GREAT READ! Spread to your friends on the blogs! Major H/T to Mike @ Mike’s America for putting me on to this nugget. Go and download the document that McCain supporters handed to reporters leaving on the trip with the messiah, excuse me, Senator.
UPDATE: Rep. Jim McGovern’s Press Secretary Michael Mershon responded to my requests for additional information. View his statement in its entirety HERE.
Are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) bad actors in a tragedy about the Separation of Powers?
In Spring 2007, Speaker Pelosi visited Syria, where she met with President Bashar Assad in a highly publicized, and much criticized trip. She was the poster child for Obama-esque ‘without pre-condition’ foreign policy. But this year, the Speaker chose to avoid the limelight, allegedly preferring to task loyal foot soldier Rep. Jim McGovern with chatting up leftist guerillas closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) - a group identified by the US State Department as terrorists. Not to mention the talks with Columbian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who remainsunder investigation by the Columbian Attorney General - and who is closely aligned with Venezuelan dictator/President Hugo Chavez.
Much of the main stream media seems content to ignore the Pelosi-McGovern-FARC story. Too much of a political hot potato. Brings to mind Pelosi’s own language regarding Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s repeated attempts to impeach President Bush. Remember? She told us all that was ‘off the table.’ Until yesterday, when Pelosi indicated that Kucinich’s latest attempt might get hearings.
Insert the uncomfortable pause here. All is fair in love and politricks.
So I placed a few calls. Speaker Pelosi’s press staff: delightful but refused to provide on-the-record comments each of the several times we spoke. I’m still waiting to hear back from McGovern’s office. Somehow, I am unsurprised by the lack of candor.
In multiple conversations with sources close to Speaker Pelosi, I was told the assertions made in the Wall Street Journal reports are “categorically false” and “without merit.” (This wins the prize for least original evasive answer)
Gee, I suppose if a Republican stood accused of colluding with a terrorist to undermine the democratically elected government of a US ally that it would be a non-story. Oh wait… the entire country would be enraged. And demanding answers. Hearings. Accountability.
This is where the average American should step in. Call Speaker Pelosi. 202.225.0100. The role of Speaker of the House is supposed to transcend partisan politics. She is a public servant. Our tax dollars may have funded these misadventures.
Never ask permission to engage in our national dialogue. Your tax dollars matter. And Speaker Pelosi should address this Obama-esque policy directly. Was she engaging with an agent of a foreign government to undermine our ally, the democratically elected government in Columbia? Did Speaker Pelosi direct Rep. McGovern to tell FARC that all military aid from the US to Columbia would be suspended under an Obama presidency?
If Speaker Pelosi was a pawn in McGovern’s game, where he invoked her name to play-up his own street-cred and power - then Pelosi should promptly throw him from the Democratic train. Give him a little partisan spanking. Go public. Offer a little straight-talk to the American people.
From the Wall Street Journal… House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony in traveling to Damascus this week, against the wishes of the president, to communicate on foreign-policy issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The administration isn’t going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue. Maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whose aggressive prosecution of Lewis Libby establishes his independence from White House influence, should be called back.
The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, “without authority of the United States,” to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government’s behavior on any “disputes or controversies with the United States.”
A hard drive recovered from the computer of a killed Colombian guerrilla has offered more insights into the opposition of House Democrats to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
A military strike three weeks ago killed Raúl Reyes, No. 2 in command of the FARC, Colombia’s most notorious terrorist group. The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia’s elected and popular government.
Mr. McGovern’s press office says the Congressman is merely working at the behest of families whose relatives are held as FARC kidnap hostages. However, his go-between’s letters reveal more than routine intervention. The intervenor with the FARC is James C. Jones, who the Congressman’s office says is a “development expert and a former consultant to the United Nations.” Accounts of Mr. Jones’s exchanges with the FARC appeared in Colombia’s Semana magazine on March 15. This Mr. Jones should not be confused with the former Congressman and ambassador to Mexico of the same name from Oklahoma.
“Receive my warm greetings, as always, from Washington,” Mr. Jones began in a letter to the rebels last fall. “The big news is that I spoke for several hours with the Democratic Congressman James McGovern. In the meeting we had the opportunity to exchange some ideas that will be, I believe, of interest to the FARC-EP [popular army].”
