Happy Birthday, To Kill a Mockingbird

A friend sent me this item about the anniversary of Harper Lee's novel:

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm broken at the elbow..."

Those were the first fifteen words Harper Lee wrote in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Little did she know that soon after her book's publication in 1960, it would go on to win not only a Pulitzer Prize, but remain a bestseller for decades to come. The film version received eleven Academy Award nominations, winning three Oscars. (Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch.) I first saw the book in the hands of my mother shortly after it was published. An avid reader, she spent many hot and humid summer evenings enthralled by the words Harper Lee had composed about Scout, Jem, their father Atticus Finch, and Boo Radley and the mythical town of Maycomb, Alabama. My father, nor my two younger siblings dared to interfere with my mother's reading. It was always after supper and after the dishes were washed - by my younger brother and me - that she got comfortable in her favorite chair and in her mind traveled to visit the Finch family in Maycomb. She and my father would stroll down to the local theater to see the film version upon its arrival in our tiny town.

Years later in a college english class, my classmates and I were assigned to write an essay about a book of our choice. Being an eternal procrastinator, I waited until literally the last minute to choose, read a book, and write my essay about it. Miraculously, I recalled that my mother had not only read To Kill a Mockingbird, she had also seen the movie. So I immediately called her. I omitted the fact that I had an essay due in a matter of days. My inquiry went something like this: "Hey, mom. Remember that book you read...ummm, uhhh, the one you really liked...And then you and dad went to see the movie." Her reply: "I've read a lot of books..." "This one was about the south and a lawyer with two kids who defends a black man..." "To Kill a Mockingbird..." "That's it. I think." "Why are you asking about it now?" "Oh...ummm...I'm thinking about reading it. But I just need, uh, want to know more about it..." I readied my pen, had it hovering over note paper. My mother's long silence made me fidget in my seat at my desk. "H-u-l-l-o?" "Umm humm. Is this for one of your classes?" I was afraid to lie, but too desperate not to persist in weeding out the information I needed from my mother. "Kinda" "And you haven't read it?" "I will. I will. I just..." "I'm not going to tell you about the book. You'll have to read it for yourself, young man. Better get busy....Hope you get an A. B-y-e." Dial tone.

I dashed to the student bookstore on campus, bought a copy of Cliff Notes on To Kill a Mockingbird, and frantically read the summary and analysis. After an overnight typing session, red-eyed I turned in my essay on time. A week or so later my english professor returned the graded essays to the class. With a grade of B- I thought I had done quite well, though I had not truly read the book. As I was about to leave, my professor called for me to come to where she sat at the front of the class. I was not guilty of plagiarizing a single word, so I knew I couldn't be had for that. What could it be? I worried. Finally. She was serious, not grim, as she stared into my eyes. "I can tell that you rushed your essay... Even after you had two weeks to write it." She was right. So I kept my mouth shut. She continued. "You have an innate ability to write. And I think it's a shame that you don't work to the best of your ability. The B-... could very well have been an A."

Whether my english professor knew it or not circa 1971 or 1972, she did shame me. Since then I have at the very least attempted to do the best I can do when it comes to the written word. Some positive results have come of it. But for some odd reason or another, I have never read To Kill a Mockingbird from the beginning to the end.

Paul Berman on Islamism's Nazi Roots

From Saturday's Wall Street Journal:

No one disputes that the Nazis collaborated with several Islamist leaders. Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, orated over Radio Berlin to the Middle East. The mufti's strongest supporter in the region was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna, too, spoke well of Hitler. But there is no consensus on how to interpret those old alliances and their legacy today.

Tariq Ramadan, the Islamic philosopher at Oxford, is Banna's grandson, and he argues that his grandfather was an upstanding democrat. In Mr. Ramadan's interpretation, everything the Islamists did in the past ought to be viewed sympathetically in, as Mr. Ramadan says, "context"—as logical expressions of anticolonial geopolitics, and nothing more. Reviews in Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker—the principal critics of my book—have just now spun variations on Mr. Ramadan's interpretation.

The piece in Foreign Affairs insists that, to the mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler was merely a "convenient ally," and it is "ludicrous" to imagine a deeper sort of alliance. Those in the National Interest and the New Yorker add that, in the New Yorker's phrase, "unlikely alliances" with Nazis were common among anticolonialists.

The articles point to some of Gandhi's comrades, and to a faction of the Irish Republican Army, and even to a lone dimwitted Zionist militant back in 1940, who believed for a moment that Hitler could be an ally against the British. But these various efforts to minimize the significance of the Nazi-Islamist alliance ignore a mountain of documentary evidence, some of it discovered last year in the State Department archives by historian Jeffrey Herf, revealing links that are genuinely profound.

"Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion," said the mufti of Jerusalem on Radio Berlin in 1944. And the mufti's rhetoric goes on echoing today in major Islamist manifestos such as the Hamas charter and in the popular television oratory of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a revered scholar in the eyes of Tariq Ramadan: "Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one." Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker have expended nearly 12,000 words in criticizing "Flight of the Intellectuals." And yet, though the book hinges on a series of such genocidal quotations, not one of those journals has found sufficient space to reproduce even a single phrase.

Why not? It is because a few Hitlerian quotations from Islamist leaders would make everything else in those magazine essays look ridiculous—the argument in the Foreign Affairs review, for instance, that Qaradawi ought to be viewed as a crowd-pleasing champion of "centrism," and Hamas merits praise as a "moderate" movement and a "firewall against radicalization."

George Will on Prohibition

From last week's Washington Post column:

Although whiskey often was a safer drink than water, Americans, particularly men, drank too much. Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who would close saloons. So the United States Brewers' Association officially opposed women's suffrage.

Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

By 1900, per capita consumption of alcohol was similar to today's, but mere temperance was insufficient for the likes of Carrie Nation. She was "six feet tall, with the biceps of a stevedore, the face of a prison warden, and the persistence of a toothache," and she wanted Prohibition. It was produced by the sophisticated tenacity of the Anti-Saloon League, which at its peak was spending the equivalent of 50 million of today's dollars annually. Okrent calls it "the mightiest pressure group in the nation's history." It even prevented redistricting after the 1920 Census, the first census to reveal that America's urban -- and most wet -- population was a majority.

Before the 18th Amendment could make drink illegal, the 16th Amendment had to make the income tax legal. It was needed because by 1910 alcohol taxes were 30 percent of federal revenue.

Workmen's compensation laws gave employers an interest in abstemious workers. Writes Okrent, Asa Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola Co., saw "opportunity on the other side of the dry rainbow." World War I anti-German fever fueled the desire to punish brewers with names such as Busch, Pabst, Blatz and Schlitz. And President Woodrow Wilson's progressivism became a wartime justification for what Okrent calls "the federal government's sudden leap into countless aspects of American life," including drink.

And so Prohibition came. Sort of. Briefly.

Senate Posts Elena Kagan's Answers to Written Questions

You can read them on the Senate Judiciary Committee website (ht Senatus blog). IMHO Senator Coburn scored a point with his question about pro bono legal work:

[SEN. COBURN:]I believe each profession has an obligation to serve the less fortunate. I take that belief personally and apply it in my career as a physician. While I am not a lawyer, I do know the legal profession encourages and actively promotes, as does my medical profession, pro bono services. In fact, Rule 6.1 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which governs the behavior of attorneys, states “[e]very lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay. A lawyer should aspire to render at least 50 hours of pro bono public legal services per year.” It goes on to note the various ways that responsibility should be fulfilled, stating the lawyer should provide those services to “persons of limited means or charitable, religious, civic, community, governmental and educational organizations in matters that are designed primarily to address the needs of persons of limited means.”

Comment 1 of Rule 6.1 reinforces the importance of pro bono services when it states, “[e]very lawyer, regardless of professional prominence or professional work load, has a responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay...” Comment 9 goes even further by stating, “[b]ecause the provision of pro bono services is a professional responsibility, it is the individual ethical commitment of each lawyer.”

Based on the Model Rules and your comments in the committee-required questionnaire for your nomination as solicitor general, which merely notes Harvard Law School’s institution of a tuition-free third year and loan forgiveness for students engaged in public service, I am concerned by your personal lack of pro bono legal services.

a. In your Supreme Court questionnaire, you note that you have “served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations” and “promoted public service and pro bono work” while Dean at Harvard. But, you “did not engage in any individual representation of clients.” In fact, your pro bono work appears to be far less than prior Supreme Court nominees, despite some of those nominees’ restrictions on providing these services due to their careers as judges. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Harriet Miers listed extensive pro bono activities, including representing indigent clients, in their questionnaires. Even Justices Sotomayor and Alito, who had spent most of their careers as judges and were prohibited from representing clients in pro bono work, had more meaningful volunteer work for the underprivileged and indigent.

i. Since graduating from law school, have you ever volunteered your time for pro bono legal services that would qualify you to fulfill the yearly requirements of Rule 6.1 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct? Why or why not?

Response:
My pro bono work as a lawyer is listed in my questionnaire response except that I may have done some pro bono work at Williams and Connolly that I do not now recall. My general practice as both a government lawyer and an academic was not to represent individual clients (whether for pay or pro bono). I do not know whether my efforts to expand pro bono opportunities as Dean of Harvard Law School or my service on the boards of several organizations devoted to representation of needy persons falls within Rule 6.1.

