BY JAMES TARANTO
Friday, February 6, 2004 3:52 p.m. EST
The Kerry Doctrine
John Kerry, as we've noted before, thinks that the war on terror isn't really war, but "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation." The New York Times reports from Hamburg, Germany, on an example of the Kerry Doctrine in action:
A German court on Thursday acquitted a former roommate of Mohamed Atta who was accused of providing support to suicide pilots in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The court cleared Abdelghani Mzoudi, the second suspect to be tried for involvement in the attacks, of accessory to murder and membership in Al Qaeda. . . .
"You are acquitted," said the judge, glancing at the defendant, who was allowed to leave jail in December. "Not because the court is convinced of your innocence, but because the evidence was not enough to convict you." . . .
The acquittal of Mr. Mzoudi is also a setback for the German government, which has asserted that terrorist suspects can be tried in criminal courts rather than in military tribunals, which the United States favor as a venue for many of the suspects it now has in custody.
Indeed. Also--let us hope--a setback for Kerry. Predictably enough, the Germans blame America for their decision to let Mzoudi go--specifically, "the Bush administration's reluctance to make captured terrorists available for testimony and to allow prosecutors to make use of intelligence information on the terrorist network." But does anyone doubt the administration is right not to want this information in open court?
Extending to the enemies of civilization the full panoply of due-process protections criminal defendants enjoy--the presumption of innocence, protection from self-incrimination, the right to a lawyer, and so on--makes it harder to gather intelligence and prevent future attacks. Three thousand people died on Sept. 11, but at least Mohamed Atta's civil liberties were never violated. Don't you wish they had been?
John Kerry's Massachusetts
In the interest of fairness, we propose the following ground rule for the 2004 general election campaign: Anything that happens in the home state of the Democratic nominee is fair game for the Republicans. After all, in 2000 Al Gore and the NAACP tried to blame President Bush for a horrible racist murder that occurred in Texas. So if the nominee is, let's just say, John Kerry, the GOP can point to prison furloughs, trouble with the "Big Dig," same-sex marriage and any other Bay State weirdness they can find.
Actually, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post has already beaten us to this and is very much on the defensive about it. A Bay State native, he devoted his Tuesday column to defending (and boy is he ever defensive!) the proposition that Massachusetts is not "a culturally or politically demented place."
Meanwhile in Massachusetts, the MetroWest Daily News reports on the campaign for a vacant state Senate seat:
When Millis Democrat Angus McQuilken won the party's nomination, he did not even wait to deliver his acceptance speech before he launched a blistering attack against his Republican opponent, state Rep. Scott Brown of Wrentham. . . .
McQuilken cited a bill Brown filed that would prohibit inmates in state prisons from obtaining state-funded sex-change operations.
"I just don't think this is the kind of issue the people in this district wake up and worry about," he said.
So the first issue on which McQuilken attacks Brown is the latter's opposition to "sex change" operations for felons? We'd hate to hear what sorts of things they'd debate if Massachusetts were a demented place.
Anyway, someone needs to ask Kerry where he stands on the issue of state-funded sex-change operations for prison inmates. As we noted yesterday, Kerry is savvier than Michael Dukakis, so he may actually come up with an answer or a dodge that will make him look not totally demented. Here's one idea: I oppose sex-change operations for prisoners and any other form of cruel and unusual punishment.
Kick-Me Kerry
Here's another Associated Press story that hints at Kerry corruption: "At least three times in his Senate career, Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry has recommended individuals for positions at federal home loan banks just before or after receiving political contributions from the nominees, records show":
In one case, Kerry wrote to the Federal Housing Finance Board to urge the reappointment of a candidate just one day before a Kerry campaign committee received $1,000 from the nominee, the records show.
"One has nothing to do with the other," said Marvin Siflinger, who contributed around the time of Kerry's Oct. 1, 1996, recommendation that he be reappointed for another term to the board.
Siflinger may be right; we have no idea. But by running a pseudopopulist campaign and railing against "special interests," Kerry is inviting journalists to delve into this sort of thing. He might as well just put on a "kick me" sign.
He Just Loves a Man in Uniform
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan has endorsed the presidential bid of Sen. John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, the Associated Press reports. "Levin said earlier this week he was deciding between Kerry and Wesley Clark because he believes the Democratic candidate must have military experience."
Hmm, does anyone remember whom Levin endorsed in 1992 and '96?
A Pre-emptive Investigation
President Bush has taken pre-emptive action to stave off Democratic efforts to discredit the liberation of Iraq. Dems have lately been harping on apparent CIA overestimates of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in the immediate preliberation period, as if that were ever the most important reason for military action. Now Bush has announced a bipartisan commission to investigate these "intelligence failures."
