STUCK ON STUPID

"Iran's president said on Friday his country would pay no attention to international calls to halt its nuclear work, hours before the U.N. atomic watchdog reports on whether Tehran has met U.N. Security Council demands," Reuters reports from Tehran:

"Those who want to prevent Iranians from obtaining their right, should know that we do not give a damn about such resolutions," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in northwest Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is expected to tell the council and the agency's board on Friday that Iran has not stopped enriching uranium or fully answered IAEA queries as the U.N. body asked a month ago.

On a related subject, here's an April 10 U.N. press release:

The recent record of the Disarmament Commission was far from satisfactory, but now, more than ever, it should use the opportunity of an agreed agenda to strengthen the disarmament machinery to effectively deal with new emerging threats and challenges, the new Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Nobuaki Tanaka, said today upon the opening of the Commission's substantive session. . . .

In other business, the following delegations were elected as Vice-chairpersons, by acclamation: Chile, Uruguay and Iran.

Chairing the U.N.'s disarmament commission is a country whose head of state doesn't "give a damn" about his obligations to the U.N. In light of all this, of what use is the U.N.? Indeed, isn't it worse than useless?

Priceless 

Priceless

American flag: $25
Gasoline $2
Cigarette Lighter $2.50

Catching yourself on fire because you're a terrorist asshole: PRICELESS

A Shortsighted Policy

The efforts by anti-war protestors at UC Santa Cruz to run military recruiters off campus, while successful, portends a dangerous trend for the Left. For a generation, universities around the country have kept the ROTC and recruiters off campus, ostensibly due to the ban on homosexuals serving in the military but more clearly due to an anti-military point of view. After the Supreme Court upheld the Solomon Amendment that gives the federal government the ability to cut off federal funding to colleges who block access to military recruiters, the students themselves have escalated the battle by driving them off campus through intimidation, as they did at the home of the Banana Slugs.

This represents a short-sighted policy by those on the Left, which comes as a piece from their reflexive dislike for all things military (the Left, as opposed to liberals). When they organize to force the military from their campuses, they deny access for their fellow students to the kind of opportunities that can eventually give them access to leadership roles in the armed services. Programs like the ROTC produce officers that often make the military their career, and while the Pentagon prefers academy graduates for promotion to the highest ranks, ROTC-trained officers have also risen to influential leadership positions. They certainly have had brilliant careers in the armed forces over the decades, and their contributions and influence have been remarkable.

The ROTC program allows for the widest possible sampling of the nation's best and brightest, ensuring that the officer corps reflects the nation as a whole, politically, ethnically, and geographically. However, the pressure from the most liberal universities to obstruct their students from entering the military has created an interesting dynamic: only the more conservative or moderate schools now contribute to the ROTC pool. The Solomon Amendment may have corrected that, but as the Banana Slugs have shown, the radicals will not allow it.

What kind of military leadership will this produce? We will have an increasingly conservative officer corps, one whose politics will not accurately reflect the nation's political spectrum. Even as a conservative, this worries me. The natural balance of viewpoints allow for the best decision-making. Moreover, it threatens to politicize the officer corps of the military in a manner which could eventually challenge civilian leadership, especially if a more liberal president gets elected. It sets up a potential conflict that could threaten the Constitution in a manner never seen before in the US. The open slots for officers will get filled, and if the Banana Slugs don't want to help fill them, then candidates will come from somewhere.

Chasing military recruiters off of the most liberal of campuses might give some kooks a thrill, but in the end it is self-defeating. It does not surprise me at all that these leftist radicals don't have the foresight to see this, but it does surprise me that the universities themselves fail to recognize it.

The President didn't leak squat.

IT'S amazing how the common topics and subjects of discussion three years ago should vanish so quickly from memory.

Yesterday, breathless news reports suggested that President Bush had directed the "leak" of classified information in July 2003. Yet the "leak" in question was from a document called the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE - and by the time this "leak" occurred, the contents of the NIE as they related to Iraq were almost entirely public.

On Oct. 7, 2002, nine months before Bush's supposed "leak," the administration released an unclassified version of the very same NIE at the urging of Senate Democrats. And in early 2003, reporters hostile to the administration (primarily John Judis and Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic) were being told all sorts of things about the still-classified portions of the NIE.

And this "leak" wasn't a leak in any case. A "leak" is the unauthorized release of government information. The leak of classified information is a crime. But according to Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to the vice president who gave the information from the NIE to a reporter, he only released it because he was authorized to do so by the president himself.

Constitutionally, the authority to declare documents "classified" resides with the president. So, under the terms of an executive order first drafted in 1982, he can declassify a document merely by declaring it unclassified.

The language of the executive order reads as follows: "Information shall be declassified or downgraded by the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position . . . [or] a supervisory official." In the executive branch, the president is the ultimate "supervisory official."

We have found out about the president's decision to declassify information from the 2002 NIE because the special prosecutor who has charged Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice revealed elements of Libby's grand-jury testimony in new court papers.

The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, claims Libby was involved in revealing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame as a means of discrediting Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson.