Last fall, Mr. Chávez and the FARC hatched an audacious plan whereby the Venezuelan would take “proof of life” of Ms. Betancourt to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, where the plight of Ms. Betancourt was a cause célèbre. The rebels wrote that Mr. Chávez was sure French pressure for negotiations would cause President Bush to “order Uribe to allow the meeting” between Mr. Chávez and the rebels on Colombian soil, something Mr. Uribe had refused to do. The rebels reported that Mr. Chávez was “super-motivated,” because he viewed the rendezvous as a public-relations coup that would give him and the FARC “continental and world renown.”
That plan flopped, but Mr. Chavez had other cards up his sleeve. One involved Ms. Cordoba, who is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to the FARC. She figures prominently in the captured rebel documents, and is notoriously close to Mr. Chávez.
She met at the Venezuelan presidential palace with FARC leaders last fall. From that meeting the rebels reported that “Piedad says that Chávez has Uribe going crazy. He doesn’t know what to do. That Nancy Pelosi helps and is ready to help in the swap [hostages in exchange for captured guerrillas]. That she has designated [U.S. Congressman Jim] McGovern for this.”
If the speaker of the House was working with Ms. Cordoba in this scheme, her judgment was more than a little misguided. The rebels write that on a trip to Argentina Ms. Cordoba told them, “It doesn’t matter to me the proposal that Sarkozy has made to free Ingrid. Above all, do not liberate Ingrid.” In short, why give up such a useful pawn?
Here is the text of the Logan Act:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
STATEMENT FROM REP. JIM MCGOVERN’S PRESS SECRETARY MICHAEL MERSHON:
It’s important to remember that what INTERPOL determined is that there was no evidence of any tampering of the FARC computers by the Colombian military once the military took possession of those computers. Which is very good news. What INTERPOL did NOT determine, of course, was whether any of the statements in those computers were somehow empirically true. Which, of course, they could not, as we made very clear in our letter to the Wall Street Journal.
As to the Journal column in question which attacked Colombian-based human rights groups for their alleged ties to the FARC (therefore suggesting that the FARC would easily be convinced to turn the hostages over to these groups), we were disappointed to see that one of the Colombian military members involved in the hostage rescue was wearing the insignia of the International Committee of the Red Cross during the mission, in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions. We were pleased to see that President Uribe has apologized for that error.
As to the specific questions you have asked:
Rep. McGovern met with Sen. Cordoba during the time she was the official mediator (appointed by President Uribe) for a potential humanitarian exchange of the hostages. She also met with high-level U.S. State Department officials during this period.
Rep. McGovern never said that Sen. Obama would win the election. At the time, he was a strong supporter of Sen. Clinton.
Rep. McGovern never ‘ensured’ the end of military aid to Colombia. He doesn’t believe that would be a proper policy position to take. He has argued, and will continue to argue, that a higher percentage of our aid should be used for the building of civilian and judicial institutions in Colombia; for economic redevelopment; and for assistance to the hundreds of thousands of Colombians who have been internally displaced by the conflict.
I have attached a copy of Rep. McGovern’s floor statement from yesterday’s debate on an amendment offered by House Republican Whip Roy Blunt to the intelligence authorization bill. It lays out a lot of his thinking about the way forward, and I hope you find it useful.
I’d be happy to respond by e-mail to any other specific questions you may have.
Regards,
Michael Mershon, Press Secretary
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)
This morning we bring you good news and bad news. Which would you like first?
Just kidding - you’re not getting that choice:
Evidence of al-Qaida’s problems in Iraq is weighty and convincing. It has been badly hit by the fightback from the American-backed Sunni “Sons of Iraq” and the US troop “surge”. Western intelligence agencies estimate that the number of foreign fighters is down to single figures each month. The border with Syria is now harder to cross.
Iraq-watchers point, too, to financial strain caused by the arrests of al-Qaida sympathisers in Saudi Arabia, mafia-like disputes over alcohol licences and difficulties recruiting the right calibre of people. Last month, a sympathetic website carried a study showing a 94% decline in operations over a year. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed 334 operations in November 2006 but just 25 a year later. Attacks dropped from 292 in May 2007 to 16 by mid-May this year.
Dia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on radical Islamists, says recent al-Qaida propaganda footage from Iraq is old and cannot mask the crisis it is facing. “They have not got new things to say about Iraq though they are trying to give the impression that they are still alive. The material isn’t convincing.” Nigel Inkster, former deputy head of MI6, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees: “Al-Qaida is starting to prepare their people for strategic failure in Iraq.”