"Democrats doubted [the commission] would be non-partisan since its nine members are being picked by Bush rather than by Congress," reports Reuters. What that means is that the Democrats doubted the commission would be partisan, as they are hoping.
There's something objectionable about the whole exercise, as Victor Davis Hanson notes in National Review Online: "We live in a sick, sick West if we investigate Mr. Bush's and Mr. Blair's courageous efforts to end Iraqi fascism, while ignoring the thousands of Europeans and multinational corporations who profited from his reign of terror."
Amen to that, but this is primarily a political move. And in a particularly brilliant stroke, one of the president's appointees to the commission is Sen. John McCain. The Democrats can hardly object to McCain, who is their favorite Republican owing to his opposition to tax cuts, gun rights and free political speech. But whatever his faults (by Republican lights) on domestic policy, McCain is a true patriot who is serious about national security--just the kind of man Bush-hating Democrats don't want on the commission.
The Four-Year Itch
Ralph Nader, the Green Party presidential nominee in 1996 and 2000, tells Newhouse News Service he's "itching to run again," apparently as an independent, and will make up his mind later this month. Nader's previous campaigns yielded pretty unimpressive results; he managed just 0.7% of the vote in 1996 and 2.7% four years later. But because the 2000 election was freakishly close, Nader is widely credited with keeping Al Gore out of the White House.
Actually, in some quarters, he's blamed for it. Many on the Angry Left hate Nader with a passion, and we suppose we can see why. Let's say you're an Angry Left type. You've already compromised yourself by spending the past eight years fiercely defending Bill Clinton, despite his maddening moderation on many issues. Now along comes another moderate (remember, this was before Gore went completely off the rails and became a MoveOn maniac), and you hold your nose and support him--and this time you get nothing in exchange for compromising your principles, because Nader with his 2.7% makes George W. Bush president!
It's unlikely that Nader will make the difference again this year; the election won't be as close, and Nader probably won't get as many votes. But if Nader does decide to run, we can nonetheless expect wails of outrage from the Angry Left, and nothing is more entertaining than seeing them fight among themselves.
Putin: Hey, Let's Fight Terror
A terrorist blew up a Moscow subway this morning, killing 39 and wounding well over 100 people, the Jerusalem Post reports. "Russian President Vladimir Putin, reacting to the attack, has called upon world leaders to join forces in the fight against terror, which he calls 'the plague of the 21st century.' " Why didn't we think of that?
The terrorist was apparently a female suicide bomber. Or, as the FoxNews.com homepage puts it, "blast possibly caused by homicide bomber." We guess the guys at Fox are waiting for the coroner to determine if those 39 people were really homicide victims. Now that's fair and balanced.
Shut Up, They Explained
Here's a good rule to follow: When someone on the liberal-left tells you he's for freedom, don't believe him. Somehow when "social liberals" have their way, it quickly turns out that anything that isn't mandatory is forbidden. A case in point: gay rights. Those of us with libertarian impulses agree that government shouldn't prohibit gay sex between consenting adults. We may even be sympathetic to the call for marriagelike benefits for same-sex couples. But we also believe in free speech and thus are quite troubled by stories like this one, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.:
A high school teacher in British Columbia, punished for writing publicly against homosexuality, is not protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the province's Supreme Court has ruled. . . .
In 2002, the British Columbia College of Teachers suspended [Chris] Kempling for one month for "professional misconduct or conduct unbecoming a BCCT member."
It had been investigating a complaint received after Kempling wrote a series of letters to his local newspaper between 1997 and 2000 saying homosexuality was wrong.
Reuters quotes Justice Ronald Holmes, who wrote the decision: "Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth." Even if we accept for the sake of argument the proposition that Kempling's speech was "discriminatory" and false, it is still arrant nonsense to call it "incompatible with the search for truth." The search for truth inevitably entails exposure to many false ideas, some of them obnoxious. The "liberal" agenda Holms advocates is actually a profoundly illiberal one: the imposition by bureaucrats and judges of a preapproved "truth."
'You Deserve This for What Your Ancestors Did'
"An elementary school instructor's outlandish technique for teaching children about segregation" has prompted a kerfuffle in Nevada, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports:
Officials at Manch Elementary School have launched an investigation into the unusual Black History Month lesson, which involved separating children by skin color and giving preferential treatment to black students. . . .
One perturbed parent gave a detailed account of what her crying 9-year-old child told her after school Tuesday, saying [teacher Lora] Mazzulla began class by seating black children at one set of tables and everyone else across the room.