[SEN. COBURN:]ii.Please list the cases or clients you have participated in or in which you have represented a client pro bono.

Response:
Please see above.

Document of the Week: Chief FOIA Officer Report FY09 Central Intelligence Agency March 15, 2010

The CIA recently posted its report by a secret author on its handling of Freedom of Information Act requests for 2009. It makes for interesting reading.

In section one, part one, the CIA admits that it has released declassified documents to students at a private military day and boarding high-school located in Culver, Indiana for a symposium it called "Creating Global Intelligence: the Creation of the US Intelligence Community and the Lessons for the 21st Century." While it must have been fun for the high-schoolers, and nice for the school, one has to wonder how such a private event at a private military school, located out in the country, could be classified as a contribution to "the presumption of openness." (I'm guessing someone at the CIA knew someone connected to Culver Military Academy). I don't think that even the producers of Team America: World Police would have thought of this.

Chief FOIA Officer Report
FY09
Central Intelligence Agency
March 15, 2010

I. Steps Taken to Apply the Presumption of Openness
1. Describe below the steps your agency has taken to ensure that the
presumption [of openness] is being applied to all decisions involving
the FOIA. This section should include a discussion of the range of
steps taken by your agency to apply this presumption. From
publicizing the President’s FOIA Memorandum and Attorney
General’s FOIA Guidelines and providing training on them, to
implementing the presumption in response to FOIA requests and
administrative appeals, with examples or statistics illustrating your
agency’s action in making discretionary releases of records or partial
releases when full disclosure is not possible.

Both the President’s FOIA Memorandum and the Attorney General’s FOIA
Guidelines were widely circulated and discussed with all individuals involved
in the FOIA process. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has worked
diligently to release information to the public that no longer requires
protecting, including discretionary releases not mandated under FOIA.

Under the CIA’s Historical Review Program, several discretionary collections
on historically significant topics were released to the public in FY09. These
collections included (date of release in parentheses):

• Office of Scientific Intelligence (10/08)
• Polish Martial Law (12/08)
• Vietnam Histories (3/09)
• Air America: Upholding the Airmen’s Bond (4/09)
• Founding Documents of the Intelligence Community (5/09)

These discretionary releases provided official acknowledgement of
previously undisclosed information. For example, in the case of the Polish
Martial Law documents, the documents provided insight into the
contributions of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski to U.S. policymakers’
understanding of the events leading up to the imposition of martial law in
Poland. In the case of the Air America documents, the CIA acknowledged
for the first time the role that Air America pilots played in the search and
rescue of airmen during the Vietnam conflict.

The CIA also partnered with Culver Academy, a private school in Indiana
during a year long effort to place declassified documents into the classroom
for hands-on study in the classroom. The CIA released the Founding
Documents of the Intelligence Community, 833 documents primarily from
the late 1940’s through the 1950’s. The documents provide specific
procedural and implementing guidance for the establishment of the CIA and
more broadly, the Intelligence Community. Historians from the CIA’s Center
for the Study of Intelligence Historians, the National Security Agency, and
Villanova University conducted in-class learning experiences with the
students showing them how to use the primary sources and also providing the
background framework and events that shaped the documents. The Capstone
of the project was a symposium entitled Creating Global Intelligence: the
Creation of the US Intelligence Community and the Lessons for the 21st
Century.

In section one, part two, the CIA states that it released 363 records in full and 918 records in part, in response to FOIA requests. This is compared to the previous years totals of 237 and 532, respectively. Thus, the CIA concludes: "The data show that more documents were released in full or in part in FY09 in comparison to 2008." This data is almost meaningless, because it consists only of raw numbers, rather than percentages of requests answered. How many requests were made as opposed to answered in the two years discussed? They don't say, we don't know, and so cannot make any claim as to relative trends in this regard. The information has been kept secret, in such a way as to negate the validity of the claim, except as technically responsive to the question. Perhaps some high school students at Culver Military Academy could explain principles of statistical analysis to the CIA FOIA officer?

2. Report whether your Agency shows an increase in the number of
requests where records have been released in full or where records
have been released in part when compared with those numbers in
previous year’s Annual FOIA Report.

In FY09, the CIA released 363 records in full and 918 records in part as
compared to FY08 when 237 records were released in full and 532 records
were released in part. The data show that more documents were released in
full or in part in FY09 in comparison to 2008.