Al-Qaida is also perceived as being “on the back foot” because of attacks by Muslim clerics on its takfiri ideology and revulsion at the killing of innocent Muslims. Participants in Zawahiri’s recent “open dialogue” on Islamist websites compared al-Qaida’s performance unfavourably with the successes of Hamas in Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Challenges to the use of violence by Sayid Imam al-Sharif, founder of the Egyptian Jihad group, have rattled his old colleague Zawahiri, says Rashwan. Influential Saudi clerics have helped undercut al-Qaida’s theological arguments. How far such rarified debates affect radicalised Muslim youth in Bradford or Madrid is a different question.
What’s the key difference between the U.S. in Iraq and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon? The regime of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, confronted with the opportunity to eradicate both Hamas and Hezbollah two years ago after both Iranian proxies helpfully provided the provocation by kidnapping several IDF soldiers, lost its nerve and let the “international community” intervene and impose a ceasefire that handed the Jewish state’s enemies a qualified military victory and a gargantuan propaganda/morale triumph. For the first time since Israel was reborn as a nation in 1948, external Muslim enemies had attacked her and fought her to a standstill. Not because the Hezbos and Hamastanis were better soldiers or had superior weapons or tactics, but because Israel’s political leadership, fearing a “world opinion” that will NEVER favor them whatever the circumstances, was afraid to fight.
President Bush, faced with a similar situation in Iraq six months later, a near-unanimous domestic and international demand for U.S. retreat, and a confident Iran-al Qaeda axis believing their conquest of Iraq was only a matter of time, tacked directly into that ferocious defeatist gale with the appointment of General David Petraeus and the implementation of the “Surge” strategy instead.
Today Israel is looking down the barrel of another war with a much better armed and trained Hezbollah, which now all but rules Lebanon, while a few hundred miles to the east, al Qaeda has been massacred, the mullahs have lost Sadr and the Madri Army, and democratic Iraq has stabilized. Or, distilled further, Ehud Olmert was afraid to win, and so lost; George W. Bush chose to win, and did - a fact so incontrovertible that not even European leftist publications are bothering to deny it any longer.
The Guardian piece does fret about al Qaeda opening up “new” fronts in Algeria, Yemen, and Somalia, none of which, as Ensign Ed details, are truly new.
But that brings us to today’s bad news. If al Qaeda is going to make a major move somewhere else, there are two likely candidates - Pakistan, and the United States of America:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
The justices handed the Bush Administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court’s liberal justices in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” …
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also dissented.
Well, that’s it, then. After nibbling around the edges for almost seven years, the American Left, via its media, congressional, and finally its judicial strongholds, has finally turned the policy clock all the way back to September 10, 2001. There is now nothing left of the steps taken in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks to defend our country from this enemy and its insidious mode of warfare.
Let’s tally it up: the ability to extract intelligence from captured jihadis in a war where the extraction of intelligence is maximally critical to the saving of American civilian lives was sacrificed on the alter of imaginary “torture” objections. The ability to disrupt the financing of terrorist networks (the SWIFT program) was exposed and nullified by the New York Times. The ability of the NSA to monitor jihadi communications worldwide was first exposed by the Times, then subjected to FISA oversight, and now is forbidden altogether, and has been for nearly six months. And now the Supreme Court, by the usual 5-4 liberal majority, has decreed that the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism is no longer a war, but is a conventional, civilian “law enforcement” matter once more.
And here I thought it was going to be President Hussein who turned all those Gitmo bloodmisters loose to rejoin the Global Jihad against us. Turns out it’ll be President Bush. The rapturous, ecstatic orgasms of the fever swamps at such delectible irony must be seismic this morning.
If they wanted irony, they should have had the Supremes wait to issue this ruling until September 11th. Maybe they figured that if they did, nobody would remember why that would be so ironic.
Here’s another irony: by deciding that “the Constitution applies worldwide rather than just to the US and its residents,” Justice Kennedy’s majority has issued what is literally an act of judicial imperialism in the most liberal sense imaginable: he has imposed NOT American power, NOT American rule, NOT American law on the entire planet, but only its civil liberties protections. Just as congressional Dems have successfully ruled that U.S. intelligence cannot monitor ANY enemy communications ANYWHERE on the globe if, at some point, they flow through so much as a single American communications hub or server, now five robed oligarchs have decreed that all an enemy has to do to literally get away with mass murder on American soil is not wear a uniform and wage war from amongst our civilian population, then hide behind the very freedoms they are trying to destroy, get sprung by another dhimmized American judge, and continue the jihad.
