The Churchill Sereis - Mar. 17, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Churchill loved his baths. It was a rare day when he didn't take at least one.

Then came the day in post-war Britain when Churchill, leading the opposition in the Commons, heard the government's Minister of Fuel and Power, Hugh Gaitskell, suggest to the House that the government encourage people to take fewer baths as an energy saving measure.

Gaitskell told the House:

"Personally, I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less."

Well, you can guess how Churchill responded to that:

"When Ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of HM's Government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour.

"I have even asked myself, when meditating upon these points, whether you, Mr. Speaker, would admit the word 'lousy' as a Parliamentary expression in referring to the Administration, provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration."

If you'll forgive a pun, the House showered Gaitskell with laughter.
______________________________________________________
The quotes and background are found at The Churchill Centre's Speeches and Quotes

Ferraro's truth & Durham H-S's race pandering

Folks, I’m sending the following email to Durham Herald Sun editor Bob Ashley. He edits both the H-S’s news and editorial sides. I invite his response, but don’t really expect one since he’s never responded on the record.

John
_________________________________

Dear Editor Ashley:

Re: H-S editorial “Playing with 'What if?'” (3/16/08)

You distorted former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks that race and gender can sometimes convey an advantage.

You also inadvertently helped prove the truth of what Ferraro said when you asked: “If she were a man, would Fritz Mondale have chosen her as his running mate?”

Of course not!

From the beginning Ferraro’s said the reason Mondale chose her was she’s a woman.

That proves her point.

You say: “People are who they are, and their identities are all wrapped up in many components, including age, experience, family history, genetic predisposition and, yes, race and gender. We can't take one of those threads, unravel it and try to predict what the person would be like.”

But you know Ferraro didn’t predict what Obama would be like.

She offered her opinion that Obama’s emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination because of the response of Democratic primary voters to, in part, his ethnicity.

You say: “The truth is that a lot of people want to inject race into the campaign, and Ferraro is apparently one.”

That’s disingenuous.

You know race is a huge factor in the Dems’ presidential primaries; and that Obama so far is the beneficiary of that.

Throughout her public life Sen. Clinton has received overwhelming and often passionate support from blacks and upper-income whites. They’ve supported her despite her involvement in a series of scandals.

But their support largely evaporated this year.

In Democratic primaries, Obama’s winning on average about 90% of the black vote and a majority of the upper-income white vote. As a result, he’s now the front-runner for the nomination.

Would that be the case if everything about Sens. Clinton and Obama and their platforms were the same except that Obama’s father was a white Kenyan instead of a black Kenyan?

You’re sliming Ferraro because she gave the honest and obvious answer to that question.

Your editorial reminded me of the way the Herald Sun so often slimed and race-baited following the lies of Crystal Mangum and Mike Nifong.

Talk about injecting race into something!

Would the H-S have played the Duke Hoax story the way you did if Mangum was white and the Duke lacrosse players black?

Wouldn’t you have asked questions about why all 46 black students were being ordered to submit to police DNA testing and face and torso photographing, when the police knew some weren’t even at the party?

And wouldn’t you have objected to the CASTRATE rally, the vigilante poster and the loud and virulent racism of many Duke professors if they’d been targeting blacks instead of whites?

Would you have been so fulsome in your praise for Nifong if it had been black students he was lying about and attempting to frame?

C’mon, Editor Ashley, be honest.

Inject race into a campaign? Ferraro’s not doing that.

But Mike Nifong, the Herald Sun and most of the liberal/leftist media all injected race into the Duke frame-up campaign.

Ferraro is truth-telling.

Your editorial attacking her is just the latest instance of H-S race pandering.

If you care to respond, I'll publish it.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

Newsweek’s Obama-Wright story

You Tube and blogs have made it much harder for liberal/leftist news organizations to ignore stories that don’t help their candidates. So they find themselves relying more often now on those old journalism standbys: underreporting and “softening” what they’re forced to report.

We see those standbys at work in Newsweek’s Trying Times for Trinity , its story concerning Obama and his close friend and pastor of almost 20 years, Trinity’s UCC’s Rev. Jeremiah Wright [extract]:

Last Thursday, snippets of a few of Wright's more incendiary sermons circulated online, including one in which the pastor calls out Hillary Clinton for being part of the white establishment—"Hillary ain't never been called a n–––––"—and another in which the pastor says, "God damn America … for killing innocent people." He also calls the 9/11 attacks "America's chickens coming home to roost."

The next day Obama released a statement about Wright on the Huffington Post. "I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy," he wrote. He said further that he hadn't been in the room when the offending comments were made and that he and his family looked forward to continuing their relationship to the church through its new pastor.

Later, a spokesman announced that Wright would no longer serve the campaign in any advisory capacity.

The quotes you’ve just read are all Newsweek provides from Wright’s “more incendiary sermons.” Talk about “snippets!”

Nowhere in the article does Newsweek say Wright has over the years laced his sermons with extended anti-American and racists remarks.

Newsweek doesn’t mention the question millions of Americans are asking themselves: How could Obama not know of the kind of statements Wright made not just “ a few” times, but often, and not in just in “a room” but from the pulpit?

But Newsweek does serve up a lot about what a really great guy Rev. Wright is. As Newsweek describes him, Wright sounds like the sort of clergyman the Dems should get to deliver one of the invocations at their national convention this August.

Now, what about Wright’s friendship with Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, you may be asking?

Well, that all has to do with Rev. Wright’s “unconditional love.” At least it does the way Newsweek spins it.

Read the whole story here. It’s a masterpiece of underreporting and “softening.”

People who rely for news on Newsweek and lib/Dem media outfits won’t know much about Wright’s anti-Americanism and racism.

So they won’t know enough to ask themselves what it means that Obama chose such a person as his spiritual counselor and close friend.

And that’s the point of Newsweek’s Trying Times for Trinity.

Obama & “the forces of division”

A JinC Regular comments with fair questions for Sen. Obama concerning his close friend and Pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Americanism and racist screeds.

The comment:

If Obama didn't quite catch Jeremiah Wright's meaning when he was a member of his church for 20 years, ya think he's gonna be able to deal with people who want to turn America into a flaming pyre?

So what if Obama meets our enemies and talks with them, like Chavez?

He sat in the pews listening to a man who wants God to damn America!

Does anyone think he'll disagree with Chavez? With Ghadaffi? With the leadership of Hamas? With Ahmadinejad?

If Obama was asleep when Pastor Wright made his infamous commentaries, who thinks he'll stay engaged in staff meetings, in NSC meetings, in meetings with foreign friends and enemies?

Still, anyone who has seen Obama in action on the campaign trail could not possibly believe that Obama was sleeping in the pews, nor misunderstand the character of the commentary!

He bought it, he swallowed it and he believed it: now the chickens have come home to roost - on his own head!

So what are Obama, his campaign staff and MSM shills doing to respond to those questions and others on the minds of millions of Americans?

According to the AP , Obama's complaining about the “forces of division.”

The “forces of division” meme will play well with the kind of people who always bash America.

But what’s Obama offering the rest of us besides accusations about “the forces of division?”

Advice to Sen. Obama: IMO Eliot Spitzer has better damage control specialists than you do. Why not give him a call and see if he’ll rent them out for a day or two?

And please stop referring to people like the JinC Regular mentioned here as “the forces of division.”

Such people are standing up for America and truth in the public square.

When Obama first met his pastor

An Anon commenter alerted me to a Mar. 14 post by National Review editor Rich Lowry at NRO. The post follows, after which I offer a few comments below the star line.

Lowry posts ----

Wright in "Dreams of My Father"

Before he ever thought he would have to deploy Clintonesque spin to try to get himself out of a campaign controversy, Barack Obama wrote (an achingly good) memoir. In the book, Obama makes it clear that Wright when he first got to know him was pretty much the same Wright we're getting to know now (the one that Obama is at pains to say is on the verge of retirement).

Wright was striking some of the same notes, saying racially venomous things and attacking the bombing of Hiroshima. Note this passage about the first sermon Obama heard from Wright, the source ultimately of the title of Obama's second book and one of the central themes of his presidential campaign:

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God.

