Best of the Web Today - February 27, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Foggy Bottom Sides With Terror Advocate
The State Department's annual human-rights report came out this week, and it criticizes Israel over the accidental killing of Rachel Corrie last March:
Israel demonstrated disregard for the work of human rights monitors in official statements, and soldiers attempted to disrupt their work. On May 21, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom said, "Most human rights offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip provide shelter for Palestinian terrorists."
On March 16, an Israeli bulldozer clearing land in Rafah in the Gaza Strip crushed and killed Rachel Corrie, 23, a US Citizen peace activist. Corrie was standing in front of the bulldozer, [and] was wearing a reflective vest. Eyewitness demonstrators stated that they believe the driver knew Rachel was in front of the bulldozer as he proceeded forward. The IDF conducted two investigations into the case, including a polygraph of the operator, and found that no negligence on the part of the operator. The operator knew that there were demonstrators in the area, but claimed he did not see Corrie at the time she was struck. However, the report of the IDF Judge Advocate General recommended several remedial measures including remedying blindspots from the cabs of armored bulldozers, for improved safety during future operations.
But Corrie was no "human rights monitor." As we noted last March, she was attempting to obstruct an Israeli operation to destroy tunnels that Palestinian Arabs used to smuggle weapons for use in terrorism.
And why is Foggy Bottom so dismissive of Shalom's assertion that so-called human-rights offices shelter Palestinian terrorists? The week after Corrie died, as we noted, Israel captured a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist at the Jenin office of the International Solidarity Movement, the group under whose auspices Corrie had been acting in Rafah.
The credibility of the State Department's human rights reports took another hit last week, when the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case called Chen v. INS (link in PDF) held that the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Board of Immigration Appeals had erred in ordering Tian-Yong Chen deported. Chen is seeking political asylum, arguing that if he returns to his native Red China, he will face persecution on account of his Roman Catholic faith.
In rejecting Chen's claim, the board cited the State Department's human-rights report on China, which downplayed the degree to which China persecutes ordinary churchmen (as opposed to leaders). Judge Jose Cabranes wrote for the court:
The immigration court cannot assume that a report produced by the State Department--an agency of the Executive Branch of Government that is necessarily bound to be concerned to avoid abrading relations with other countries, especially other major world powers--presents the most accurate picture of human rights in the country at issue. We note the widely held view that the State Department's reports are sometimes skewed toward the governing administration's foreign-policy goals and concerns.
What's astonishing about the Corrie case is that the department's report is skewed against the governing administration's foreign-policy goals and concerns. President Bush, after all, has made clear that fighting terrorism is his administration's top priority. Why in the world is the State Department condemning as a "human rights" violation the accidental death of a terror advocate?
We Get Results
Jews are welcome to visit Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's embassy in Washington now says. Saudi Arabia also has removed from its tourism Web site the list of those who are ineligible to apply for tourist visas, which, as we noted yesterday, included "Jewish People." (The original is cached here.)
"It is not the policy of the Kingdom to deny the issuance of visas on the basis of religion," according to the Saudi Embassy press release:
Yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner, a consistent critic of Saudi Arabia, issued a statement in which he incorrectly said that it is the policy of Saudi Arabia not to issue visas to people of the Jewish faith. He based this information on material posted on the website of the Saudi tourism board. Rep. Weiner's office was informed by Embassy officials that this does not reflect the visa policies of Saudi Arabia and the visa requirements are available through the Saudi consulates and are posted on the Embassy website. Further, the Supreme Commission for Tourism was informed that the information on the website was not correct and as a consequence the erroneous material was removed from the website.
According to Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan: "I am surprised that Rep. Weiner would issue a statement after his office was advised by officials of the Embassy that the concerns he raised were not the kingdom's policy. At this time, we should be working toward greater understanding and better relations between the United States and the Middle East. Rep. Weiner and his actions only serve to spread doubt and mistrust."
Bandar's statement is at best appallingly ungracious. If the Saudis are telling the truth here, it is still their error, not Weiner's. And does anyone really believe that the list included "Jewish People" owing to a mere clerical error?