The fact that we’ve never, in 232 years of national history, lavished captured enemy prisoners in time of war with full constitutional rights, or treated illegal combatants as legitimate POWs, or that the Geneva Convention defines illegal combatants with precisely the criteria that describe Islamic terrorists? Non-functional. Obsolete. Superceded.
Olympus has spoken. The American people are now officially on death row. The only question is when and where the next mass attack in the homeland comes. We can only hope and pray that our men and women in uniform (who are now going to have to rotate home to testify in civilian criminal trials, and who will presumeably have to read each captured jihadi his Miranda rights, and who will, in practice, be more likely to kill them in battle than capture them, cutting us off from a primary avenue of vital intelligence gathering) have bought us more time to come to our voting senses than the SCOTUS has gifted to bin Laden & Co. to get back on their feet and exploit the “get out of jail free” card they’ve been so foolishly handed.
UPDATE: Mark Levin provides a Jeremiac lament:
It has been the objective of the left-wing bar to fight aspects of this war in our courtrooms, where it knew it would have a decent chance at victory. So complete is the Court’s disregard for the Constitution and even its own precedent now that anything is possible. And what was once considered inconceivable is now compelled by the Constitution, or so five justices have ruled. I fear for my country. I really do. And AP, among others, reports this story as a defeat for “the Bush Administration.” Really? I see it as a defeat for the nation.
Well, remember, Mark - for liberals, America is only “their” nation when they get to rule it. Otherwise, they see it as their enemy, which goes a long way in explaining this suicidal ruling and the Left’s - and, doubtless, al Qaeda’s - raucous celebration of it.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has tons and tons and tons more. Though I’ve gotta differ with him on one point: where’s the bona fide indication that Senator McCain would appoint federal judges and SCOTUS Justices that would have dissented against this spectacularly unconstitutional, not to mention literally lethal, usurpation of Legislative and Executive power when he’s done everything in his power for years to block such appointments in the Senate and holds a Homeland Security stance that is far more in tune with the five-justice lib majority?
UPDATE II: The blistering dissents of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia.
[cross-posted at 
]
Fighting Words, Revisited
Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK
Back in 2004, when the Senate intelligence committee began investigating whether public statements by U.S. officials about Saddam Hussein’s pre-invasion Iraq were “substantiated” by existing intel, Republicans controlled Congress and the committee’s inquiry was aimed at figures on both sides of the aisle. The idea was to examine the fighting words of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as well as prominent Democrats including Al Gore, Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Hillary Clinton. But Democrats, who took over the panel after winning Senate control in 2006, decided that the final report would examine only statements by “policymakers”—in other words, the Bush administration. So in the report, due out this week, no Democratic comments will be parsed. That includes an Oct. 10, 2002, speech by Clinton in which she criticized Saddam’s WMD ambitions and accused him of giving “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.” (Continued…)
Russia: A totalitarian regime in thrall to a Tsar who’s creating the new Facist empire
By JONATHAN DIMBLEBY
As ex-President Putin settles in to his new role as Prime Minister, he has every reason to congratulate himself.
After all, he has not only written the script for his constitutional coup d’etat, but staged the play and given himself the starring role as well.
Of course, he has given a walk-on role to Dmitry Medvedev, his personally anointed successor.
…
But the transfer of power from Putin to his Little Sir Echo, Medvedev, and the show of military strength with those soldiers and clapped-out missiles in Red Square on Victory Day which followed it last week, made it clear who is really in charge.
…
Just before he stood down as President, Putin declared: “I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning til night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results.”
As he surveys the nation today he reminds me of that chilling poem by Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting, in which the dreaded bird sits at the top of a tall tree musing: “Now I hold all Creation in my foot - I kill as I please because it is all mine - I am going to keep things like this.”
…
Despite the fact that Putin’s Russia is increasingly autocratic and irredeemably corrupt, the man himself - their born-again Tsar - is overwhelmingly regarded as the answer to the nation’s prayers.
Russia has a bloody and tormented history. Its centuries of suffering - its brutalities, its wars and revolutions, culminating in the collapse of communism and the anarchic buffoonery of the Yeltsin years - have taken a terrible psychological toll.
Cynicism and fatalism which eat away at the human psyche have wormed their way into the very DNA of the Russian soul.
In a nation that has not tasted and - with very few exceptions - does not expect or demand justice or freedom, all that matters is stability and security.
…
In a country where the “separation of powers” has become a bad joke, the law courts are no less corrupt.
Except perhaps for minor misdemeanours at local level, the judiciary is in thrall to the Kremlin and its satraps.