The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!” (Bold Lowry's)

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

********************************************************************

Comments:

First, thanks to the Anon commenter who called Lowry’s post to my attention.

Next, shouldn’t what Lowry told us have gotten more MSM attention before now?

Why haven’t MSM news organizations pressed Obama to speak in greater detail about what he knew, and when, concerning his friend and pastor of almost 20 years?

We’re still being told by Obama's people in his campaign and in MSM that he “didn’t know.”

But how could he not know?

That, and so many other questions, need to be answered.

Wright’s church cries character assassination

This an hour ago from Politico:

The Chicago church attended by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) issued a statement Sunday contending that coverage of his pastor’s inflammatory remarks amounted to character assassination and “an attack on … the history of the African American church.”

Obama distanced himself from inflammatory comments by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., retiring pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, after they circulated on YouTube last week and were played repeatedly by cable news channels.

Wright, condemning society as racist, said, “God [expletive] America” and referred to the “U.S. of KKK-A.”

The statement begins: “Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe.”

The statement adds: “Trinity United Church of Christ’s ministry is inclusive and global.”

Neither Wright nor Obama was present at the church on Sunday.

Politico reporter Mike Allen says Trinity’s minister of communications, the Rev. Joan R. Harrell, provided Politico a copy of the statement. Politico’s story and the full text of the statement are here.

Comments:

Politico tries to soften Rev. Wright's message by saying he condemned “society” as racist? But it was America Wright condemned.

Trinity’s statement begins:

Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe.

Trinity’s linking the criticisms of Wright to Dr. King’s assassination is shameless exploitation. So is it’s claim near the end of the statement that criticisms of Wright are “an attack on the legacy of the African American Church.”

I think most Americans, including many blacks, will see that.

And I doubt most people will be taken in by Trinity’s claim Wright’s being criticized because he’s “preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe.”

We all know people who preach – and more important live – a social gospel on behalf of the oppressed without erupting into the anti-American and racists screeds Wright has.

Nowhere in the statement does Trinity try to explain how Sen. Obama could be a member of its congregation for almost 20 years and not know about pulpit pronouncements Wright’s made that most people recognize are anti-American and racist.

But that’s what millions of Americans want to know.

So far Obama hasn't answered that question. His silence is hurting him.

And so will Trinity's statement today, no matter how Dems and most of MSM try to spin it.

Ferraro, the Duke Hoax & truth-telling

San Diego Union Tribune Reuben Navarrette’s latest column targets Geraldine Ferraro.

According to Navarrette, when Ferraro said,

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

she “sounded a bit like” Archie Bunker.

Further along, Navarrette directly addresses Ferraro.

“Let me help you with this, Ms. Ferraro. Remember all those years when you were fighting for women's rights, and men would sometimes charge they were being victimized by "reverse discrimination" because of Title IX, affirmative action, or other programs seeking to expand opportunities for women? Remember how silly those big crybabies sounded to you and other feminists?”

“That's how silly you sound when you claim you're being attacked because you're white. You aren't. You're being attacked because you said something that came across as bitter, envious and foolish.”
“Not to mention hypocritical.”

Navarrette has a lot more to say before he closes with:

“The sad part is that a lot of people agree with Ferraro's comments about Obama." ...

“These people live in a fantasy world. They tell themselves that they or their kids could have gotten into Harvard Law School and become editor of the Harvard Law Review if some skinny black kid with a funny name hadn't taken their spot. Our political leaders are supposed to know better. They're supposed to douse those fires with perspective and common sense.”

“Geraldine Ferraro opted for gasoline.”

Navarrette’s entire column is here.

I’ve just sent him the following email.

Dear Mr. Navarrette:

I blog as John in Carolina and have posted here concerning your column attacking Geraldine Ferraro. The post includes this email.

I wish you’d done less name-calling and instead engaged Ferraro on her principal point: that there are certain times and situations when being a person of color or a woman can be an advantage.

Throughout their careers the Clintons have received overwhelming and often passionate support from blacks.

That changed this year when a young, attractive, articulate U. S. senator in his first term sought the Democratic presidential nomination. In Democratic primaries, he’s winning on average about 90% of the black vote. Largely because of that, he’s emerged as the front-runner for the nomination.

Would that be the case if everything about Sens. Clinton and Obama and their platforms were the same except that Obama’s father was a white Kenyan instead of a black Kenyan?

You didn’t speak to that. Why not?

You ridicule Ferraro and suggest she’s a hypocrite because she’s benefited in certain situations because of gender.

But Ferraro’s admitted that from the first. Surely you know that.

Why is it hypocritical for a nationally prominent political leader to say she benefited at times because of her gender?

What is wrong with pointing out Obama is benefiting in the nomination race by virtue of his ethnicity?

Why do you want Ferraro to keep quiet about things we all know are true?

I live in Durham, NC. The last two years a terrible tragedy has played out here.

It began with a woman's wildly improbable and self-evidently false accusations of gang-rape.

But the media embraced them anyway. News organizations attacked the accused and cheered on a frame-up attempt by our then DA, certain Durham police officers, their supervisors and others.

Duke University’s trustees, its president and his “senior team,” many faculty and rights groups stepped forward to support the DA and his fellow conspirators.

They did so even as the DA’s actions were so obviously unethical from the start that the NC State Bar opened a complaint file on him within a few days of his first public statements concerning the case.

When hate-filled people rallied under a large CASTRATE banner outside a house where some of the accused lived, do you know how news organizations, Duke and rights groups here in Durham, including the state NAACP, reacted?

They spoke approvingly of “outpourings of community support for the woman.” Most of them made similar approving statements when Vigilante posters with face-photos of the accused were circulated on Duke’s campus and in Durham.

The DA won a Democratic primary and his general election race.

And it wasn’t just in Durham, at Duke and in our local media that he received support for what it was soon obvious was a frame-up attempt. Almost all the national media went along with DA Mike Nifong’s scheme for many months.

I don’t need to tell you or anyone with at least a room temperature IQ the race of the accuser and the race of the accused.

That tells us all something very important: Ferraro’s right. There are times and situations when a person’s race or gender can advantage them.

And there are times and situations when a white person’s race and a male's gender can severely disadvantage them.

If you don’t believe that, please read about the Duke Hoax frame-up attempt and its ongoing cover-up.

Or interview members of Duke's 2006 Men's and Women's lacrosse teams. The men can tell you about the frame-up attempt; the women can tell you about the vicious trashing they received from many in the MSM because they spoke the truth about the Duke lacrosse case: "Innocent!"

Please stop attacking Ferraro for doing no more than speaking the truth.

You’d better serve your readers and our country if you’d encourage reasoned discussion of the advantages and disadvantages race and gender convey in contemporary America.

If you care to respond, I’ll post it in full at my blog.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

Hat tip: RealClearPolitics

NYT's John Burns’ Iraq War Assessment

People who should know tell me The New York Times’ John Burns is a great military reporter.

Today, with the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War at hand, Burns offers a detailed, poignant, informed and reflective description and assessment of the Iraq War. He concludes:

… For close to two years, the Shiite religious parties that won the December 2005 election have clung tenaciously to their new-found power, and the Sunni parties, mostly unreconciled to an Iraq ruled by Shiites, have maneuvered in ways intended to keep open the possibility, ultimately, of a Sunni restoration. Nothing, in short, has been settled.

Americans officials bridle at the failure to tackle decisively any of the issues they identified as crucial to “reconciliation,” including the critical issue of the future share of oil revenues. Meanwhile, the rival Iraqi blocs, taking the long view, look beyond the American occupation to a time when these central issues of power will be settled among themselves.

American hopes are that Iraqis, with enough American troops still present to stiffen the new Iraqi forces and prevent a slide backward toward all-out civil war, will ultimately tire of the violence in the way of other peoples who have been plunged into communal violence, as many Lebanese did during their 15-year civil war.

Those hopes have been buoyed by a reduction in violence in the last year that can been traced to the American troop increase and to the cooperation or quiescence of some previously militant groups, both Sunni and Shiite.