In section two, sections one and two, the CIA first admits that it didn't have a functioning IT system in 2008 to track FOIA requests, then describes the new system in such vague terms as to be almost meaningless. I couldn't find one hard fact, statistic, or number to analyze. A non-answer. Again, the CIA FOIA officer might benefit from a refresher course in English composition at Culver Military Academy.

II. Steps Taken to Ensure that Your Agency has an Effective System for
Responding to Requests
1. Describe here the steps your agency has taken to ensure that the
system for responding to requests is effective and efficient.
2. This section should include a discussion of how your agency has
addressed the key roles played by the broad spectrum of agency
personnel who work with FOIA professional in responding to
requests, including, in particular, steps taken to ensure that FOIA
professionals have sufficient IT support.

1. In FY08 we replaced an outdated case management system with a new--
more efficient--system compatible with modern technology platforms. We
continue to assess and modify the current system in order to make it as
efficient and effective as possible. We also automated capturing, forwarding,
and tracking requestor phone calls to our public FOIA phone number in order
to respond to these requests effectively and efficiently.

2. The FOIA program office involves IT support in every aspect of the
FOIA/PA process and has partnered with it to further advance the common
goal to use technology to improve responsiveness. IT support personnel are
located within close proximity of the FOIA program office, fostering greater
interaction and support, and are proactive in their trouble-shooting efforts and
looking ahead for system enhancements.

III. Steps Taken to Increase Proactive Disclosures
1. Describe here the steps your agency has taken to increase the amount
of material that is available on your agency website, including
providing examples of proactive disclosures that have been made
since the issuance of the new FOIA guidelines.

In addition to posting documents from closed FOIA cases each month, the
electronic FOIA Reading Room website also hosts documents released
through the discretionary Historical Review Program (see Section I above for
details). Web site statistics show that many visitors to the CIA FOIA Reading
Room website are most interested in these historically significant document
releases. New additions since the memo and guidelines include a
downloadable version of the previously released Family Jewels collection and
Warsaw Pact documents.

Part three actually contains a concrete fact. It's nice to know that some old documents have been put online. However, re-releasing already publicly available "Family Jewels" doesn't strike one as the same thing as making new material available under FOIA. If something has been made public once, it can't be made public again, even if it is now "downloadable". Perhaps Culver Military Academy offers courses in Logic?

IV. Steps Taken to Greater Utilize Technology
1. Does your agency currently receive requests electronically? No.
2. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency establishing a
mechanism to receive requests electronically?

CIA is evaluating the security, counterintelligence, and resource issues
associated with the implementation of electronic FOIA submissions.
Currently, resources are devoted to automating the processing, tracking,
and required reporting of FOIA requests. Emphasis on back-end
processing has contributed to improved response time to requesters as
noted in our FY09 FOIA Annual Report.

3. Does your agency track requests electronically? Yes.
4. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency utilizing a
system to track requests electronically? Not applicable.
5. Does your agency use technology to process requests? Yes.
6. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency utilizing
technology to process requests? Not applicable.
7. Does your agency utilize technology to prepare your agency Annual
FOIA Report? Yes.
8. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency utilizing
technology in preparing your Annual FOIA Report? Not applicable.

Part Four seems to be the most interesting of all. While almost every government agency and business in the USA does business by email and on websites, the CIA does not receive requests electronically. While this may be justifiable somehow or other, there is no explanation given. The only answer I can think of is that it makes it harder to submit a request. They just don't want to hear from the public. But of course, I didn't go to Culver Military Academy. Perhaps they have a better explanation. Although I'd reckon some kids in the Culver Military Academy IT department might figure how to set up an email FOIA request service on a secure website.

V. Steps Taken to Reduce Backlogs and Improve Timeliness in Responding
to Requests
1. If you have a backlog, report whether your backlog is decreasing.
That reduction should be measured both in terms of numbers of
backlogged requests and administrative appeals that remain pending
at the end of the fiscal year, and in terms of the age of those requests
and appeals.

Note: Privacy Act Cases were not included in CIA’s FY08 data but were
included and reported in FY09. As reported in the FOIA Annual Reports,

CIA’s backlog is decreasing -- from 940 cases in FY08 to 592 in FY09. The
median number of days to process simple and complex cases decreased
(detailed below in Section 3), and we closed the four oldest pending FOIA
cases and the three oldest appeals cases. At the end of FY09, the oldest
FOIA/PA and administrative appeals cases were dated 10/7/1998 and
4/26/1995 compared to FY08’s oldest FOIA and administrative appeals cases
of 5/1/1992* and 3/1/1993, respectively.

2. If there has not been a reduction in the backlog, describe why that has
occurred and what steps your agency is taking to bring about a
reduction. Not applicable.

