it has something like 16,000 “likes” on FB. Would seem an omission not to share some of its awesomeness with Power Line readers, especially since we’re still in a too-long hiatus of beauty pageants worthy of John’s coverage. So enjoy this respite from scandalmania for a holiday Friday.
If memory serves, Irving Kristol once remarked that the term “peace,” as it was used by the left, “is a Stalinist concept,” since the intent of the so-called “peace movement” was the unilateral disarmament of the West and the triumph of Communism. Today the term “diversity” works the same way: it has become a term meaning the opposite of its dictionary meaning, and is a vehicle for racial division and resentment.
Charlotte Allen writes splendidly in the Weekly Standard about “white privilege” conferences where Orwell would be astounded to find that the hate sessions go for a lot longer than the two minutes prescribed in 1984. Needless to say, the lack of irony is evident in the very fact of such conferences, for who is more “privileged” these days than academics and activists who can travel to these hootenannies where the registration fee alone is $435. But good for Charlotte; my experience, having long ago attended similar preposterous round-robins of radical resentment, is that the worst thing you can do is simply report what is said. Like mushrooms, these kinds of lefty hate-ins flourish best in the dark.
But if you needed fresh evidence, check out this story out of Northwestern University, where a white student was rejected for a diversity appointment because “he is a white heterosexual male.” The student’s name, incidentally, is Stephen Piotrkowski. Just a hunch here, but he sounds like someone with immigrant roots that don’t trace back to the Anglosphere, and as such would represent what ought to be meant by “diversity” if it was meant seriously. (Turns out his sister is gay, but that’s apparently not enough.) But pigment is everything for the diversity-haters.
I have written before about the lack of expression of opposition to the Schumer-Rubio amnesty legislation on leading Fox News programs such as Sean Hannity’s. While amnesty opponents receive little or no air time, Marco Rubio appears fairly regularly with Hannity to field mostly softball questions.
Now comes word that Rubio will appear tonight on a “special edition” of Hannity to field questions from an audience of experts on immigration. Will Rubio really be subjected to tough questioning from opponents of Schumer-Rubio? Or is will the format be rigged to enable Rubio to swat down a few watered-down objections and always get the last word?
We’ll see. But given the fact that, to my knowledge, Rubio has never actually debated anyone on Fox, I fear that this is just another set-up.
A knowledgeable reader who asks us to withhold his name writes to comment on our post “On section 1203.” Our reader writes:
I’m writing to comment on your post on the IRS and section 1203. Like the retired CID agent you quote, I’m a regular reader and a fan. I’m also an attorney with many years of service with Chief Counsel’s Office of the IRS. I agree with most of what the writer says (especially as respects section 1203), but I would qualify what he says about the significance of time elapsed statistics as it affects the targeting scandal. The writer is absolutely correct that time elapsed statistics are one of the principal, if not the principal, driving metrics in the IRS (much to the frustration of a lot of the more conscientious agents and mangers).
However, while elapsed time is measured on pretty much everything, managers’ performance evaluations don’t necessarily take into account elapsed time on all case types (or at least they don’t in Counsel), with the predictable result that the case types aren’t taken into account languish while those that are go to the top of pile irrespective of their relative importance. I don’t know whether time elapsed on the types of applications at issue was an element of TEGE managers’ evaluations or not during the time period in issue (these things can change from year to year), but I wouldn’t assume that it was. If it wasn’t, the fixation on time elapsed would actually help explain the time these applications were pending.
If and when I have some time, I’d like to give you some thoughts as to why most of the conventional wisdom concerning the IRS scandal is wrong and why the wrong leasons will likely be drawn from this sad affair. For now I’ll just make two observations: First, the image of the IRS as being composed of a bunch of left-wing activists that is being peddled in some quarters is factually wrong (I’d note that my own organization has been the breeding ground for such well known radical leftist as Michele Bachmann). I have no hard data to prove it, but I’m convinced that the IRS has a higher percentage of center and center-right employees than almost any other Federal agency (at least among the field agents; I can’t speak to the national office types). When you think about it, this only makes sense, since what IRS agents do is accounting, and accounting is numbers, which is something liberals neither like nor are particularly adept at.
