Congress Proposes to Take Control of Charities

And Heather Higgins, who I met a number of years ago when she was called Heather Randolph and running her own family foundation, writes on OpinionJournal - Extra that she doesn't like the idea:

The added costs are easily absorbed by the huge charities that already employ large bureaucracies, but they will devastate small shops with limited budgets and largely volunteer non-professional staff. New rules would limit board size--another blow to fund-raising--and prescribe governance policies, duties and composition.

The proposals would require the IRS to grade each charity against its definition of 'Best Practices.' The IRS already receives annual 'Form 990s' from most nonprofits (detailing officers, revenues and expenditures), and can audit any nonprofit at any time. These proposals may clarify that process, and if so that's all to the good. But some now propose an expanded process that could put most, if not all, charities through an extensive review as frequently as every five years. This would involve submission of massive documentation to the IRS justifying the charity's compliance, restating its charitable goals and offering detailed narratives about its policies and operations, all to be made public.

Moreover, the IRS could require accreditation for the maintenance of tax-exempt status, and could contract out some of these powers to private accrediting entities. There is already deep concern on both sides of the political aisle that the IRS, despite denials, has had its auditing powers used for political purposes. Accreditation is an area where Congress must proceed with great caution. Accreditation by private organizations can be an excellent idea if voluntary and competitive, but mandatory and monolithic accreditation as a substitute for IRS oversight could stifle diversity while doing nothing to alleviate fears of misuse.

Sleepless at 34,000 Feet

A sobering short story, on This 'n' That. A sample:

I don't recall how or why, but we began to converse. I recollect that it had to do with the dinner menu. I also discovered that he was not African American. His accent was Pakistani. And quite frankly, after I'd heard him speak, I didn't want to talk with him anymore. Shame on me, for I had stereotyped him as a radical Muslim possibly associated with terrorist activities. The recent atrocities visited upon innocent women and children in Russia was still fresh in the news and in my mind. Because of that, mostly, I felt nothing but animosity for him and his religious faith.

As it turned out, my assumptions about his country of origin and religious faith were correct. Because he soon began to speak about the virtues of Islam. I quickly became a circumspect listener, reluctant to discuss or hear about the Islamic faith on an airplane 34,000 feet in the air of all places.

As Glenn Reynolds says, read the whole thing.

A Link to Slate...

To note a reference to our post on Saul Bellow in Judgment Call by Bidisha Banerjee (scroll down)...

A Plug for my Cousin's Blogs

Cousin Lucy's Spoon and Travels in Boo Land.

Kyrgyzstan: What is to be Done?

I've posted my suggestions onRegistan.net.

Mark Steyn: The Pope Was Right About AIDS

From The Telegraph: "The question now is whether His Holiness was as right about us as he was about the Communists. The secularists, for example, can't forgive him for his opposition to condoms in the context of Aids in Africa. The Dark Continent gets darker every year: millions are dying, male life expectancy is collapsing and such civil infrastructure as there is seems likely to follow.

But the most effective weapon against the disease has not been the Aids lobby's 20-year promotion of condom culture in Africa, but Uganda's campaign to change behaviour and to emphasise abstinence and fidelity - i.e., the Pope's position. You don't have to be a Catholic or a "homophobe" to think that the spread of Aids is telling us something basic - that nature is not sympathetic to sexual promiscuity. If it weren't Aids, it would be something else, as it has been for most of human history."

Photos of the Pope's Funeral

Katherine Lopez, at National Review Online, has posted a photo-essay on Pope John Paul II's funeral.

Will Iraq Now Welcome Back Its Jews?

Thanks to a tip from Roger L Simon, I saw this interesting item from neo-neocon.

I was reading a thread at LGF about Talabani's selection as interim President of Iraq, when I saw this remark by a commenter named sandspur:

Just saw a little clip of Talabani on FNC. Sorry I can't quote him verbatim, but he said that Jews, Arabs, all will be treated equally.

As extraordinary as Talabani's election was, this comment seemed even more extraordinary. Why mention Jews? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a link for the quote. But in researching it, I came across some other information that I found fascinating.

There are almost no Jews left in Iraq, although it once teemed with them, and the Jewish presence there was ancient. At the time of WWI, one-third of the population of Baghdad is estimated to have been Jewish. But anti-Semitism in Iraq increased during the early 1940s, influenced by Nazi-inspired leaders who staged a coup (and I don't mean "Nazi-inspired" as a metaphor; I mean it literally). Violence against Jews intensified after the state of Israel was established, and most of the Jews of Iraq left the country.