"All the African-American children were given board games to play, and everyone else had to put their heads at the table, and they weren't to look up or speak," said Stacey Gough, whose daughter Amber is a third-grader at Manch. "She told them that she believes in everything that Martin Luther King (Jr.) had to say and she wanted the white children to know what it was like to be black back then." . . .
"The black children were making fun of the white children, and saying things like, 'You deserve this for what your ancestors did to us,' and the teacher was letting them," Gough said.
Hmm, we're not really sure what the big deal is here. Isn't this good preparation for the admission practices and racial politics they'll encounter when they go to college?
Just Wondering
An Associated Press dispatch on Mel Gibson's forthcoming "The Passion," a movie about the life of Christ, notes:
Gibson's movie, with dialogue in Latin and Aramaic and English subtitles, is set to open on 2,000 screens nationwide--an unusually large release for an independent religious film made in dead languages.
So how big is the usual release for independent religious films made in dead languages?
What Would Downtown Do Without Experts?
"People Key to Reviving Downtown, Experts Say"--headline, Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin, Feb. 6
Not to Mentioning Opening Wine Bottles
"Corkscrew May Help in Stopping Strokes"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 6
The Majesty of the Law
You've heard of slip-and-fall lawsuits? Tanisha Torres is suing over a slip she received last fall. Torres lives in a dodgy neighborhood on New York's Long Island; her hometown, Wyandanch, " 'is one of our busier areas' for crimes such as drug-dealing and prostitution," Newsday quotes a local police inspector as saying.
Anyway, in October Torres went to a nearby Radio Shack to pay her cell phone bill. The receipt she got listed her town as "Crimedanch." Torres tells the paper: "I was outraged. That's embarrassing."
So did she ask the Radio Shackers to correct the error? Apparently not, though Newsday did:
Asked by a Newsday reporter last week about the "Crimedanch" reference, store manager Bill Sullivan called up Torres' name in the computer and, indeed, her home community appeared as "Crimedanch." Sullivan then immediately corrected the name of the town to Wyandanch. He said he was unaware of the incorrect reference and said the employee who processed Torres' payment no longer worked there, for unrelated reasons.
Oh well, that's that. A silly misunderstanding, right? Not quite. Torres got herself a lawyer and filed suit:
Torres' suit claims Radio Shack was negligent and reckless in its operation and maintenance of the store and the receipt system, and in the hiring, supervision and monitoring of employees. It asks for unspecified damages to compensate Torres for being "embarrassed, flustered and shamed" and for suffering emotional distress and mental anguish.
The wording on the receipt "implicitly or explicitly labeled her a criminal," according to court papers.
"Clearly, it is defamatory to Ms. Torres and the entire community, and it's a violation of civil rights to be characterized in a way that infers that everyone from Wyandanch is a criminal," [lawyer Andrew] Siben said.
Of course, we don't have much confidence in Torres's ability to win this case, given that her lawyer doesn't even know what "infer" means.
The Gipper Turns 93
Ronald Reagan, the oldest living ex-president in U.S. history, turns 93 today. (Only three other presidents--John Adams, Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford--have made it to 90.) The Chicago Tribune reports that Reagan's alma mater, Illinois's Eureka College, is recognizing the occasion by reopening its Ronald Reagan museum "the largest repository of Reagan memorabilia outside of his presidential library in California."
Reagan's birthday is always a bittersweet occasion: a chance to honor a great American, but also a reminder of how frail he has become. This year, indeed, marks the 10th anniversary of Reagan's withdrawal from public life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In an online essay for Newsweek Reagan's surviving daughter, Patti Davis, reflects on how her father has faded:
There are moments when you long for that person's voice, when you imagine it in your head, play it out like a tape that has been perfectly preserved in your memory. But then you hear an actual recording of the voice that has been silent for so long and you realize how much you have forgotten. There are times when a news broadcast plays a piece of one of my father's speeches, or an interview, and I'm brought up short by the cadence of his voice, the inflections. All these years of silence and broken-off language have chipped away at my memory of what his voice once was.
Thinking about Reagan today is a comforting reminder of the temporal nature of partisan political disputes. It's hard to remember how polarizing a figure he was when he was president. Liberals and Democrats derided him as a war monger and a cowboy; they even called him stupid. Sound familiar? Yet today he is universally beloved and admired. Those who once hated Reagan have found a new target for their ire, and no doubt they'll move on to someone else in another 20 or 25 years, assuming the haters haven't all died off. And so it goes.
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