They are hopes shared by many ordinary Iraqis. Opinion polls, including those commissioned by the American command, have long suggested that a majority of Iraqis would like American troops withdrawn, but another lesson to be drawn from Saddam Hussein’s years is that any attempt to measure opinion in Iraq is fatally skewed by intimidation. More often than not, people tell pollsters and reporters what they think is safe, not necessarily what they believe.

My own experience, invariably, was that Iraqis I met who felt secure enough to speak with candor had an overwhelming desire to see American troops remain long enough to restore stability.

That sentiment is not one that many critics of the war in the United States seem willing to accept, but neither does it offer the glimmer of cheer that it might seem to offer to many supporters of the war. For it would be passing strange, after the years of unrelenting bloodshed, if Iraqis demanded anything else. It is small credit to the invasion, after all it has cost, that Iraqis should arrive at a point when all they want from America is a return to something, stability, that they had under Saddam.

For America, too, it is a deeply dispiriting prospect, promising no early end to the bleeding in Iraq.

****************************************************************
Burns' entire article is here.

His accounts of the war’s human tragedies and policy mistakes are painful to read. But we need to know about them in order to assess what we’ve done in Iraq and what our future course there should be.

Burns’ article is an outstanding example of a journalist doing his duty to inform, often at great risk to himself.

He has my admiration and thanks. Be sure to read the article and let me know what you think.

Shredding Obama’s “denunciation”

At NRO Victor Davis Hanson will have none of Obama’s “denunciation” of his long-time friend and pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, following the airing of video-tapes documenting Wright's vicious anti-Americanism and racism.

Despite the serial profession of a new politics, there is something Nixonian about Obama's recent disclaimers over his racist pastor's diatribes. At first he tried to blame the messenger:

"Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor.”

The problem is not cherries, Senator, but an entire orchard.

The most egregious slurs are not from two decades past, but post 9/11 and especially in 2006. And Obama should have learned from Nixon that when there is something there, it is best to get out in front of it in a manner that anticipates more disturbing revelations.

Yet the modified hangout then followed;

"It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS."

This is a de facto defense of, not a distancing from, Wright, and begs the question of why? And the AIDs evocation is especially damning since the reverend has made it clear that HIV was our own creation, apparently part and parcel of some US government conspiracy.

Is Obama now suggesting that Wright did important civic work with AIDs even though he promulgated a belief that the virus was fabricated by our own government? ….

“Judgment” is the wrong word here, because the entire Wright liaison is proof positive of terrible judgment. And the problem is not judging Sen. Obama “on the basis of what someone else said”, but on the basis of his own generous subsidies to someone who spewed forth not mere speech, but hate speech.

And when Obama announces, “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation,” he only will prompt investigative reporters to rush to substantiate whether the Senator was there when any of this calumny was preached, or has given a hint that he was aware of it in the past.

No doubt every word he has written, interview he has given, and people he has talked with will be examined to see whether that astounding statement is in fact true. For some strange reason, Obama has now banked his entire campaign on his word and assurance that he did not hear on a single occasion any such screed.

I hope he is correct. But if one were to collate the reverend’s views on what his congregation should think of the United States, and, further, his writs against Americans as “selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant” with Michelle Obama’s own astounding statements that hitherto she had no pride in the United States, and considered America “just downright mean," and Americans “guided by fear" and (in the words of the New Yorker profiler) who summed up her views as ‘we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents’ the echoes are eerie.

Without sounding dramatic, I think his campaign has seriously underestimated the effect of the Wright tapes on the average American voter (again, the problem is not just the transcript, but the delivery, most notably its fury and coarseness), and the senator’s own abject inability honestly and forthrightly to explain the close relationship of the Obamas to Reverend Wright, apologize for such a lapse of judgment, and move on.

His advisors are culpable here, and apparently in their spin have no clue that they are making things worse rather than better.

I hope you read the whole thing here.

Cabbie’s truth-telling honored

In today’s Durham Herald Sun:

Moezeldin Elmostafa is elated beyond expression. He has risen from the humiliation of being the cabbie who became collateral damage in the politically motivated Duke lacrosse case to being anointed an American hero.

Reader's Digest has named Elmostafa its 2008 Hero of the Year. He was selected by thousands of readers in an online contest sponsored by the popular, folksy magazine that has more than 40 million U.S. readers. …

"I feel great about it. I really feel good," said Elmostafa. The Sudanese immigrant and co-owner of On Time Taxi said he couldn't have entertained a dream of this uniquely American miracle story when he immigrated here in 1999. …

Reader's Digest profiled the 40-year-old Elmostafa and his travails in its November edition, and the ordeal struck a national nerve.

To recap, he was the taxi driver who picked up Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann and a friend on March 14, 2006, from an off-campus lacrosse party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. He took them to an ATM, a fast-food restaurant and then to a campus dorm.

The late-night fare provided Seligmann, who was falsely accused along with two teammates of raping a stripper who performed at the party, with an ironclad alibi.

Shortly thereafter, Elmostafa was arrested on a 2003 warrant charging him with shoplifting at Hecht's department store at Northgate Mall. A woman who got a ride in his taxi had been charged and later pleaded guilty to stealing handbags.

Defense lawyers and lacrosse case observers accused District Attorney Mike Nifong -- who was later disbarred as a rogue prosecutor for his misadventures in the lacrosse case and spent a night in jail -- of attempting to shake down Elmostafa with the old warrant.

District Judge Ann McKown found the cabbie not guilty at trial for lack of evidence linking him to the crime. ….

The rest of the H-S story is here.

Reporter Dan Way interviewed Elmostafa not only about his witness for Seligmann and subsequent arrest and trial, but about his wife and children back in Sudan who’ll come to America once Elmostafa earns American citizenship, something that he expects to happen soon.

It will be a pleasure to say to him: “Congratulations on your citizenship. I’m glad you live here in Durham.”

Some time back, author Joan Collins paid tribute to Elmostafa in a Profile in Courage post hosted a Friends of Duke University. It’s well worth reading by yourself or with a child you want to help learn about right and good people.

Liestoppers has a tribute post. It includes a picture of Elmostafa at his trial with two uniformed Durham Police officers sitting menacingly in the background. (Inv. Himan on the left; Ofc. Clayton on the right as you look at the picture)

The reason why the officers were at the trial has never been explained.

The Reader's Digest story about Elmostafa is here.

And this from NBC17.com:

“Moezeldin is the quintessential hero,” said Reader’s Digest Editor-in-Chief, Peggy Northrop. “He selflessly stood his ground because he wanted the truth to prevail.”

Elmostafa’s photo and story are included in the April issue of Reader’s Digest, which will be on newsstands on March 18.

Today’s NY Times Obama-Wright Story

The story contains some interesting background concerning Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But for the most part, it’s very “soft” reporting on the Obama-Wright relationship. It also works to excuse Wright’s raving anti-American and racist preaching.

The Times begins:

In the handful of years Senator Barack Obama has spent in the national spotlight, his stance toward his pastor has gone from glowing praise to growing distance to — as of Friday — strong criticism.

No mention in that important first sentence of Sen. Obama and Rev. Wright's very close, nearly 20-year relationship.

Instead, we’re told about a “handful of years” during which Obama’s been gradually distancing himself from Wright.

Just “a handful,” you understand.

The “growing distance” is in there so liberals and leftists who trust the Times can say to others: “No, Obama didn’t denounce Wright under the pressure of exposure and awareness he’s being hurt politically. There's been “growing distance” between the two for at least "a handful of years." I read about it in the Times.”

Wright’s prejudices are not new; they go back decades.

Even if you go with the Times about "growing distance" for "a handful of years," there's still the question of why not sooner?

Why was Obama drawn to Wright in the first place?

And why, knowing what Wright is, has Obama brought his daughters to Wright’s church for their religious instruction?

Obama's "I wasn't ever in church" when all those statements were made works at the NYT, NPR and the DNC, but it won't fool most people.

Now let's look at the Times second sentence:

Friday, Mr. Obama called a grab bag of statements by his longtime minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., “inflammatory and appalling.”

The Times could have said “ a series of anti-American and racist statements Wright’s made over the years.” They’re what are starting to draw notice.