Well, it turns out that this mention of Jews by the Kurdish Talabani was no fluke. Today, while researching this, I came across an extraordinary article written in 2001 by Michael Rubin, entitled "The Other Iraq." Read the whole thing, as Glenn Reynolds would say.

According to Rubin's article, written before the Iraq war that deposed Saddam, many Kurds were already expressing approval of Israel and studying the country as a model for their own autonomy and liberation. Victims of persecution and genocide themselves, they could identify. What's more, they despised the Palestinians for their support of Saddam. The older generation of Kurds remembered the absent Iraqi Kurdish Jews fondly, and even the younger generation were able to listen to Israeli radio, watch Israeli TV, and access Israeli websites, unlike the inhabitants of the rest of Iraq.

So Talabani's statement doesn't come out of the blue, although it was a total surprise to me. I was ignorant of this long history of relative goodwill in the Kurdish part of Iraq towards Israel and the Jews.

MISTAKES WERE MADE: Charlie Clark's New Book

My friend Charlie Clark has a new book out. It's MISTAKES WERE MADE: PEOPLE WHO PLAYED THE ROLE OF “GOAT” IN HISTORY. Here's his synopsis:

Ask someone to describe his worst mistake and he will probably pause before replying, ``I'd prefer not to discuss it.'' Ah, but what if you had a ringside seat in the lives of people who suffered the fate of committing major errors in full view of a public that forever ties them to the gaffe? In this captivating collection of nine historical profiles, Charlie Clark offers a blow-by-blow description of the mistakes made by some history’s most famous “goats” in such areas as the military, exploration, technology, and the arts. Most intimately, he takes the reader through the painful aftermath to show you how each of these reverse heroes coped with the role. You’ll meet such memorable characters as the pioneer guide who misled the Donner Party, the college football lineman who ran the ball the wrong way, and the record executive who rejected the Beatles.

To order, click on this link to amazon.com.

Cathy Buckle on Zimbabwe's Election

From Cathy Buckle's Letter from Zimbabwe: "My descriptions of the last two elections told of war veterans breaking down doors, burning huts and force marching villagers to rallies and all night re-education sessions. They told of arson, of petrol bombs being thrown through windows, of women being raped and men being beaten with electric cables, sticks and batons. The things that were done to the people of Zimbabwe in the last two elections were so widespread that there was hardly a suburb or even a street where there was not a victim, a relation or an eye witness. We saw the blood, broken bones, burns and bruises with our own eyes; we heard the screams, groans and cries with our own ears. From February 2000 to March 2005 we have waited for the perpetrators of those deeds to be apprehended, tried and convicted for their crimes but we have waited in vain. There has been no accountability and so now we watch, we listen, we keep our mouths shut and we wait. The old saying that a leopard does not change its spots is very much in our minds just a few days before elections. "

Congo: 3.8 Million Dead in 6 Year Conflict

This International Rescue Committee report reveals the scale of mass-murder that followed the overthrow of Mobutu. "Democracy Revolutionists" might want to consider this precedent before overthrowing their next authoritarian government...

Power Line on Anti-Semitism at Columbia University

Here at Power Line.

Dershowitz on Columbia University's Anti-Semitism Scandal

Interviewed by CAMERA:

I have a letter in front of me from one of the most prominent alumni, a major contributor, who says: 'I'm poised to replace Columbia as the main beneficiary of my charitable remainder trust.' If President Bollinger thought that he would calm fears about the one-sidedness by appointing a committee that includes two people who are part of the problem, not part of the solution, he was misguided...

DP: What’s the difference between free speech and academic freedom?

AD: Free speech and academic freedom apply to what a professor says outside of the classroom. Academic freedom does not entitle the professor to limit discussion in class ideologically. However, if a professor wanted to, he or she could say "I just do lectures, there are no questions." Why anybody would take that course, I don’t know, but a professor has the right to do that. And a professor has the right to say, "I will call on students based on alphabetical order, or based on who raises their hands first," but a teacher cannot refuse to take questions from a student based on content, and a teacher may not punish students for the ideological content of their views. Nor can students be restricted from attending a class, or registering for a class based on their ideological views.

These principals are part of the academic freedom and freedom of speech of the students, and the university must always balance, particularly in the setting of a classroom, the academic freedom and speech rights of the student versus the academic freedom and free speech rights of a professor.

Top 100 Saudi Companies

This looked interesting. A list of the 100 biggest Saudi companies, from Arab News. The biggest of all is the "Kingdom Holding Company."

Complain about PBS, NPR and Pacifica!