The threat of prosecution for tax fraud is the Kremlin’s weapon of choice against anyone who dares to challenge its hegemony.
When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, used his oil wealth to promote human rights and democracy, Putin detected a threat to his throne.
The oligarch was duly arrested and convicted of fraud. He now languishes in a Siberian jail where he is in the third year of an eight-year prison sentence.
None of this is a matter of public debate in Russia where the media has been muzzled by the Kremlin, their freedom of expression stifled by the government.
Almost every national radio and television station is now controlled directly or indirectly by the state, and the same applies to every newspaper of any influence.
In the heady days immediately before and after the collapse of the Soviet empire, editors and reporters competed to challenge the mighty and to uncover scandal and corruption.
Now they cower from the wrath of the state and its agents in the police and the security services.
That diminishing number who have the courage to investigate or speak out against the abuses perpetrated by the rich and powerful very soon find themselves out of a job - or, in an alarming number of cases, on the receiving end of a deadly bullet.
Some 20 Russian journalists have been killed in suspicious circumstances since Putin came to office. No one has yet been convicted for any of these crimes.
Putin calls the system over which he presides “sovereign democracy”. I think a better term is “cryptofascism” - though even the Kremlin’s few critics in Russia recoil when I suggest this.
After all, their parents and grandparents helped save the world from Hitler - at a cost of 25 million Soviet lives. Nonetheless, the evidence is compelling.
The structure of the state - the alliance between the Kremlin, the oligarchs, and the security services - is awesomely powerful.
No less worryingly is popular distaste - often contempt - for democracy and indifference to human rights.
In the absence of any experience of accountability or transparency - the basic ingredients of an open society - even the most thoughtful Russians are prone to say: “Russia needs a strong man at the centre. Putin has made Russia great again. Now the world has to listen.”
The new Prime Minister has brilliantly exploited the patriotism and latent xenophobia of the Russia people to unify them in the belief that they face a major threat from NATO and the United States.
This combination of national pride and insecurity has been fuelled by the America with its proposed deployment of missiles only a few hundred kilometres from the Russian border, allegedly to counter a nuclear threat from Iran.
No serious defence analyst believes this makes any strategic sense, while even impeccably pro-Western Russians recoil from this crass assertion of super-power hegemony by President Bush.
Similarly most Russians feel threatened - and humiliated - by the prospect that Ukraine and Georgia, once the most intimate allies of the Soviet Union, may soon be enfolded in the arms of NATO.
…
With communism consigned to “the dustbin of history”, there is no ideological conflict of any significance. And there is now only one military superpower.
[Editorial Comment: WHAT? No difference between USA and USSR?]
“For the first time in many years heavy military equipment will be used. This is not sabre-rattling. We are not threatening anyone and don’t plan to,” Putin said ahead of the traditional Victory Day parade on Friday.
No that is not supposed to raise questions, but God forbid there be a DEFENSIVE missile system near by. Or HIS talk of new Russisn missiles that can penetrate “any missile defense system.” Don’t worry about it at all!
Previous work done on the topic, that can help you form an opinion on the matter: USSR Watch, II, IV, V
Gary W. Moore is a humble man, calm and friendly, happy to discuss the life of his father. After all, the tale of his father is larger than life, and a story we can learn from - because it is a tale about second chances, but second chances in a direction that we don’t always expect. Gary’s father, Gene Moore, began his journey to the pages of Playing With The Enemy as a 15 year old baseball prodigy that was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1940. The outbreak of World War II, however, demanded that the young phenom join the military. Gene Moore joined the United States Navy, and his tour began in North Africa where he played for the Navy baseball team to entertain the troops. The duty was not always easy, or away from danger, evidenced by the death of the center fielder when an explosion on the field took the young ballplayer’s life. Later, as the war effort concentrated more on the theater in Europe, Gene Moore was sent on a secret mission to guard German POWs in Louisiana. These prisoners were very special, however, and their capture was a secret to the outside world for a tremendous reason. The submarine these German sailors were the crew of was the U-505 (now on display in Chicago, Illinois at the Museum of Science and Industry), inside which the United States procured the Enigma Machine and all of the code books that went with it, enabling us to stay on top of the changes in the code, and therefore assisting us in winning the war against Germany. During this time that Gene Moore guarded these prisoners, primarily out of his desire to play baseball (and perhaps a little boredom), Gene Moore and his fellow military baseball players taught the enemy soldiers how to play America’s pastime. The story does not end there, however. Tragedy, and the storms of life that can crush dreams, and enable the birth of new ones, came to Gene Moore’s life. It was then that he learned about second