Best of the Web Today - January 19, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
16-2
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has endorsed the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state; the full Senate is set to confirm her tomorrow, a few hours after President Bush takes the oath of office. The vote was 16-2, with Barbara Boxer, the sweetheart of the Angry Left, and John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, casting the only "no" votes. Perhaps Kerry will vote "yes" tomorrow so he can say he voted against her before voting for her.
In an unpleasant exchange yesterday, Boxer confronted Rice with the usual Angry Left line, that BUSH LIED!!!! about Iraq. But it turns out Boxer is the one taking liberties with the truth:
Rice: It wasn't just weapons of mass destruction. He was also a place--- his territory was a place where terrorists were welcomed, where he paid suicide bombers to bomb Israel, where he had used Scuds against Israel in the past.
And so we knew what his intentions were in the region; where he had attacked his neighbors before and, in fact, tried to annex Kuwait; where we had gone to war against him twice in the past. It was the total picture, Senator, not just weapons of mass destruction, that caused us to decide that, post-September 11th, it was finally time to deal with Saddam Hussein.
Boxer: Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that, you know, particular vote.
Presumably when Boxer says "I did not," she means that she didn't vote to liberate Iraq, not that she didn't read the resolution. But the resolution itself makes clear that Rice was right:
Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolution of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait; . . .
The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to--
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.
Ignorance is actually the more charitable explanation for Boxer's misrepresentation of the resolution's contents. If in fact she did read it, her own integrity is a matter of question.
And here's another apparent Boxer falsehood:
You never even mention indirectly the 1,366 American troops that have died. . . . And 25 percent of those dead are from my home state.
According to Casualties.org, the number of California servicemen who've died is 157, which is about 11.5% of the total, less than half the proportion Boxer claimed.
The Cognitive Elite?
Rice did get one thing wrong during her hearing yesterday. Reuters notes that, asked about the prospect of reducing America's military presence in Iraq, the secretary to be said, "Our role is directly proportional, I think, to how capable the Iraqis are." Of course, she meant inversely proportional: The more capable the Iraqis are, the less the U.S. role.
Which raises an obvious question: If John Kerry is so smart, how come he didn't correct her?
The Loser Party
John Kerry's vote against Condoleezza Rice is the latest evidence that he is responding to his crushing election defeat by adopting a sore-loser persona. Other evidence: A statement on Kerry's campaign Web site demands that Bush fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And of course there's his "I have a bellyache" speech in which he complained that there weren't enough voting machines in Ohio Democratic precincts.
Like Kerry's Vietnam-era "war crimes" calumnies, that last complaint would appear to be a canard, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:
A Plain Dealer analysis shows that, in [Cleveland's] Cuyahoga County at least, the elections board distributed machines equally to city and suburban polling locations. . . .
Before the Nov. 2 election, the elections board allotted each Cleveland precinct one machine for every 117 registered voters within its boundaries--the same ratio of machines that suburban precincts received. . . .
And in the end, the busiest precincts--when measured by the number of ballots cast per machine--were actually in the suburbs, not Cleveland, according to a Plain Dealer analysis of records from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
In 2001 the Republicans lost the Senate when Vermont's Jim Jeffords became a de facto Democrat. The GOP did not spend the next year and a half attacking Jeffords and whining about the unfairness of it all; instead, they recruited good candidates, waged a vigorous campaign, and won enough seats in 2002 to regain their majority. If the Democrats ever hope to win elections again, they'd be well advised to follow this model.
What Would We Do Without Exit Polls?
"Exit Polls Say Bush Won Fair and Square"--headline, MSNBC.com, Jan. 19
'Strictly a Business Decision'
CNSNews.com looks at the Planned Parenthood annual report (link in PDF) and notes an interesting trend:
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation's most frequent provider of abortions, is performing more of the procedures than ever--albeit in fewer clinics--and relying increasingly on the revenue generated from abortions, according to its Fiscal Year 2004 annual report.