Second, there is no single monolithic IRS culture and any generalization made about the IRS as a whole is likely to be wrong. There are significant cultural differences among various divisions and between the field offices and the national office. And the service centers are a whole other world. For better or worse, the reorganization that followed RRA ‘98 has made the IRS something of an amalgamation of separate organizations. TEGE, which is where current problem lies, probably has less interaction with the rest of the organization than any other division.
Since the rancid Weiner (Anthony) announced his campaign for the mayoralty of New York, I’ve been looking for an excuse to enter the Weiner (punning) sweepstakes. Now I think the Houston Chronicle may have provided the fodder. Finding the local angle in a New York story, the Chronicle reports on Weiner’s incredibly efficient rehabilitation in Houston:
Anthony Weiner’s New York mayoral candidacy was only made more improbable today after he revealed that he visited a Houston psychiatric facility following his resignation from Congress in 2011.
Haunted by scandal surrounding his sexually explicit online communications with women, the Democratic former congressman sought treatment for his compulsive behavior from mental health professionals at the Gabbard Center.
According to its website, the facility provides “3-day outpatient psychiatric evaluation,” particularly to “professionals who are in personal or professional crises.”
While Weiner did not disclose his diagnosis, he told the New York Daily News that the Center was critical in his “journey” to becoming a “new man.”
“It wasn’t an addiction thing,” he told the Daily News. “I mean, it was just a place to get away and to meet people…who might be able to help.”
In his resignation statement, Weiner said that his main priority upon stepping down was to “heal from the damage that I have caused.” Weiner told the Daily News that he “didn’t go to rehab anywhere” – simply that he worked with a referred therapist at the Center over a few days.
In his resignation statement, Weiner brilliantly turned himself from a perpetrator into a victim. He needed to “heal from the damage” that he had caused. Let the healing begin! For a man in a hurry, three days sounds about right.
Where did Weiner turn for advice on his short road to rehabilitation? He could have turned to the Big He who officiated at his wedding, but Clinotn would surely have advised a more plausible timeline on the journey to becoming “a new man.” Three days!
We know, however, that the journey to new manhood isn’t over yet. It won’t be complete without the help of the New York voters whose assistance Weiner requires to achieve victory in the race for the Democratic nomination.
UPDATE: I see Wesley Pruden is thinking along the same lines, and the New York Times is covering Weiner’s raucous reentry on the campaign trail.
I have greatly admired the work of James Rosen over the years. He seems to me a classic old-fashioned reporter, as the events of the past week have strongly suggested. And while working his day job at Fox News, he also wrote an intensely interesting biography cum history, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate.
Rosen’s biography of Mitchell was unjustly neglected upon its publication in 2008. It appears not even to have made it into a paperback edition. Nevertheless, the book is excellent. Rosen is a talented researcher and the book represents a labor of love. He started work on the book in 1991, seventeen years before it was published, with the support of “the late, great William F. Buckley, Jr.” and his “mentor” and “friend,” Dan Rather, as Rosen puts in his acknowledgements.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: the subject is incredibly timely. Rosen’s work on the book perfectly equips him to place his current ordeal in the proper context.
Fox News chief Roger Ailes has sent the following memo of support to Rosen and his fellow Fox employees. It leaves a lot unsaid about the larger context of the Obama administration’s assault on Fox News, but it rings all the right bells:
Dear colleagues,
The recent news about the FBI’s seizure of the phone and email records of Fox News employees, including James Rosen, calls into question whether the federal government is meeting its constitutional obligation to preserve and protect a free press in the United States. We reject the government’s efforts to criminalize the pursuit of investigative journalism and falsely characterize a Fox News reporter to a Federal judge as a “co-conspirator” in a crime. I know how concerned you are because so many of you have asked me: why should the government make me afraid to use a work phone or email account to gather news or even call a friend or family member? Well, they shouldn’t have done it. The administration’s attempt to intimidate Fox News and its employees will not succeed and their excuses will stand neither the test of law, the test of decency, nor the test of time. We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth.