chances, and the importance of the unexpected things in life. This inspirational true story is being made into a film by Producer Gerald R. Molen via his WhiteLight Entertainment production company. Molen’s and White Light Entertainment’s credits include Schindler’s List, Minority Report, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Twister, Casper, Rain Man and The Flintstones. White Light Entertainment has to its credit 33 Academy Award nominations, 19 Academy Awards, including two for the best picture and a total box office collection of $4 billion from the 14 movies it has produced so far. The screenplay was written by WhiteLight director of development David Ranes and the author’s son, Toby Moore, who’s also set to portray his grandfather. The film is in production now and is slated to be released during the first quarter of 2009. I first met Gary W. Moore, the author of Playing With The Enemy, at a book signing in San Diego on October 1, 2006. A month later we got together in Pasadena, California after another book signing, and it was then that I realized I had made a wonderful friend. Since then, Gary W. Moore has appeared on my Political Pistachio Radio Show a number of times (April 7, 2007; June 16, 2007 with his publisher: Ted Savas; and January 26, 2008). And honestly, Playing With The Enemy is a great read, and a book that is not about World War II and Baseball as much as it is about the human spirit. As for the movie? Well, I hear there is going to be some great acting talents in the film, but the producer has not released the names, yet. However, when we know who those actors are that are in the film, you will find out about it on Political Pistachio, and of course at that time we will have Gary W. Moore return to Political Pistachio Radio to discuss the latest news regarding this blockbuster film. Also see Gary interviewed by CNN here, and the Fox affiliate in Milwaukee here.
And don’t forget to catch Political Pistachio on Blog Talk Radio nightly at www.blogtalkradio.com/politicalpistachio.
Among Conservatives the rumblings are constantly about how the Republican Party has left us, moving toward the left, using “Compassionate Conservatism” as an excuse to inject big government into the party. The Republican Party leadership is hardly conservative, and the current nomination for President of the United States, John McCain, is barely better than his two Democrat Party opponents.
The Republican Party has lost its way, and if it is not salvaged soon, the GOP will go the way of the Whigs.
A handbook for Republicans who feel in their heart that the basics of the Republican Party have been lost is on the bookshelves of bookstores today. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is a handbook for Republicans that explains how we need to return to our roots. The author of the book is Michael Zak.
Back to the Basics for the Republican Party is an acclaimed history of the Grand Ol’ Party from the civil rights perspective, as well as recognizing the founding principles of the United States. Michael Zak believes that we can benefit greatly from knowing and appreciating the Republican Party’s heritage.
Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country, and his book has been cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. Hundreds of articles by Mr. Zak are available on the Grand Old Partison blog each day, celebrating 154 years of Republican heroes and heroics.
Tonight, Michael Zak is my guest on Political Pistachio Radio tonight at 10:00 PM Eastern Time.
I usually do not promote my show, but tonight I will be spending the first portion of the show speaking about Missile Defense. If you want some facts please tune in at 2100hrs eastern.
News broke this morning that William F. Buckley Jr. had passed on. With great sadness and a deep appreciation for all that he did to organize conservative thought in America, Political Vindication sends our prayers to his family in their grief and to God in his keeping. We all live our lives striving to leave behind a legacy that endears us to our peers and the Angels that watch over us - Mr. Buckley leaves a legacy so stunning and consequential that it stands as a Red Sea parted in perpetuity. Let’s all take some time today and read some of his thoughts, and re-dedicate ourselves to fighting for the conservative principles he taught us.
Today’s breaking news: Fidel Castro resigns. Siggy and I will discuss the news in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern.
Later in the podcast, our special guest, Andy Blom of Hawaiian Values.US will talk about the Akaka bill, i.e., the ‘Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005′.
For background information on the Akaka bill, Betsy Newmark has two excellent posts on the subject: The Akaka Bill is Baaaack and The return of the Akaka Bill . The Heritage Foundation’s The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act page contains a great roundup of articles on the bill and its consequences.
Chat will be open by 10:45, and the call-in number is (646) 652-2639. Join us!
Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog
I was the invited guest speaker at this morning’s Cocoa Beach Republican women’s club meeting.
I told them how I detest the way the media and the Left are determining who our Republican presidential candidate will be through their control of the debates and the first four primaries and caucuses. I shared my suggestions for how it should be changed. (”Change, change, change. Change the fools… “) Twenty solid minutes of how I’d change the political election world. Heh…
Following a Q & A session, I made my departure and this little group of the Space Coast Federation of Republican Women (and some men) then took a straw poll.