Wilson had written an op-ed in which he said he knew first-hand that the Bush administration had deliberately lied when it claimed Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium in Africa. (The CIA had sent Wilson, a one-time ambassador, to the African country of Niger for little more than a week in 2002 to check out the uranium story.)

Wilson was certain he could demonstrate that Libby had told Judith Miller of The New York Times about Valerie Plame's CIA employment at a meeting between the two on July 8, 2003. But Libby told the grand jury, in effect, that he met with Miller that day to give her information to discredit Wilson's op-ed that was far more potent than simply pointing out Wilson probably got the gig because his CIA wife was throwing the diplomatic has-been a bone.

According to Fitzgerald's court filing, Libby "testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out. [Libby] further testified that he at first advised the vice president that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE. [Libby] testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized [Libby] to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE."

Also lost in the mists of recent memory is the reason we're talking about this in the first place. Fitzgerald is involved in this story because he was asked to investigate whether the public exposure of Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment was a crime. For it to be a crime, she had to be a covert CIA operative who had served in that capacity at some point in the five years prior to her exposure - and the person exposing her had to be doing it consciously and with knowledge that she was covert.

Fitzgerald did not indict Libby or anybody else on those grounds. Even so, there's been a lot of harrumphing about the idea that the White House might have sought to discredit Wilson at all - that somehow doing such a thing was manifestly horrible.

But Wilson had claimed that he had inside knowledge that the White House knew Saddam had never sought to purchase uranium and that it went ahead and told a cock-and-bull story anyway - that, in other words, Bush had deliberately lied us into war.

That charge was so explosive that the Bush administration had no choice but to answer it in some fashion. By authorizing the release of some classified material to a reporter, Bush was fighting back against a slander.

And slander it was, no more and no less. The Senate Intelligence Committee specifically said Wilson came back from Niger and offered up some information suggesting Saddam had been pursuing nuclear material in Niger in 1999.

Wilson's appalling lies were revealed in 2004. And yet, here we are, in 2006, fighting the same old battles. Guess this is what happens when you don't win a war quickly enough.

The Cynthia McKinney Guide to "Racially Motivated" Arrests

As you are undoubtedly aware, Representative Cynthia A. McKinney (D-Black Pantheria) has landed herself in a spot of trouble. Ms. McKinney, an African American who's no stranger to controversy, allegedly assaulted a Capitol police officer who had the nerve to compel her to walk through a metal detector.

After an earlier display of semi-contrition, Ms. McKinney changed her stance and is now as mad as heck about the whole incident. What brought about such an about-face? Well, it appears as if Ms. McKinney may be charged for punching the officer in question. Thus pseudo-remorse has turned to righteous indignation.

But what kind of righteous indignation appealed to Ms. McKinney? You may be surprised to discover, dear reader, that Ms. McKinney decided to play the race card. Gee: We didn't see that one coming.

Carl Hulse's report in The New York Times perfectly encapsulates the congresswoman's Johnny Cochran-esque strategy:

One of her [McKinney's] lawyers, James Myart, said the case typified a pattern of police harassment of black Americans. "My belief is this is no different than that: 'they all look alike.'"

Wow. How mind-numbingly offensive is this? A Capitol police officer scrutinizes Ms. McKinney because she failed to wear a lapel pin that would have identified her as a Member of Congress. For his troubles, he gets punched by Ms. McKinney and accused of racism.

Interestingly, the Times report clearly attempts to portray the odious McKinney in the best possible light: It mentions that Republicans are purportedly interested in this brouhaha because it will "shift attention from a guilty plea to corruption charges Friday by a former senior Republican House aide." Well, gee: Thanks for that impartial observation.

Further, the Gray Lady refers to McKinney as "a lawmaker known for provocative statements." Hmm: We suppose that "provocative statements" is an acceptable synonym for "anti-Semitism." We wonder if they'd let David Duke off the hook so easily.

Given the brazenness of Congresswoman McKinney's trumped up cries of racism, one might reasonably wonder how she would respond to allegations for other crimes. Well, dear reader, wonder no longer. The Official Race-Bating Department here at "The Hatemonger's Quarterly" has come up with a list of potential McKinney responses to future criminal allegations.

So, before you take in another indignant McKinney press conference--obligatorily staged at a traditionally black college and graced with the obligatory presence of Danny Glover--you can save yourself some time by consulting the following list:

The Unofficial Cynthia McKinney Guide to "Racially Motivated" Arrests

1) Jaywalking: A citation for jaywalking would be easy to handle; clearly, it's just a disgraceful attempt to confine a Black woman. Whitey can't handle a Woman of Color running free in the world.

2) Sexual Assault: This charge insidiously harkens back to age-old racist stereotypes about Back sexuality. A Black woman should be passive, think malignant racists.

3) Embezzlement: Racists think that all people should live up to "white standards" of proper fiscal conduct. The disgusting oppressors!

4) Slander: Oh, so the minute a Black woman dares to speak her mind, the white world must slap her with a fine, eh? Obviously, this is another plot to keep a Black lady down.

5) Blackmail: Uh, do we even need to explain?