But the Times prefers to say “grab bag.” It has a slighting quality that will encourage readers not to take Wright’s statements as seriously as they might otherwise.

Obama knew enough not to use a term like "grab bag" in his statement concerning Wright's anti-American and racist remarks.

Further on in the story the Times offers this:

Since he arrived at Trinity in 1972, [Wright] has built a 6,000-member congregation through his blunt, charismatic preaching, which melds detailed scriptural analysis, black power, Afrocentrism and an emphasis on social justice; Mr. Obama praised the last quality in Friday’s statement.

Wright’s “charismatic preaching” has also included anti-Americanism and racism but the Times can’t bring itself to say that about the close friend, pastor and political ally of Barack Obama.

The Times goes on to quote leaders of the religious left, none of whom are critical of Wright. He’s described as a “beloved figure.”

And yes, for those of you wondering, the Times does work in the “few remarks taken out of context” excuse.

That and the rest of the story is here.

The Churchill Series - Mar. 14, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

I’m an admirer of William Manchester’s two volume Churchill biography: The Last Lion and Alone. I regret a stroke prevented Manchester from completing his planned third and final volume of the biography.

That said, there are some things Manchester says about Churchill that just aren’t so. Here's one example. In Alone Manchester writes :

As a man who reached his majority in 1895, when Victorian gentlemen never use the words “breast” or “leg” if ladies were present, he assumes that they are innocents who must be shielded from the brutal facts of life and that feminine beauty is unaccompanied by carnal desire.” (p. 17)

Churchill understood from youth that the Victorian convention of avoiding references to sex in front of women was just that: a social convention.

Churchill knew that many women enjoyed sex. One of them was his mother; another was his wife. When he was away, Clementine would often end her letters to him remarks such “your ‘Cat’ needs stroking” and “I so want to purr with you.”

Now the weekend's upon us, and I hope yours purrs right along.

All Good Thinks,

John

Obama Denounces But Doesn’t Explain

Aol.com carries an AP story that begins:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, … the Rev. Jeremiah Wright [of] Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.

In a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright suggested the United States brought on the attacks.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Wright said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." …

There’s much more to the story including quotes from Rev. Wright sermonizing and damning America. The entire story’s here.

The aol.com site polls for readers’ reactions. One question:

Should Obama do more to disassociate himself from the pastor’s remarks

Given a “yes” or “no” choice, 75% of respondents are saying “yes” as of 9:30 pm eastern

But I chose “no.”

Here’s why:

While many Democrats here at home and other people around the world agree with Rev. Wright, there are still many Americans who don’t agree with him.

Those of us who don’t agree America is a state sponsor of terrorism want Obama to explain why he hasn’t denounced Wright until today.

Obama's excuse -- he wasn’t in church the Sunday after 9/11 and so didn't know -- is as believable as Bill Clinton’s “I never had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”

NY Governor Eliot Spitzer built his career in part on his denunciations of prostitution. He worked to increase the criminal penalties for it. He prosecuted people who engaged in it.

So much for denunciations from politicians.

What Obama must do now is provide full, honest explanations.

Decent Americans want to know why Obama chose Wright as his spiritual advisor; why he chose him to officiate at his wedding; and why he brings his children to a church where such a man is pastor?

Apart from those comfortable with the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism of the religious and political left and Obama's MSM shills, who’s satisfied with Obama’s after disclosure “denunciation?”

Will even Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich accept it?

Some Plead for Spitzer

Beginning Monday when the Spitzer scandal broke, there’ve been unanswered questions concerning, for example, possible use of campaign funds to pay prostitutes and whether Spitzer’s been blackmailed during the years he’s held public office.

Those questions and others need to be fully investigated.

But some don’t want that to happen. A NY Times story today includes:

A friend of Mr. Spitzer’s, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reacted with fury at the news that prosecutors appeared to be widening their inquiry to include money spent on campaign trips that may have involved trysts with prostitutes.

“At some point, this becomes piling on,” the friend said. The friend said that he would be stunned if “a judge or jury would convict a man for something like this. It’s very low grade,” adding, “Why would prosecutors pursue this?”

An AP story today includes this:

Gerald Lefcourt, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, said criminal charges against Spitzer would be "stretching federal statutes to a place they've never been."

Edward J.M. Little, who worked in the public corruption unit of the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office in the 1980s, said it would be "piling on" to bring charges now.

"I think it would be outrageous if they went after him any further on this," he said. "Solicitation cases are typically pled down to minor charges and just because he was governor doesn't mean he should be treated any more harshly unless they impacted his duties as governor."

He added: "Even though I personally think it's reprehensible, it doesn't mean it's criminal. He's resigned which is probably the ultimate penalty in this case so we should let it be."

About Spitzer’s friend: If I were in Spitzer’s position, I’d be glad to have friends speaking up for me. But I’d tell them not to say: "Why would prosecutors pursue this?”

That will only get the public thinking maybe we need to know more about what Spitzer’s done that would concern federal and state prosecutors.

Message to attorneys Lefcourt and Little: I don’t doubt it’s in Spitzer’s interest to try to cut a deal as soon as possible.

But it’s not in the public’s interest until federal investigators and prosecutors can assure us they’ve looked at everything that could be criminal, had time to weigh everything and have concluded that a deal, if reached, is in the public’s interests as well as Spitzer’s.

The complete NYT story is here; the complete AP story's here.

Breaking: Top Al-Qaeda Figure Captured in '07

The AP reported about an hour ago:

Authorities have captured a high-level al-Qaida figure who helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan in 2001, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to say when or where Mohammad Rahim was captured -- or by whom -- announcing only that he was handed over by the CIA to the Pentagon earlier this week and is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But in a memo obtained by The Associated Press, CIA Director Michael Hayden told agency employees that Rahim was detained in the summer of 2007.

"Rahim is a tough, seasoned jihadist," Hayden said. "His combat experience, which dates back to the 1980s, includes plots against US and Afghan targets."

Rahim is a close associate of bin Laden and has ties to al-Qaida organizations throughout the Middle East, Whitman said.

He said Rahim helped prepare the al-Qaida hideout at Tora Bora -- a mountain area full of warrens used by bin Laden during the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. He assisted al-Qaida's escape from the area during the U.S. operation to try to catch the al-Qaida leader, officials said.

"Rahim's detention in the summer of 2007 was a blow to more than one terrorist network," Hayden said. "He gave aid to al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other anti-Coalition militants.

*******************************************************************
This story goes in the "great news" file.

BTW - There's no agreed upon spelling of the name of the terrorist group OBL heads. The AP used al-Qaida in this story; other news organization use al- or Al- Qaeda and other variants. (with and without the hyphen)

I use al-Qaeda because it's the most commen usage based on number of Google hits.

Plaintiffs Respond to Duke’s Motion

For background concerning the post which follows, please see Duke's Motion a Stumble and Law Prof Responds to Duke's Motion.

Attorneys for 38 unindicted members of Duke University’s 2006 Men’s lacrosse team and some of their family members have filed their response to Duke motion “regarding attorney –initiated and attorney-sanctioned contact with the media.” The response is available (pdf) at www.dukelawsuit.com - Response to Duke's Motion.

The plaintiffs 18-page response, which asks the Court to deny the requests in Duke’s motion, is extremely persuasive.

Based on what attorneys tell me and what I’ve read of the Duke motion and the plaintiffs’ response, I can’t see how the court will grant any of the requests in Duke’s motion.

I continue to believe what I said when Duke first filed its motion: it was “a stumble.”

Does Duke really believe an attorney of Charles Cooper's caliber and experience would commit ethical violations in any situation, and especially in so public a setting as a press conference or by agreeing to the setting up of an information Web site.

I’ll say more about the motion and response this weekend.

Liestoppers.com posts the first two paragraphs of the response’s Argument. Give them a read if you don’t have time to read the entire response.

There are three exhibits (A, B, and C) attached to the response.

Exhibit A is a copy of the request for change of venue filed Dec. 15, 2006 on behalf of David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, then under indictment but subsequently declared innocent by the NC attorney general.

I strongly encourage you to read the change of venue request asserting the three men could not get a fair trial in Durham because of grossly biased media coverage and statements by, among others, some Duke leaders, faculty and students.