Club president Nancy sent the results to me. I wonder if it might be a microcosm of how Florida will vote in our primary on the 29th?
1 vote for Huckabee
1 vote for McCain
1 vote for Paul
5 votes for Thompson
8 votes for Guiliani
22 votes for Romney
We’ll be back to compare these results with the finals on Primary night. Stay tuned…
***
On tonight’s internet radio webcast we’ll be talking to the brilliant Selwyn Duke, national columnist whose works appear on The American Thinker, News with Views, World Net Daily, and other conservative journals of note.
Selwyn was with us for the final half hour of last Sunday night’s program, and we got on so well I invited him back for a return engagement. We’ve got him for the full hour tonight. We’ll be talking about the presidential campaign, the political landscape, conservatism, and whatever else comes to mind. Do join us! We get underway at 9 p.m. EST.
CALL IN NUMBER IS 646-478-4604.
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“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” - Thomas Jefferson
We Americans are sensitive about our liberty - it was won at a high cost and throughout our history good men and women have died far from home to protect it. Some of the liberties we insist on keeping are used by the irresponsible to prey upon the civilized, like the right to bear arms or the first amendment right to express our political thoughts. Some ask why we pay such a high price for the right to enjoy such adult liberties? Our answer is that human history has taught us that no life is “so dear, or life so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery.” What the European has dismissed we cherish, asking ourselves “what infringement on our freedom are we willing to endure for promises of peace and equality? ” In America, such questions are answered by our willingness to endure ignorance and insult, we believe that to ban expression because it hurts feelings creates a standard so low that we are all soon in chains. There has been a movement to impose such a standard here, but we reject it as unbecoming of a free people, while believing that the relationship between a government and the citizen is built upon the belief that there is inherent dignity due every one of us. When our government begins to believe that its citizens are not worthy of the liberties of a free people - not worthy of the dignity afforded a living soul - then the relationship becomes one of the authoritarian to the child, and we are not free any longer. It is the legacy of the West that we have empowered the free man to direct his government to protect his rights, for in human history freedom is rare and the seduction of the tyrant draws a line of shame in blood unbroken to this very day. So we have learned only that freedom is fleeting.
There is a choice for the free man. A battle of civilizations has broken out; on one side Western values of individual liberties and equality, on the other submission and order. One claims to unburden mankind from its fetters of prejudice and poverty, the other claims to unburden man of his arrogance and greed. One offers a world free to express human aspirations and ingenuity, the other a world free from chaos and sin. The dichotomy is stark, and as the world grows smaller and these two visions collide, the debate rages about the rude influence of Western freedom on Islamic submission, or in grander terms, democracy versus totalitarianism. In America, Western values define us, and we will abide a Serrano’s crucifix in urine rather than legislate permissible expression pegged to the subjective reactions of those injured. It is another battle in the larger confrontation between cultures clashing, but a battle on the home front as important as the one the soldier faces in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Britain, home of the sagacious Winston Churchill, finds itself suppressing again his wisdom and faith in freedom. The birthplace of Western values finds today those values inconvenient in a multicultural environment, where the diminution of Western culture seems a small price to pay for peace and stability. Ayaan Hirsi Ali would tell you that a free society cannot trade away its freedom to accommodate immigrants who deny themselves such things - a state must teach freedom or soon the free will find themselves boxed into an argument pitting the chaos of freedom against the order of submission. Mother England finds herself there now, home to a growing insolence that mauls the hand that feeds it. Extremists argue that freedom breeds entitlement and arrogance, and it does, for all the reasons every slave, woman or minority might argue from a position of oppression. It was once deemed liberal to insist on such libertine avenues of expression - but today liberals argue for order over liberty, and collude in the deconstruction of notions that once freed a people. After banning the gun and the blade, they have now come to ban the word. Calling it the ‘Public Order Act of 1986‘, they have dropped to a knee in response to those who claim that the outrage directed at their efforts to undermine freedom ought to be silenced. Islamists in Britain are using the nation’s own laws to defeat any opposition to its home grown insurgency against British culture and Western values.