I am proud of your tireless effort to report the news over the last 17 years. I stand with you, I support you and I thank you for your reporting with courageous optimism. Too many Americans fought and died to protect our unique American right of press freedom. We can’t and we won’t forget that. To be an American journalist is not only a great responsibility, but also a great honor. To be a Fox journalist is a high honor, not a high crime. Even this memo of support will cause some to demonize us and try to find irrelevant things to cause us to waver. We will not waver.
As Fox News employees, we sometimes are forced to stand alone, but even then when we know we are reporting what is true and what is right, we stand proud and fearless. Thank you for your hard work and all your efforts.
Sincerely,Roger Ailes
For more on Ailes, see Conrad Black’s New Criterion review of the new book on Ailes by Zev Chafets.
Via InstaPundit/Erik Wemple.
President Obama delivered an address today at the National Defense University called “The Future of our Fight Against Terrorism.” Actually, part of the speech was about the past, including much self-congratulation and some shots at President Bush.
This part of the speech is revisionist rubbish. As Max Boot explains:
Obama said, for example, that after he came into office, “we unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with Congress.” Umm, actually all of that happened in Bush’s second term.
He also took a swipe at the admittedly imperfect terminology favored by Bush (deliberately and understandably formulated to avoid any mention of our actual enemy—Islamist extremists), saying “we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ — but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.” Actually, that’s exactly what GWOT meant when used by the Bush administration: “a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle” terrorist networks. Even Obama’s closing line—“That’s who the American people are. Determined, and not to be messed with”—sounds as if it could easily have been delivered in a Texas twang.
As for the future of the fight against terrorism, Obama declared: “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.”
This is dangerous rubbish. The fight against terrorism is defined by what terrorists attempt to accomplish. Thus, as much as we would like to, we cannot “define the nature and scope of this struggle.” If we wish to fight terrorism successfully, we must be prepared to combat it in all of its forms, with special focus on the terrorists’ methods of choice, which are always evolving.
Obama contended that “the scale of [the threat we face today] closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.” He implied, therefore, that our approach to terrorism should more closely resemble those used in the pre-9/11 world. For example, he called for the refinement, and ultimately repeal, the of the mandate provided by the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF).
This is fallacious rubbish. We know that the pre-9/11, pre-AUMF, tactics didn’t work.
Obama proclaimed that al Qaeda is a vastly diminished force in Afghanistan and Pakistan:
Today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11.
But al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan spend so much time thinking about their own safety because our military puts their safety in jeopardy. Obama, though, is pulling our military out of the region:
In Afghanistan, we will complete our transition to Afghan responsibility for security. Our troops will come home. Our combat mission will come to an end. And we will work with the Afghan government to train security forces, and sustain a counter-terrorism force which ensures that al Qaeda can never again establish a safe-haven to launch attacks against us or our allies.
This is wishful rubbish. When our combat mission comes to an end, al Qaeda will think less about its safety and, in all likelihood, more about how to conduct terrorism against U.S. interests in other regions. And having chased the U.S. out of Afghanistan, al Qaeda will likely once again become a rising, confident force. Relying on the Afghan government to counteract these realities is foolish.
To make matters worse, Obama signaled a shift in his policy of using drones. Going forward, he said, the U.S. will only use drone strikes against terrorists who “pose a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,” where there is a “near certainty” that the target is present, and there is a “near certainty” that civilians “will not be injured or killed.”
As John Yoo points out:
The president risks rendering impossible the only element of his counterterrorism strategy that has bred success. An obvious problem is that there is almost never a “near certainty” that a target is the person we think he is and that he is located where we think. President Obama either is imposing a far too strict level of proof on our military and intelligence officers or the standards will be rarely followed.
Even if Obama wanted to water down the drone program in this way, why would he announce this decision? Yoo correctly point out that, in response to Obama’s announcement, “terrorists will always meet and travel in entourages of innocent family members and others — a tactic adopted by potential targets of Israeli targeted killings in the West Bank.”
In sum, President Obama is deliberately weakening America’s ability to protect its citizens from terrorism. Having been reelected, he feels free to be true to his core convictions. Thus, to a greater degree than before, he will permit left-wing ideology to trump national security concerns.
“Arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” Winston Churchill
“Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” Inscription on the Liberty Bell