People are starting to forget a lot of what went on during the frame-up attempt and how many spoke out and helped enable it.

The change of venue motion is not a complicated legal document. It can be easily understood by a lay person. It's a valuable reminder.

Exhibits B and C are Duke statements concerning University efforts to settle suits. The plaintiffs provided them to the court as evidence that, while attorneys for the plaintiffs have not, as Duke alleges, violated the NC State Bar’s code of professional conduct or any rule of the court, Duke University appears to have done so.

Obama’s Minister of Hate

That’s the title of a NY Post editorial today. Here’s part of it. I offer comments below the star line.

The NY Post begins - - -

Which of these outrageous positions of his pastor and longtime spiritual advisor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, does Barack Obama endorse?

That African-Americans should not say "God Bless America," but rather "God damn America" for "killing innocent people"?

That 9/11 was a case of "America's chickens coming home to roost"?

That Zionism has an element of "white racism"?

The one implied by his decision to make a pilgrimage to Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy with Louis Farrakhan - a man Wright's church has hailed for having "truly epitomized greatness"?

These are not idle questions. And certainly not unfair ones.

Just two weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee put out a press release asking the same kind of questions of John McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

The attack concerned Rev. John Hagee, a leading televangelist who endorsed McCain's candidacy; the DNC demanded that McCain renounce Hagee's support because of the minister's past anti-Catholic and anti-Muslim remarks.

Noting McCain's statement that he was "not endorsing some of [Hagee's] positions, the DNC asked: "Which Hagee positions does McCain endorse?"

Well, right back at 'em.

Hagee, it should be noted, has merely announced his support for McCain, with whom he's had no longstanding relationship.

Obama and Wright, by contrast, have been intensely close for two decades: The Chicago minister married the Obamas, baptized their children and dedicated their house. He even provided the title of the senator's book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Now ABC News says it has reviewed dozens of Wright's sermons - and found repeated public denunciations of America.

The rest of the editorial is here.
***********************************************************************
Comments:

The DNC and the rest of us have every right to ask: “Which Hagee positions does McCain endorse?”

The same holds with Obama and Rev. Wright.

However, in Obama’s case there’s also his close, two decades long relationship with Wright.

That needs explaining, at least as far as I’m concerned.

The more I learn about Wright, the more disturbed I am that Obama would choose him as his spiritual counselor and bring his children regularly to Wright’s church.

A few years back I met a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. How was she?

“Pretty well,” she said, in a way that let me know things weren’t “pretty well.”

What was wrong?

It seems her minister was given to preaching the gospel in such a way that it was clear he didn’t think that Bush administration policies conformed to Jesus’ teachings.

My friend said the preacher never came right out and attacked the President, but you couldn’t miss his intent.

So a few Sundays before, as she was leaving church after service, she said to the minister: “Next Sunday you can save us all 25 minutes by just saying, ‘I hate Bush. Amen.’”

She wasn’t happy about what she’d done. Some church members were mad at her. Looking for a new church was “a chore.” But “I’d just heard enough from him.”

I wish Obama at some point had had enough of Rev. Wright.

The Churchill Series - Mar. 13, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill. )

Today amusing "orders" Churchill gave Clementine. At the time, they'd been married almost 40 years.

Twenty-eight Hyde Park Gate was the address of their London home. G.H.Q. stands for General Headquarters. The note’s punctuation is as it appears in a published copy.
____________________

15 June 1948

Darling

You did promise Sept 12 1908 ‘To Love, Honour, & Obey.”

NOW herewith are Orders

5:15 You come up here to rest. E.Y.H. [car registration letters] will bring you & is waiting

7:30 Dinner

8:30 Journey to 28 [Hyde Park Gate]

9:40 Bed & a read

Given at Chartwell G.H.Q.

The Tyrant
___________________________

Clementine and Churchill had pet names for each other. Hers were Cat and Kit; his were Pug and Pig.

The Tyrant sketched a pig below his Orders.

The note can be found on page 549 of Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston And Clementine Churchill, which their daughter, Lady Mary Soames, edited.

Do Gore and the Nobel Committee know?

From Green Bay, Wisconsin’s Press Gazette comes news that'll be tough sledding for Al Gore and the Nobel Committee ideologues. The paper reports:

So far this snow season (through March 12) Green Bay has received 80.3 inches of snow.

This is the first time in Green Bay’s modern-day weather history that more than 80 inches of snow has been measured (117 years of snowfall data).

Normal seasonal snowfall is 53.1 inches, the National Weather Service in Ashwaubenon reported. …

The entire Press Gazette’s report is here.

Question: Who can best solve the problem of record snow in Green Bay: Hillary or Obama?

One thing’s for sure: McCain and the GOP won’t do anything about it.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Remember Obama’s friend Tony Rezko?

Here’s the Chicago Sun Times’ latest news report on the trial of Tony Rezko, Chicago fixer and long-time friend of Sen. Barack Obama.

At American Thinker blog Thomas Lifson take’s a “closer look” at Rezko. It’s an outstanding post.

Lifson includes this:

There are two good sites for following Rezko news and analysis, Rezkorama and the aforementioned Rezko Watch.

Even if the mainstream media downplay it, the word from the trial will get out, as Patrick Fitzgerald turns over the Rezko rock.

Let's hope Lifson's right about that.

Iran's Eliot Spitzer & Duke's Dick Brodhead

Blog friend Mike Williams sent along the following, after which I comment below the star line.

Mike begins - - -

Sorry, I forgot to add this one to the list of you-might-want-to-reads:

Think New York’s governor has problems…..

General Reza Zarei, Tehran’s chief of police and a member of the Revolutionary Guard, has resigned under a cloud of scandal after he was caught and arrested naked, with no fewer than six nude women, during a government raid on a brothel.

General Zarei had spearheaded recent police operations targeting the enforcement of Islamic dress for women to promote public morality, which have resulted in thousands of arrests.

In courthouses across the country, but especially in Tehran — among lawyers, judges, court clerks, and police — there is talk of little else.

The story, which the Iranian regime has done its utmost to keep out of the press, first leaked out on the leftist Farsi website Peiknet more than a week ago….

Remember Walter Matthau and the movie, “A Guide for the Married Man”? The dénouement for Gen. Zarei probably wasn’t nearly as amusing.

******************************************************************

Thanks, Mike.

In Zarei's case, I'm not ruling out he was framed by others in the government who for some reason - a grudge, perhaps, fear of him as a rival, he had something on them so he needed to be discredited and gotten out of office - wanted to get rid of him.

Frame-ups happen all the time in police states. That's how they operate. They have no system of justice.

Frame-ups happen, too, in democracies when you have prosecutors like the now disbarred former Durham DA Mike Nifong and certain police officers and supervisors willing to help with the frame-up; and public and elected officials willing to do their part in the frame-up.

And, of course, if while the framers are working to railroad the innocent into jail, leaders of "the progressive community" and "rights groups," and a high-tuition university, and all but one or two of its law school faculty, and all the area news organizations are willing to go along and enable the frame-up, that makes things easier for the framers, and all the more likely more injustices will follow.

That's why although Nifong and the other framers started out to railroad three white Duke students they soon had to arrange the arrest and trial of a black cab driver because his honest evidence threatened the frame-up attempt.

If you don't believe that, just ask Duke's head, Dick Brodhead. He knows an awful lot about what I've just said.

Brodhead also knows about the ongoing cover-up of the frame-up attempt. Ask him about that, too.

And if you care about preserving your Constitutional rights, pray and act so that the civil rights violations suits which have been filed on behalf of the young men victimized by Nifong, his office, certain Durham police and their supervisors, Meehan's lab, the City of Durham and Duke University succeed in exposing all that was done that shouldn't have been done.

That's the only chance Durham has of learning what it needs to know so we can punish the guilty and acknowledge and protect those who acted fairly and in accord with their duties and our Constitution and laws.

If that doesn't happen, if we don't learn of the travesties and crimes committed in our name, and set out to "right wrongs," then Durham will continue its slid toward being more like Tehran than what our founders dreamed America would be.