Presumably Saudi Arabia still bars visits by Israelis, as do most Arab and Muslim countries. (Egypt, Jordan and Turkey are the notable exceptions, and Saudis do allow Israeli Muslims in for the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.) Most Arab countries also refuse entry to anyone whose passport shows evidence of travel to Israel--either an Israeli stamp or a stamp from Egyptian or Jordanian entry points on the Israeli border.
The Dubai tourism Web site--Dubai is one of the United Arab Emirates--includes this stipulation: " Nationals of 'Israel' may not enter the U.A.E." That's right, the Emiratis can't even bring themselves to refer to Israel without Reuters-style scare quotes.
We Guess the Critics Had a Point
"Critics worry that Mr. Gibson's film, which has already been embraced by Christian preachers as a tool of evangelization, will reawaken old prejudices--not that Jews are guilty of killing Christ, but that Jewish liberals control the entertainment and media industries and have imposed a secular, left-leaning bias on movies and television."--New York Times, Feb. 20
"Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood's most prominent figures are also Jewish. . . . Many in the relentlessly secular movie industry see [Gibson's] recent religious conversion--he practices a traditionalist version of Roman Catholicism--as another form of addiction."--New York Times, Feb. 26
A Dowdwork Orange
" 'Now,' said the prison charlie, 'listen to the Word of the Lord.' Then he picked up the big book and flipped over the pages. . . . It had been arranged as part of my like further education to read in the book and even have music on the chapel stereo while I was reading, O my brothers. . . . One day the charles said to me, squeezing me like tight with his bolshy beefy rooker: 'Ah, 6655321, think on the divine suffering. Meditate on that, my boy.' . . . So I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better that there was something in it. While the stereo played bits of lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion."--from "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, 1962
"This is a Mel Gibson film, so you come out wanting to kick somebody's teeth in. In 'Braveheart' and 'The Patriot,' his other emotionally manipulative historical epics, you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman. Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history . . ."--Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Feb. 26
Reuters Imitates Us
You may have noticed that on occasion we make a joke about John Kerry's habit of constantly reminding people that he served in Vietnam. We're far from alone in this, of course; these days just about everyone enjoys a laugh now and then at the expense of the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam. But we may have been the first; we were doing it as early as December 2002.
Anyway, now even Reuters is following our lead. Yesterday the "news" service moved a nonstory about Kerry's reaction to "The Passion of the Christ." He didn't have much of one, as he hadn't seen the movie. But after four paragraphs of nothing, Reuters delivers the punch line:
The four-term senator from Massachusetts hasn't had much time to see movies lately. He has been running for president virtually since the beginning of last year.
In fact, the last movie he saw in a theater was another Mel Gibson flick released in 2002 called "We Were Soldiers," set in Vietnam where Kerry commanded a Navy Swift boat and was decorated for heroism.
We never saw "We Were Soldiers," but somehow we doubt it was about Kerry, who was not a soldier but a naval officer. Byron York of the Hill, however, reports there is a movie about Kerry's Vietnam experience, produced and directed by John Kerry. York describes a 1996 report in the Boston Globe:
Kerry told reporter Charles Sennott the oft-repeated story of the February 1969 firefight in which Kerry attacked the Viet Cong who ambushed his Swift boat. . . .
The future senator was so "focused on his future ambitions," Sennott reported, that he bought a Super-8 movie camera, returned to the scene, and re-enacted the skirmish on film.
It was that film, transferred to videotape, that Kerry played for Sennott.
"I'll show you where they shot from. See? That's the hole covered up with reeds," Kerry said as he ran the tape in slow motion. . . .
Through hours of watching the films in the den of his newly renovated Beacon Hill mansion, it becomes apparent that these are memories and footage he returns to often," Sennott wrote.
York argues that Kerry is "stuck in a Vietnam-era time warp"; he even plays ancient Jimi Hendrix tunes at campaign rallies. Sixty-year-old Kerry "seems far older than, say, the 71-year-old Donald Rumsfeld--a man who is always moving ahead, not inclined to lecture about the way things were 30 or 40 years ago."
I Do. Now I Don't.