There is a case in point I’d like to use. Those who blog and those who read our musings may not recognize it but what you see before you is proof of our freedom here in America. The ability to write and disseminate our thoughts without censorship is crucial to any functioning democracy. What do you call a society that censors its bloggers, or censors any free expression whatsoever? Authoritarian might be an apt description. An English blog has become a victim of the authoritarian state in its quest to enforce peace and tranquility. The blog is titled Lionheart, and its writer, who goes by the same name, writes forcefully about the growing Islamist threat inside Britain - doing so without threats of violence but vows of defiance. His site is loaded with history and outrage, and unabashed opinions about the appeasement approach his government has taken even after the 7/7 bombings by British Islamic terrorists that killed 52 people and wounded scores more. He certainly represents those Brits yet uncowed by Big Brother, and that might be why the multiculturalists have come after him. He has been alerted by Ian Holden of the Bedfordshire Police that based upon the complaint by an unnamed person he will be arrested upon arrival back to his home country. When he contacted the police for an explanation, they replied ” The offence that I need to arrest you for is “Stir up Racial Hatred by displaying written material” contrary to sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act 1986. You will be arrested on SUSPICION of the offence. You would only be charged following a full investigation based on all the relevant facts and CPS consent.” What has he written about that is worthy of imprisonment? They won’t tell him, they want to arrest him first then tell him. Here are the sections of the Public Order Act that the officer mentioned:
(a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b)having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.
and:
27. - (3) A person guilty of an offence under this Part is liable—
The blogger Lionheart is being hunted by his government not for threatening the life of another, or urging the death of British Muslims, but for expressing thoughts considered offensive by those he intended to offend. Had this law been in force when Sir Winston Churchill stood and denounced Nazism and the Nazis that practiced such depravity, the savior of Britain would have been at the mercy of British Nazis who, with one complaint, could have had him silenced and imprisoned for insulting them. Are you curious to see what chains sound like when put into words? Then read the Public Order Act of 1986 - and imagine yourself confined to the sensitivities of those you disagree with! It would be near impossible to escape harassment, and would certainly prove paralyzing to anyone who dared depart from main stream opinion.
But the blogger stands and fights, and bloggers in England must understand that Lionheart fights for them as well, regardless of what they may think about what he has written. It is said that freedom is won wielding swords and armor and lost wearing silk slippers and robes. The decadence of the West has led to its slow demise, and from across the ocean, where God granted liberty is a reflection of inherent dignity, we see the English have left themselves in a very undignified condition. What is it that they are thinking will come from abandoning the right to rise up in outrage? How can they not see that they put their freedoms in the hands of those who care nothing for it? We must always teach the value of freedom, for we see ironically those that have it often forget what it was like without it. Whether what inspires such self loathing in the English is guilt or insecurity, they have abrogated the responsibility they have as a free people to prevent tyranny for ever darkening the globe again. Thank God there are still a few there like Lionheart who will fight, and God willing, will serve to inspire once again the will to carry the burden of freedom.
REP. DUNCAN HUNTER WILL BE MY GUEST TOMORROW (SUNDAY) NIGHT ON WDBO AM 580 - ORLANDO, FL. DETAILS HERE.
BREAKING NEWS ON THE DEBATE ISSUE (from Michelle Malkin).
By Michelle Malkin • January 5, 2008 12:55 PM
The Manchester Union Leader is reporting and blogs are buzzing over the NH GOP party’s withdrawal as a sponsor from the Fox News debate tomorrow night. U-L:
12:15 p.m. UnionLeader.com has learned that the New Hampshire Republican Party has quit as a co-sponsor of tomorrow night’s nationally televised GOP forum on FOX News. The event had become controversial when FOX refused to include Ron Paul.
Boston Globe reporting:
The New Hampshire Republican Party dropped their affiliation with a Republican debate sponsored by Fox News tomorrow night because they have limited the number of candidates that can participate.
“The first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary serves a national purpose by giving all candidates an equal opportunity on a level playing field,” said Republican chair Fergus Cullen. “Only in New Hampshire do lesser known, lesser funded underdogs have a fighting chance to establish themselves as national figures.
Tonight’s ABC News back-to-back debates will include Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul at 7pm and Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson after the GOP event.
Denny K is going after Disney/ABC for the exclusion.
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I’ve been invited to participate tonight in a discussion about our rights and the limits our nation’s founders placed on the federal government.
The conversation will take place at 8 p.m. EST on the radio show “The Halls of Valhalla: American Truth Warriors”. Program host is “A Newt One” and Loki. We’ll also be looking at the post-Iowa Caucus political scene leading up to this week’s New Hampshire primary.
CLICK HERE AT 8 P.M. TO TUNE IN ON BLOG TALK RADIO
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OTHER POSTS ON THE DEBATE TOPIC:
FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE
I’VE SENT MINE OFF
IT’S AN OUTRAGE!
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