At this link to the CPB Ombudsmen. They've added another layer of bureaucracy to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Ken Bode, retired host of PBS's "Washington Week in Review" and William Schulz, former Washington editor of "Reader's Digest" have been hired as dual ombudsmen. If you want to give them some work to do, and put your tax dollars to work, just fill out this form any time you are unhappy with anything you see or hear on PBS, NPR or Pacifica radio...

Anne Applebaum on Pope John Paul II

The article is titled, How the Pope 'Defeated Communism'. She points out that secular political activities were as important as John Paul II's spiritual efforts...

Saul Bellow is Dead

Roger L. Simon tipped us off to this obituary of Saul Bellow. The Nobel-prize winning author was not too appealing when I was younger, I really couldn't read any of his novels. Too dense, somehow.

This famous quote repeated in his New York Times obituary was off-putting even at the time it was uttered:

"Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" The remark caused a furor and was taken as proof, he said, ""that I was at best insensitive and at worst an elitist, a chauvinist, a reactionary and a racist - in a word, a monster." He later said the controversy was "the result of a misunderstanding that occurred (they always do occur) during an interview."

Who is the Pushkin of Chicagoans? The Dumas of Bostonians? one might respond.

Then, I found one book I really liked: Ravelstein, based on real-life University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom.

I couldn't put that one down, it was just fascinating. Perhaps because I had been around so many neo-conservatives and "Great Books" types. Most fascinating of all was the hostility Bellow generated from certain neo-conservative circles. For example, I attended a panel at the Hudson Institute where Bellow was condemned for writing explicitly about Ravelstein's homosexuality, among other things (Ravelstein also took money from his students, and lounged about all day in a bathrobe). I had the feeling that those present would have banned the book, had they been able to do so. It was really kind of scary and depressing. Practically Soviet-style denunciations for deviationism, from a very dour and drab set of panelists, who didn't like the idea that a neo-conservative was being "outed" as a complicated human being, even as a fictional character. After all, it's a novel. But the panelists seemed to have no appreciation of Ravelstein as literature, only an instrumental view that it didn't serve "the cause."

Yuck.

That Bellow could provoke such a reaction, forcing certain people to reveal how they really thought (or didn't, more accurately put), was a tribute to his power as a novelist.

High Minded Realists v Democracy Revolutionists

In a thoughtful essay, Dmitri Simes and Robert Ellsworth, writing in The National Interest, call for "high-minded realism" as a foreign-policy alternative to President Bush's democracy policy. It's worthwhile reading the whole thing. Here's a sample:

High-minded realists do not disagree with the self-appointed champions of global democracy (the neoconservatives and the liberal interventionists) that a strong preference for liberty and justice should be an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. But they realize that there are tradeoffs between pushing for democracy and working with other sovereign states--some not always quite democratic--to combat global terror. Realists also, following the advice of General Charles Boyd, understand the need to 'separate reality from image' and 'to tell the truth, if only to ourselves'--not to play fast and loose with facts to create the appearance of acting morally.

And they are aware that there are important differences in how the United States helps the world achieve freedom. Indeed, in his first press conference after his triumph at the polls, President Bush used three different terms in talking about America's global pro-democracy effort. He discussed the need 'to encourage freedom and democracy', to 'promote free societies', and to 'spread freedom and democracy.'

'Encouraging' democracy is not a controversial position. Nearly everyone in the world accepts that the sole superpower is entitled and indeed expected to be true to its core beliefs. 'Promoting' democracy is more vague and potentially more costly. Still, if the United States does so without resorting to military force and takes into account the circumstances and perspectives of other nations, then it is likely not to run into too much international opposition. 'Spreading' democracy, however, particularly spreading it by force, coercion and violent regime change, is a different thing altogether. Those who suspect they may be on the receiving end of such treatment are unlikely to accept American moral superiority, are bound to feel threatened, and cannot reasonably be expected to cooperate with the United States on other important American priorities, including the War on Terror and nuclear proliferation.

Roger L. Simon says CSPAN Finds "Balance"

Roger L. Simon reports that CSPAN has decided not to "balance" Deborah Lipstadt with David Irving, after all...

IRS Chief: Charities Cheat on Taxes

Today's Washington Post has a story about IRS Commissioner Mark Everson's complaint that non-profits are abusing their tax-exempt status:

"Charities and other nonprofits exempted from taxes because they serve a public purpose have become a hotbed of tax evasion and abuse, according to the head of the Internal Revenue Service.

'We can see that tax abuse is increasingly present in the sector,' and unless the government takes effective steps to curb it, such organizations risk 'the loss of the faith and support that the public has always given to this sector,' Internal Revenue Commissioner Mark W. Everson said in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee detailing abuses his agency has found.