"A survey of newspaper stories regarding the closing of 11 of the organization's clinics during Fiscal Year 2004 revealed a common cause," CNSNews reports: Demand for abortions in these areas is declining. CNSNews notes that clinics have closed in Texas, Ohio and Indiana--all states President Bush carried--and in Houghton, Mich., which is in a northern county where Bush outpolled John Kerry, 56% to 43%:
"While we recognize the need for affordable family planning services in the Copper Country," said Scott Blanchard, executive director of PPNM [Planned Parenthood of Northern Michigan], "our Houghton center simply hasn't served enough clients to justify the monthly costs to keep it going."
Closing the facility was a difficult decision, Blanchard noted in a press release, in part because "those who oppose Planned Parenthood's presence in Houghton will undoubtedly see this as a victory.
"However, this was strictly a business decision," he said.
This suggests that the demand for abortion is becoming more concentrated in areas that vote Democratic. In other words, the Roe effect is accelerating.
Raining on Bush's Parade
One complaint that's arisen as President Bush's second term approaches is that his planned inaugural celebrations are too extravagant. Here's Rep. Anthony Weiner, appearing the other day on Fox News Channel's "Your World With Neal Cavuto":
I don't say don't have the inauguration or don't have the parade. I think it's the $40 million inaugural balls.
This is a very sober time. We've lost 1,300 troops overseas. Scores more have been injured. We have now nearly 50 percent of our troops on the reserve troops.
I just think that the weight of the time, just like Wilson and FDR before, dictate that we don't send the image that we're parading in black tie and champagne flutes, that we're taking these sober times with a sober attitude.
Now, if you suggest that opponents of the president's war policies tone down their criticism in the interest of national unity, or that it may make sense to attenuate some civil liberties during wartime, you're met with cries of "McCarthyism!" or "un-American!" or "If we do that, the terrorists will have won!" But the president is supposed to forgo the traditional inaugural celebrations--and leave many businesses in the nation's capital in a lurch--in order to make some symbolic point. Leave it to the Dems to accentuate the trivial.
What's more, as we were working on today's column, a Democratic National Committee e-mail came in, "signed" by chairman Terry McAuliffe, which began:
Last week, James Carville sent you a message asking you to join him this Inauguration Day by renewing your financial support of the Democratic Party. Your response has been incredible. We've nearly made it to our goal of 1,000,000 people renewing their support by tomorrow.
We have no objection to this, but those who are complaining about the president's balls should.
Then there's Counterinaugural.org, which promotes "the ReDefeat Bush Counterinaugural Ball," slated for tomorrow at Dream, a Washington nightclub. Tickets range from $30 to $500, and the site includes a weird Q&A:
Why should I pay $500 to get access to the Penthouse?
So you can see why it is that a nightclub should have what amounts to a really nice hotel room on the top floor, complete with a bedroom and a shower that is far too large to have been designed to clean just one person at a time. And after you've satisfied yourself on the question of "why" there are all sorts of other provocative questions that may be posed to you in this circumstance. Besides, you can afford it and it is the only no press zone in the entire complex, for what amount to obvious reasons.
Important: If you become aware of any illicit sex please see the media relations coordinator on site so that we can alert the Washington Post, which will not write about the treasonous conspiracy to subvert popular government in the U.S. but will surely be interested in any scandal involving sex. Obviously, you must be a married white heterosexual man to be involved in a scandal. If you are not in this category we regret to inform you that you will not be able to secure media attention for your scandal no matter what your particular perversion is or how many people are involved. That's just the rule.
Well, OK, whatever. For its part, the Washington Post profiles anti-Bush protester Jon Bjornstad of Santa Cruz, Calif.:
He is 55, a vegetarian pacifist and laid-off software engineer who has lived in a commune and owns a fuel-efficient hybrid car with the bumper slogan "Terrorism Prevention Vehicle."
The Post reports that even though Bjornstad is old enough to join the AARP, he is staying at a youth hostel! Here's someone who probably won't be coughing up a McKinley.
Reuters: Hooray for Reuters!