Spitzer, Nifong & Their MSM Enablers

Kimberley Strassel in the 3/12 WSJ uses the unfolding Spitzer scandal to provide important insights into how most news organizations work. Anyone who's followed the frame-up attempt by now disbarred former Durham DA Mike Nifong will see many similarities between Spitzer and Nifong on the one hand, and journalists who were all too eager to enable them.

I make some comments below the star line concerning press coverage and enablement of Nifong.

Strassel begins:

The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will surely be examining them in coming months. But don't expect the press corps to delve into the biggest lesson of all -- its own role as his enabler.

Journalists have spent the past two days asking how a man of Mr. Spitzer's stature would allow himself to get involved in a prostitution ring.

The answer, in my mind, is clear. The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press. "You play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don't get caught," said Mr. Spitzer two years ago.

He never did get caught, because most reporters were his accomplices.

Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances.

Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.

Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. …

Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title "Crusader of the Year," and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the "Enforcer."

A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was "a rock star," and "the Democratic Party's future." In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.

What the media never acknowledged is that somewhere along the line (say, his first day in public office) Mr. Spitzer became the big guy, the titan. He had the power to trample lives and bend the rules, while also burnishing his own political fortune. He was the one who deserved as much, if not more, scrutiny as onetime New York Stock Exchange chief Dick Grasso or former American International Group CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.

What makes this more embarrassing for any self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. He knew what sort of storyline they'd be sympathetic to, and spun it.

He knew, too, that as financial journalism has become more competitive, breaking news can make a career. He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance.

News organizations that dared to criticize him were cut off. After a time, few criticized anymore.

Instead, reporters felt obligated to run with whatever he handed them. Consider the report in the wake of a 2005 op-ed in this newspaper by John Whitehead.

A respected Wall Street figure, Mr. Whitehead dared to criticize Mr. Spitzer for his unscrupulously zealous pursuit of Mr. Greenberg. Mr. Spitzer later threatened Mr. Whitehead, telling him in a phone call that "You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done."

Some months later, after more Spitzer excesses, Mr. Whitehead had the temerity to write another op-ed describing what Mr. Spitzer had said.

Within a few days, the press was reporting (unsourced, of course) that Mr. Whitehead had defended Mr. Greenberg a few weeks after a Greenberg charity had given $25 million to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation -- a group Mr. Whitehead chaired.

So Mr. Whitehead's on-the-record views were met with an unsourced smear implying bad faith. The press ran with it anyway.

In 2005, Mr. Spitzer went on national television to suggest that Mr. Greenberg had engaged in criminal activity. It was front-page news. About six months later, on the eve of a Thanksgiving weekend, Mr. Spitzer quietly disclosed that he lacked the evidence to press criminal charges. That news was buried inside the papers.

What makes this history all the more unfortunate is that the warning signs about Mr. Spitzer were many and manifest. In the final days of Mr. Spitzer's run for attorney general in 1998, the news broke that he'd twisted campaign-finance laws so that his father could fund his unsuccessful 1994 run. Mr. Spitzer won anyway, and the story was largely forgotten.

New York Stock Exchange caretaker CEO John Reed suggested Mr. Spitzer hadn't told the truth when he said that it was Mr. Reed who wanted him to investigate Mr. Grasso's pay. The press never investigated.

Mr. Spitzer's main offense as a prosecutor is that he violated the basic rules of fairness and due process: Innocent until proven guilty; the right to your day in court. …

On the substance, his court record speaks for itself. Most of Mr. Spitzer's high-profile charges have gone up in smoke. A New York state judge threw out his case against tax firm H&R Block. He lost his prosecution against Bank of America broker Ted Sihpol (whom Mr. Spitzer threatened to arrest in front of his child and pregnant wife). Mr. Spitzer was stopped by a federal judge from prying confidential information out of mortgage companies. Another New York judge blocked the heart of his suit against Mr. Grasso. Mr. Greenberg continues to fight his civil charges.

The press was foursquare behind Mr. Spitzer in all these cases, and in a better world they'd share some of his humiliation. …

Yes, but most of the press has no shame and one of the things journalists do best is excuse themselves.

Strassel continues:

Instead, remarkably, they continue to defend him. Ms. Masters, his biographer, was on CNN the day Mr. Spitzer's prostitution news broke, reassuring viewers that the governor really was a "lovely" guy.

Other news reporters were reporting what a "tragedy" it was that such a leading light in the Democratic Party could come to such an ignoble end.

There's little that's tragic about Mr. Spitzer, unless you consider his victims (which would appear to include his own family). The press would do well to meditate on that, and consider how many violations they winked at and validated over the years. Politicians don't exist to be idolized by the press, at least not by any press corps doing its job.

Strassel’s entire column is here.
********************************************************************
Comments:

“Enabling” is an accurate but very understating descriptor of the roles most MSM have played in furthering Spitzer’s career and Nifong’s criminal acts and his two successful election campaigns. “Complicit” is a better descriptor.

In the case of Nifong, there were no press demands he explain why his office sought a court order requiring certain members of the lacrosse team to submit to DNA testing when police knew those members weren’t at the party where Nifong insisted a gang-rape took place.

Nor did the press demand Nifong explain who actually made the decision to seek the court order which most attorneys say was an unconstitutional order.

It’s still not clear today whether Durham Police decided on their own to seek the order or whether they prepared a request for the order in response to a directive from Nifong’s office.

That question should have been asked in March 2006. If Nifong didn’t answer it, reporters should have kept asking and news organizations should have editorially demanded he answer it.

But rather than do that, most news organizations, dominated by liberal Democrats, went along with Nifong’s and others’ rogue conduct, while spinning the PC meta-narrative of race, class and gender.

The Raleigh News & Observer, which led the media charge, withheld news it had of the players’ cooperation with police and instead promulgated Nifong’s lie the players weren’t cooperating with police.

When that later became known, there was no media demand that Nifong hold a press conference and explain why he’d lied about the players’ lack of cooperation. And there was no media condemnation of the N&O for what it did.

Both major Durham area dailies – the N&O and the Durham Herald Sun - went for many months praising Nifong even when it was obvious to any fair-minded, intelligent person he was engaging in a frame-up attempt.

What did the two papers’ editors do?

They mostly castigated Nifong’s victims for underage drinking and hiring strippers and cheered on his enablers. They also looked the other way at police misconduct, something they’re still doing.

Nifong never could have gotten indictments if the local and national media had done a half-way decent and honest job of reporting and commenting on what was a wildly improbable series of conflicting lies told by accuser Crystal Mangum and Mike Nifong.

Americans need to keep our eyes on our news organizations. Many of them can be as dangerous to a free and just society as rogue prosecutors Spitzer and Nifong.

Hat tip: Tarheel Hawkeye

Spitzer: A list of possible charges

Until two days ago NY Governor Eliot Spitzer was one of the most powerful liberal Democrats and often spoken of as a future presidential nominee. Today wcbstv.com reporter Don Dahler lays out criminal charges he may face, after which I offer a few comments below the star line.

Now Dahler - - -

Eliot Spitzer's resignation Wednesday spares him and the state the spectacle of an impeachment, but what about an indictment?

It was a rare and unequivocal declaration by U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia: "There is no agreement between this office and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter."

And in Spitzer's own words:

"Over the course of my public life, I've insisted, I think correctly, that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct."

But what conduct? And what form will that responsibility take? Legal observers say there's a good chance the governor will be indicted.

"To move funds from one place to the other, to hide the source of the money … it's still going to be money laundering," said John Jay College School of Criminology professor Joseph King.

Experts say "Client 9" could face the following charges:

* Money laundering for trying to conceal the source and recipient of financial transactions.

* Tax evasion, if he was a knowing party to an all-cash business that wasn't filing taxes.

* Violation of the Mann Act for paying for the trip from New York to D.C. by the call girl known as "Kristen."

* Misuse of state resources, if he used his state-issued credit card for hotels or meals with prostitutes as well as if he was being protected by State Troopers during his dalliances.

* And finally, soliciting prostitution.

There's also the question of whether Spitzer used campaign funds for these trysts, which opens up a whole other litany of charges from fraud to federal election violations.