"Democratic front-runner John Kerry yesterday came out for a Massachusetts constitutional ban on gay marriage and suggested that a law he once blasted as 'gay-bashing' should remain the law of the land," reports the New York Post's Deborah Orin. After telling the Boston Globe he backs a state constitutional amendment to preserve the traditional definition of marriage, Kerry had this exchange, during last night's debate, with the Los Angeles Times' Ron Brownstein:
Brownstein: You say you oppose gay marriage. You also oppose the . . . federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Do you think Georgia and Ohio, or any other state, should have to recognize a gay marriage performed in California or Massachusetts? And if not, why did you vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, designed to prevent that, in 1996?
Kerry: I said very clearly--I could not have been more clear on the floor of the United States Senate. My speech starts out expressing my personal opinion, that . . . I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. But notwithstanding that belief, there was no issue in front of the country when that was put before the United States Senate. And I went to the floor of the Senate and said--even though I was up for re-election, "I will not take part in gay bashing on the floor of the United States Senate. I will not allow the Senate to be used for that kind of rhetoric." . . .
Brownstein: You also said in that statement that you believe the Defense of Marriage Act was fundamentally unconstitutional. And if the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, isn't President Bush right, that the only way to guarantee that no state has to recognize a gay marriage performed in any other state is a federal constitutional amendment?
Kerry: In fact, I think the interpretation--I think, under the full faith and credit laws, that I was incorrect in that statement. I think, in fact, that no state has to recognize something that is against their public policy. And for 200 years, we have left marriage up to the states. There is no showing whatsoever today that any state in the country, including my own--which is now dealing with its own constitutional amendment--is incapable of dealing with what they would like to do. And I believe George Bush is doing this--he's even reversed his own position. He's reversed Dick Cheney's position. He is doing this because he's in trouble. He's trying to reach out to his base. He's playing politics with the Constitution of the United States.
Brownstein: . . . So are you saying that, now that gay marriage is on the table in a place like California or Massachusetts, that you would support the Defense of Marriage Act?
Kerry: No, because--
Brownstein: That it's not . . .
Kerry: --the Defense of Marriage Act is the law of the land today.
Larry King: And you would support it today?
Brownstein: And you would leave it--
Kerry: . . . no votes to take it back. And I think it's more important right now to pass the employment nondiscrimination act, hate crimes legislation, and begin to move us forward so we have on the books those laws that will allow us to protect people in this country.
The Boston Globe reports the issue similarly tripped up John Edwards during a campaign appearance yesterday in Claremont, Calif.:
Speaking to reporters yesterday afternoon, Edwards explained that he personally opposes gay marriage but supports civil unions, and believes each state should set its own marriage policy.
When asked why civil unions could not simply be called marriages, Edwards said, "My answer is the same."
Asked why states, not the federal government, should decide policy, he replied, "Because it's something I think should be decided by the states."
And when asked to explain his personal opposition to gay marriage, he snapped, "I'm done with that question."
The two Johns' eagerness to change the subject suggests that they sense they're on the losing side of the question politically. During the debate, incidentally, Edwards said the proposed constitutional amendment is a solution for "a problem that does not exist." That'll come as news to anyone who's been watching the recent shenanigans in Boston and San Francisco.
Losers for Kerry
The Los Angeles Times reports John Kerry picked up an endorsement yesterday from California's ousted governor, Gray Davis, who by the way served in Vietnam:
Davis appeared with Kerry at a rally at the California African American Museum shortly after the debate. "I was proud to serve with you" in Vietnam, Davis said, saluting the candidate. "I am ready to enlist in the Kerry army" for president.
Hey, maybe President Bush can win California.
Iowa Terror Cells
"Kerry said he would address the root caucuses of terrorism by protecting chemical and nuclear facilities, increasing security at ports and airports, restoring federal funding for 100,000 police officers and adding 100,000 fire fighters across the country."--Associated Press, Feb. 27
A Murderer's Right to Choose
By a vote of 254-163, the House yesterday approved the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, under which attacking a pregnant woman counts as two separate assaults, one on her and one on her unborn child. Opponents argue that this somehow undermines the right to abortion:
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said it would be the first time in federal law that a fetus would be recognized as having the same rights as the born. The bill "is not about shielding pregnant women," she said. "It is and has always been about undermining freedom of choice."
The House, said Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, was "taking advantage of tragedy to promote the far-right agenda of trying to rob women of their right to choose."