Here's a strange dispatch from the Reuters "news" service:
Beijing Political Correspondent Benjamin Kang Lim, who has some of the best contacts in China and its Communist Party, put Reuters far ahead of the competition Jan. 16 with word that Zhao Ziyang, toppled as party chief in 1989 for opposing the army's suppression of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, had died after a series of strokes.
Even though Zhao's death was neither gruesome nor untimely, Reuters runs this under the heading "Oddly Enough." Go figure.
It Complicated Things for the Victim's Family, Too
"A Palestinian suicide bomber killed a member of the Israeli Shin Bet security services on Tuesday evening and wounded several soldiers next to a busy road in the southern Gaza Strip, further complicating a difficult mission for Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian president, who had just arrived here seeking to halt such attacks."--New York Times, Jan. 19
And We Thought He Was in Stable Condition
"Arafat Standing to Mark Haj Climax"--headline, Arab News (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia), Jan. 19
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"Folsom Tackles a Harsh Reality: The upscale city is forming a panel to address its small but growing homeless population."--headline and subheadline, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 17, 2005
"As the Suburbs Expand, Homelessness Is Moving In"--headline, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 18, 2005
Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
"Police Searching for Suspicious Suspect"--headline, KXAN-TV Web site (Austin, Texas), Jan. 18
'The Jerk That Flirts With Death'
In September the Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, published a column by Derek Kieper that argued against mandatory seat-belt laws:
As laws become increasingly strict for seat belts, fewer people will respond positively by buckling up in response to the laws. There seems to be a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up no matter what the government does. I belong to this group. . . .
Telling me to wear my seat belt is the same as making sure I have some sort of proper education before diving into a swimming pool. If I want to dive in without knowing how to swim, that is my right. And if I want to be the jerk that flirts with death and rides around with my seat belt off, I should be able to do that, too.
Today's Lincoln Journal Star reports the sad ending of the Kieper story:
Kieper, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, died early Tuesday morning when the Ford Explorer he was a passenger in travelled off an icy section of Interstate 80 and rolled several times in a ditch. . . . Derek, who was thrown from the vehicle, was not wearing a seat belt.
When you flirt with death, you run the risk that death has something more serious in mind.
Orthodox Unreligion
The American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue the city of Frederick, Md., over a Ten Commandments monument in a city park, so Mayor Jennifer Dougherty came up with a clever idea: She sold the land on which the monument sat to the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Since it's no longer on public land, she argued, it doesn't violate the separation of church and state--even though it's still in the middle of a city park.
It's similar to the Jewish custom of "selling chametz" for Passover. Chametz refers to any grain product except matzah prepared specifically for the holiday, and Chabad.org explains the sale procedure:
A person who owns a large quantity of chametz which he is reluctant to dispose of, because doing so may cause him considerable financial loss, may sell his chametz to a non Jew.
After writing a bill of sale, one may leave the chametz in his home without transgressing the prohibitions of not seeing or having chametz, since the chametz no longer belongs to him.
However, it must be set aside in a special place which is rented to the non Jew who has purchased it, so that the chametz becomes the property of the non Jew until after Passover.
The place where this sold chametz is stored should be inaccessible, so that neither he nor the members of his family take anything from there through force of habit. The bill of sale for the chametz states that he is selling his chametz to the non Jew for a specific price. The non Jewish purchaser then gives him a down payment either money or something with intrinsic value, to acquire ownership of the chametz.
A stipulation is added to the bill of sale, stating that if the purchaser does not pay the balance due by the end of Passover, the chametz will revert to the original owner at that time that is, at the end of Passover. The non Jew's failure to pay will not be seen as having retroactively invalidated the sale.
Thus, during Passover, the chametz belongs to the non Jew and the original owner is not liable for having chametz in his possession on Passover.
You can even sell your chametz online. Back in Frederick, though, Mayor Dougherty's effort to save the Ten Commandments didn't satisfy Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Associated Press reports the group is pursuing a lawsuit on behalf of a local resident, Roy Chambers, who argues that the sale "was a 'scam' that left church and state entwined."
Which just goes to show you that American secularists are more orthodox even than the most observant Jew. |