Court documents and published reports indicate perhaps as much as $80,000 were transferred from Spitzer's account to a trio of dummy companies that were fronts for the escort service.

North Fork Bank reportedly grew suspicious when the governor asked that his name be taken off the latest transactions.

The prostitution charge carries the least severe possible sentence. Ironically, one of the first bills Spitzer signed into law raised the penalties for Johns, the men who patronize prostitutes, from a maximum of three months, to now up to a year in jail. Money laundering has a maximum of 20 years.

***********************************************************************

Comments:

A repeat from yesterday's comments I bet almost all of us agree on: It’s too soon for the feds to cut a deal with Spitzer.

The feds won’t know enough to weigh what a deal should include until they know as much as can be learned about crimes he may have committed while in office and perhaps before.

It very likely what we’ve learned so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

In any case, the need for a thorough investigation by federal authorities with the power to subpoena records and compel testimony is obvious and urgent.

A deal now would smack more of a cover-up than a resolution.

Spitzer’s fellow liberal Democrats, including the NY Times editorial board and NY’s Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, should be demanding a “no stone unturned” federal investigation of Spitzer’s conduct.

The silence of liberals regarding an investigation of Spitzer’s conduct is a sad but not very surprising contrast to their demands for an investigation into who “outed” Valerie Plame.

You remember Valeria Plame: the “undercover CIA agent” who lived in DC and for more than 5 years commuted by car to CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.

A number of you have made excellent comments regarding the Spitzer scandal. Thanks.

Later today I plan to look around the blogosphere to find bloggers who are all over the scandal. I suspect some of you have already found some. Mention them on the comment thread. I’ll be sure to take a look.

BTW – Reporter Don Dahler was the first tv reporter to report live from the WTC on 9/11. He’s got a very impressive professional background you can read more about here.

The Churchill Series - Mar. 12, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Churchill’s warnings during the 1930s concerning the threat a rearmed and expansionist Germany posed are well known. Less well known are his warnings concerning Germany in the aftermath of World War I.

At the Paris Peace Conference which followed the November 1918 armistice, there were many who wanted a war settlement that would identify Germany as solely responsible for the war; and punish her severely through loss of territory, restrictions on the size and types of her military forces, and very large financial reparations.

France’s Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, was their most influential leader. In June 1919 he told conference delegates they would “be false to those who have given their all to save the freedom of the world if they consent to treat this war on any other basis than as a crime against humanity.”

Clemenceau demanded Germany “ make reparation to the very uttermost of her power.”

Churchill believed a harsh peace would leave Germany economically weak, politically unstable, and eager to throw off the terms of a treaty it viewed as a diktat.

On May 20, 1919, he wrote to Prime Minister Lloyd George who was then attending the conference:

In my opinion it is of profound importance to reach a settlement with the present German Government, and to reach it as speedily as possible. …

The newspapers and public opinion at home, so far as it is vocal, claims the enforcement of the most extreme terms upon the vanquished enemy. …

Disaster of the most terrible kind lies on that road, and I solemnly warn the Government of the peril of proceeding along it. …

Now is the time, and it may be the only time, to reap the fruits of victory. “Agree with thine adversary whilst thou art in the way with him”

Everything shows that the present German Government is sincerely desirous of making a beaten peace and preserving an orderly community which will carry out its agreement.

It seems to me quite natural that they should put forward a series of counter propositions, and we ought to take these up … with patience and goodwill and endeavour to split the outstanding differences.

In this way we shall get a genuine German acceptance of a defeated peace and not be dawn into new dangers measureless in their character.

During the 1920s Churchill worked to moderate some of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. He later saw his worst fears concerning an unstable and resentful Germany fulfilled as Hitler and the Nazis took advantage of those circumstances to seize power and implement their horrific policies and practices.
_________________________________________________________________
Clemenceau’s speech can be found here. (scroll down about a third of the way)

Excerpts from Churchill’s letter and the circumstances in which he wrote it can be found in Martin Gilbert’s Winston S. Churchill: The Stricken World. (pgs. 895-897)

For those following the Carson murder story

First, a report from the Durham Herald Sun’s Web site, followed below the star line by later information and a few comments.

The Herald Sun reports ------


Police Chief Brian Curran would neither deny nor confirm Wednesday morning that the department has a suspect in custody in the murder of UNC Student Body President Eve Carson.

Reports earlier in the morning said that Durham police had made an arrest after heavily armed officers raided a home on Rosedale Avenue. The man they arrested there was then turned over to the Chapel Hill police, the report said.

Shortly before 11 a.m., police escorted two people with their heads covered from the Chapel Hill Police Department, put them in a car and drove away. There was no indication where they might be headed.

Curran said that the department might be holding a press conference later Wednesday morning – "depending on how things go."

Carson was murdered last week, her body found in a residential neighborhood about a mile from the UNC campus.
*****************************************************************

Update at 1:30 pm eastern ---

From a WRAL report:

…Members of the media swarmed the Chapel Hill Police Department, and a news conference about the latest developments scheduled for 11:45 a.m. was delayed until later in the day. (Watch it live on WRAL.com when it happens.)…

You can access WRAL’s Web site here.

Comments:

The H-S's report thread already has many comments. Some comments are too presumptive and some don’t make sense. There are also some very informed and sensitive comments.

I encourage you to take a look at the thread. As a Durham resident, I think it gives you something of a cross section view of folks in Durham; something traditional media hasn’t done very well since March 2006.

I’m sure many of you have been impressed with the way CH Police Chief Brian Curren has dealt with the media and public. Quite a contrast with the false and reckless statements DPD spokesperson Cpl. David Addison made and published in March and April, 2006.

H/T - Ed in NYC

U. S. Attorney says no deal with Spitzer

From a wcbstv.com story reporting NY Governor Eliot Spitzer’s announcement he will resign his office:

… There were rumors that Spitzer had negotiated a plea deal to avoid jail time in the case, but U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia squashed those rumors. "There is no agreement between this Office and Gov. Eliot Spitzer, relating to his resignation or any other matter," he said in a statement to CBS 2….

I posted last evening concerning possible criminal charges Spitzer is likely to face: A Spitzer target letter.

Also, yesterday I posted on the Raleigh News & Observer’s very incomplete reporting on the Spitzer scandal, including the N&O’s failure to report how and why the IRS and federal prosecutors first caught on to the liberal Democrat Spitzer’s activities which may soon lead to his indictment on federal criminal charges relating to financial transactions.

I linked within that post to a NY Times story that did report on that. Go to the post here and then scroll down until you come to the section detailing and linking to the NYT’s story.

First thoughts:

I was glad to hear the feds had not cut a deal with Spitzer. This scandal is in its first stages. I have no doubt there’s a great deal more Spitzer’s done the feds very likely don’t know about.

Something else: Yes, this scandal involves a governor who hired a prostitute and thereby set himself up as a potential blackmail victim. That’s a very serious matter

But what I think is even more serious is Spitzer’s repeated, public and blatant abuses of his office. They need to be fully investigated with an eye toward prosecution where warranted.

More soon.

What do you think?

Today’s wcbstv.com story is here.

The Churchill Series - Mar. 11, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Churchill’s first wartime visit to the United States occurred shortly after Pearl Harbor. He visited again in June, 1942.

On both occasions Churchill stayed at the White House, to which during his second visit an airmail letter was delivered addressed simply:

Winston Churchill
White House
Washington, D. C.

The envelope was postmarked Denver, Colo., and dated June 21, 1942.

Inside was a single sheet of plain white stationery on which was typed in capital letters:

GO HOME

Churchill returned to England on June 25.

I can't help thinking that if today's White House press corps had been around in 1942 and learned of the letter, the next day we'd have heard in the press briefing room:

"Do you really expect us to believe the Prime Minister's departure had nothing to do with the letter the New York Times made public yesterday?"

The envelope and letter are now at the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, U. K.

The world’s safest prediction?

Tonight on Fox News with Brit Hume, a reporter wrapped up a segment on the Spitzer scandal with:

”His days as a corruption fighter may be over.”