Nita Lowey and Kate Michelman, standing tall for a murderer's right to choose. And in truth, they are the ones undermining the intellectual case for abortion rights. The pro-life argument has always been that abortion is murder; Lowey and Michelman's view is that murder is abortion.
Stopp Charder Skulz!
Massachusetts schoolteachers may have undermined their own effort to block the creation of a charter school in Marlboro simply by doing a lousy job. The Boston Herald reports:
All the proof state Board of Education member Roberta Schaefer needed to OK controversial new charter schools were the letters before her from public school students.
Schaefer ridiculed the letters against a proposed school in Marlboro for their missing punctuation and sloppy spelling--including a misspelling of the word 'school" in one missive.
"If I didn't think a charter school was necessary, these letters have convinced me the high school was not doing an adequate job in teaching English language arts," Schaefer said.
But Kathleen Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, says her organization won't give up trying to nix the new school. So remember, if you're sending your kid to a school in the Bay State, luk 4 the union labble.
Zero-Tolerance Watch
Good news from Birmingham, Ala., where the Sun Valley Elementary School has reversed its decision to suspend nine-year-old Austin Crittenden for bring a one-inch "gun" from a G.I. Joe action figure to school:
[Principal Teresa] Ragland had suspended the boy Monday after deciding the tiny toy was prohibited by school policy against "possession of a weapon firearm replica."
But [Austin's grandmother Vicki] Stewart said it became clear at a Thursday morning meeting with Birmingham City Schools officials that the policy only concerns weapons replicas that someone could consider to be dangerous.
"Obviously, this little piece of plastic could not be perceived to cause bodily harm to someone," she said.
We noted the case yesterday.
What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Experts urge use of common sense in bad weather"--subheadline, Decatur (Ala.) Daily, Feb. 26
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What Will We Do in Years Ahead Without Experts?
"Experts See Multilingual World in Years Ahead"--headline, Kansas City Star, Feb. 27
What Would the Higher Education Circuit Do Without Experts?
"Some experts think rioting is just the latest wacky behavior to spread through the higher education circuit."--Reuters, Feb. 26
Tommy Smith, Ladies Man
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the Georgia Legislature is taking up the pressing issue men having to wait for women while they use the toilet:
Rep. Tommy Smith (D-Nicholls) introduced legislation Wednesday requiring new state and local government buildings to have twice as many toilets in the women's restroom as in the men's. Several female legislators have signed on as co-sponsors.
"It's time-consuming for us to wait around for our date or our wife to get through the restroom," Smith said.
Let's see if we have this straight: Tommy Smith takes his dates to government buildings? And he still manages to get women to go out with him? Wow, what's his secret?
It's the Eponymy, Stupid
Thanks to those readers who've written urging us to continue this feature. To those who've written to say they find it vexatious and wish it would go away, thanks for sticking with us anyhow. One day your loyalty will be rewarded.
To get today's fun under way, meet Patricia Stryker, director of political action and legislation for Teamsters Local 237 in New York City. Her north-of-the-border counterpart is Lindsay Pickett, an official with the Canadian Auto Workers. Britain's Chartered Institute of Bankers lists on its roster of fellows one Robert Banks (link in PDF), and we so hope he goes by "Rob." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of drought-stricken California, meanwhile, has just named a new director of water resources: Les Snow.
You say you want funny business names? Happy to oblige. The Skelton Funeral Home of Reform, Ala., Apache Tire of Tucson, Ariz., Dingman's Collision Center of Omaha, Neb., and the team of Krein and Moen, optometrists, in Devils Lake, N.D.
The contest for the Johnny Cash Memorial Prize is down to three finalists: David Dollar, a World Bank economist; Chris Moneymaker, who walked away with $2.5 million when he won the 2003 World Series of Poker; and Nicholas Economides, a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business.
Hey, how come NYU doesn't have a Lenient School of Social Work?
This isn't really eponymous, but the name of this Franklin, Ind., law firm just makes us laugh: Roach, Lynch & Belch. And speaking of the law, reader Michael Wolff, a St. Louis lawyer, writes: "I had a case in which I represented a metal fabricator that sued the erector of the steel. My client's name was Trojan Iron Works. The title of the case, I am proud to announce: Trojan v. Big Boy's Steel Erection." |