A Spitzer target letter

Last evening California-based blogger Patterico, who’s also an attorney and prosecutor for the Los Angles County district attorney's office, posted on the Spitzer scandal[excerpt]:

[A] report says Spitzer is suspected of “structuring” which is the intentional structuring of financial transactions involving cash in amounts less than $10,000 for the purpose of avoiding the filing of “Currency Transaction Reports” with IRS and FBI.

The [federal prosecutors] indicted the prostitution ring based on what they uncovered in looking into Spitzer, but the facts suggest to me that Spitzer has received a target letter indicating that he is the target of a federal criminal investigation for his conduct.

Tonight it seems to me Patterico was right about a target letter.

From wcbstv.com this afternoon:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is set to resign Wednesday, sources tell CBS 2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer, but insiders say he's going to use the resignation as a bargaining chip to cut a deal with federal prosecutors and he won't step down until that happens.

The talks have been going on since Tuesday morning.

The governor's fate rests in the hands of two people: U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia and Michele Hirshman, the head of his legal defense team. The deal they cut will determine Spitzer's future.

Whoa, Nelly. What wcbstv.com should have said was: "the deal they may cut would help determine Spitzer’s future, but as of now there’s been no deal announcement from Garcia or Hirshman."

Back to wcbstv.com:

Criminal law experts say Spitzer will definitely have to resign the governorship and that what's involved in the deal is key.

So what's the best that could happen to him?

"No charges, absolute resignation, and contrition. I think the worst that could happen is a felony plea on one of a number of charges that they could lodge against him," said noted criminal attorney Ronald Fischetti, who has often had to negotiate with feds on behalf of clients. . . .

The very real problem for Spitzer, as he well knows having been a prosecutor and the former Attorney General is that he could be charged with a number of things that carry jail time: tax evasion, money laundering, bringing a prostitute across state lines from New York to Washington.

He also has another problem in the negotiations with Garcia, who could be feeling pressure to throw the book at him.

"It's very important that [Garcia] expresses to the public that everyone is treated alike and if he doesn't charge someone who was the Attorney General and prosecuted crimes, he will be subject to a lot of public criticism that he let [Spitzer] go because he was the governor," said Fischetti.

I'll bet most of you think there'll be more than "a lot of public criticism" if Spitzer is let off with just his resignation and a public apology about what he's called a "private matter."

Patterico's post is here and the wcbstv.com story's here.

Raleigh N&O’s 3/11 Spitzer Coverage

(This post is based on coverage in the N&O’s West print edition.)

Put in the kindest terms, today’s Raleigh News & Observer’s coverage of the scandal involving Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer is restrained and very incomplete.

The N&O runs the story at the bottom of its front-page under the headline:

Governor apologizes as reports link him to prostitutes (unable to link; story not posted at newsobserver.com)

Below the headline is the full text of Spitzer’s public statement yesterday, a picture of Spitzer reading the statement with his wife, Silda, standing beside him, four paragraphs of story text, and a Details Of Tryst – 4A prompt.

The story (Lisa Anderson, Chicago Tribune) then jumps to pg. 4A.

On 4A there’s some sidebar material including Spitzer bio info of the kind his office would release, a color photo from the Web site of the Emperor’s Club, which provided the prostitute, and a related story headlined:

In affidavit’s tale of tryst, seamy details mix with mundane

Comments:

The N&O only once mentions Spitzer’s a Democrat; and never says he’s a liberal Democrat.

It says nothing about how Democrats are reacting to news that one of their leaders, who until yesterday was often spoken of as a future Democratic presidential nominee, is now involved in a major scandal.

The N&O doesn’t mention Spitzer is a Clinton superdelegate or discuss what that means in terms of the Clinton-Obama fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. For example, that if Spitzer resigns as governor, he'll lose his superdelegate status and his delegate slot won't be filled.

The N&O also fails to report what many news organizations, including the liberal Washington Post, have reported: asked for comment yesterday, all Sen. Clinton said was "I obviously send my best wishes to the governor and his family."

The N&O’s use of “tryst” in both headline and text was obviously meant to “soften” a story that’s really a major scandal involving a liberal Democrat with a history of abusing the public’s trust.

As the Wall Street Journal said this morning after citing some of Spitzer’s abuses when he served as NY Attorney General:

In our system, citizens agree to invest one of their own with the power of public prosecution. We call this a public trust. The ability to bring the full weight of state power against private individuals or entities has been recognized since the Magna Carta as a power with limits.

At nearly every turn, Eliot Spitzer has refused to admit that he was subject to those limits.

The stupendously deluded belief that the sitting Governor of New York could purchase the services of prostitutes was merely the last act of a man unable to admit either the existence of, or need for, limits.

At the least, he put himself at risk of blackmail, and in turn the possible distortion of his public duties. Mr. Spitzer's recklessness with the state's highest elected office, though, is of a piece with his consistent excesses as Attorney General from 1999 to 2006

All true, but the N&O prefers to speak of Spitzer's “tryst.”

That from the newspaper which two years ago, with no credible evidence, nevertheless ran on its front-page, above the fold headlines:

Dancer Gives Details of Ordeal

A Night of Racial Slurs, Growing Fear, and Finally, Sexual Violence

The N&O left out entirely an extremely important part of the Spitzer story the NY Times, ABC and other news organizations began reporting last evening. It concerns why federal investigators first began looking at what Spitzer was doing. It had nothing to do with prostitution.

From the NYT:

…[According to law enforcement officials] Internal Revenue Service investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor of New York, several officials said.

[The governor] appeared to be trying to conceal the source, destination or purpose of the movement of thousands of dollars in cash, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The money ended up in the bank accounts of what appeared to be shell companies, corporations that essentially had no real business.

The transactions, officials said, suggested possible financial crimes — maybe bribery, political corruption, or something inappropriate involving campaign finance. Prostitution, they said, was the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators. …

Spitzer, besides getting caught hiring a prostitute(not a crime), may very well be the target of a federal criminal investigation growing out of the investigation into money transactions.

The N&O should have told readers that. I’m sure it would’ve were Spitzer a Republican.

Spitzer has many North Carolina connections. His wife Silda is a native of Concord, NC and a graduate of Meredith College, located just a few miles from the N&O’s Raleigh offices. The Spitzers have many friends in the Triangle area. Spitzer has spoken at both Duke and UNC – Chapel Hill. In April 2003, for example, Spitzer was the keynote speaker at a major conference at Duke concerning public policy and ethics.

The N&O’s only reference to any of the Spitzers’ NC connections is a one-liner in his bio sidebar telling readers Silda Spitzer is a Concord native and graduate of Meredith.

I could say more about today’s N&O coverage, but I don’t want this post to get too long.

Wrap-up comments:

When scandal involving Republicans and true centrist Democrats is involved, the N&O pushes hard. But when one of its own liberal Democrats is involved, it provides the kind of restrained and very incomplete coverage we saw today.

Much of what the N&O failed to report today is being heavily reported by thousands of news organization and bloggers. Their coverage will no doubt be the hard push the N&O needs to begin reporting the Spitzer scandal more fully and with less restraint.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Here are links to the complete texts of the N&O's "tryst" story, the WaPo's story quoting Sen. Clinton, the WSJ editorial, the NYT story, and Duke's announcement of Spitzer's April, 2003 speech.

A great Karl Rove retort

On Hannity & Colmes tonight Sean Hannity introduced Karl Rove with a quote from a NY Times’ writer who’d praised Rove’s election night punditry on Fox News.

What did Rove think when he heard that, Hannity asked?

Rove: “What am I doing wrong to get applause from the New York Times?”

I’ve watched and listened to Rove’s election commentary.

IMO – This is one time a Times’ writer got it right.

The Churchill Series - Mar. 10, 2008

(One of a series of weekday posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Some Churchill quotes:

"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."
House of Commons speech, July 14, 1940

"Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."
House of Commons speech, November 29, 1944

"Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."

"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself."

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."

"For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else."

The four preceding quotes are from a speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet, London, November 9, 1954

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life

And it's a good thing for all of us to have quotations from such a great and good person.

Some knew about Spitzer in ‘06

As far back as Apr. 21, 2006 The Albany Times-Union reported . . .