3. Describe the steps that your agency is taking to improve the timeliness
in responding to requests and to administrative appeals.

Throughout the fiscal year, CIA placed concerted efforts into streamlining
processes to improve timeliness. In FY09, the median number of days to
process simple and complex cases decreased from 28 to 15 and 68 to 51 days
respectively. For administrative appeals, the median number of days
decreased from 161 to 112 days. CIA also implemented several refinements
to its automated case management system to better address workflow and
other system issues as well as to add key data collection capabilities relative to
statistical reporting for the FOIA Annual Report.

*FY08’s Annual FOIA Report should have recorded this date as 7/7/1989.

Well, let's look at the bottom line: the oldest requests in 2009 dated from 1995 instead of 1992. That's to say, you only needed to wait for 14 years for an answer in 2009, rather than 16 years in 2008, for the CIA to process your FOIA request.

IMHO, this type of answer makes a mockery of FOIA--as well as a mockery of the CIA, the headquarters of which features the words of John 8:32 carved in stone, at the insistence of Allen Dulles, its first director:

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

A Newly Discovered Poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

(NOT 2 Live Crew...)

Andrew McCarthy: Kagan's Sharia Finance History Disqualifies Her for Supreme Court

From National Review Online:

Kagan and other apologists for SCF (Sharia Compliant Finance) would absolve themselves from the real-world consequences of their allegedly well-intentioned diversity fetish. But legitimizing any aspect of sharia is the endorsement of all of it. Moreover, there is no cut-and-dried separation of sharia brutality from the tidy, white-collar world of financial transactions.

To pull off the SCF chicanery, financial institutions hire as advisers Islamic clerics who are expert in Muslim jurisprudence — there being, again, no separation between divine edicts and the secular law in Islam. It is those clerics, many of them Islamists, who decide what transactions are permissible. And very often, to purge the taint, prohibited interest payments are diverted to Islamic “charities.” It all sounds wonderful . . . except for what they don’t tell you: The major schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that support for violent jihad is a legitimate form of charitable giving.

Indeed, as the Middle East Forum’s Raymond Ibrahim observes, the Koran actually prioritizes the need to fund jihad over the need to fight it. (See, e.g., Sura 9:41: “Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah!”) In a canonical hadith, Mohammed confers on the financial backer the same glorious status as the mujahid fighter: “He who equips a raider so he can wage jihad in Allah’s path . . . is himself a raider.”

SCF is thus the Islamist triple-play: It elbows sharia’s way into our legal system, from whence it can expand its influence; it institutionalizes financial jihad; and it pressures true Muslim moderates to shun Western practices. It is, furthermore, unabashedly anti-capitalist — another reason the Left likes it so much. As Frank Gaffney points out, the economic meltdown in late 2008 was taken by SCF proponents as “proof of the inherent corruption of capitalism” and the need to replace it with the asserted virtues of sharia.

But let’s put all that aside. Let’s pretend that there were some way you could compartmentalize sharia, some way you could even slice and dice SCF to facilitate market access without all the unsavory fallout. There would still be the matter of Elena Kagan’s bizarre moral universe.

The U.S. military is an unparalleled force for good in the world. Kagan has said as much, but she claims, straight-faced, that it is just this “extraordinary service” to our society that makes DADT “more not less repugnant” — the bathwater that requires throwing out the baby.

But let’s compare the U.S. military with sharia. Sharia is the cause of indescribable suffering in the world: for homosexuals, women, non-Muslims, and Muslims who wish to embrace the West. Yet for Kagan, sharia’s repugnance is irrelevant. Like opposition to DADT and support for abortion, the engagement of Islamists, the embrace of their case against American capitalism, is a progressive cause célèbre. So count Ms. Kagan in. She’ll worry about logic and sharia victims like Sakineh Ashtiani later — if ever.

Sheer political willfulness is an unattractive quality. In a Supreme Court candidate, it ought to be disqualifying.

African-American Legal Groups Have Not Endorsed Kagan

From the Washington Informer:

...two key legal groups have so far refrained from endorsing the former Harvard law dean amid questions about whether she would be a strong civil rights advocate on the court.

That split underscores the complexities of a civil rights community eager – some say over eager – to support the nation’s first African-American president and some highly-respected legal organizations that are in a much better position to evaluate the appointment of Kagan to fill the seat vacated by Justice John Paul Stevens, a reliable liberal vote on the sharply-divided Supreme Court.

Mavis T. Thompson, president of the National Bar Association, the largest organization of Black lawyers and judges, said the group gave Kagan only a lukewarm rating because of concerns about her positions on crack-cocaine sentencing disparities and her record on diversity at Harvard.
Although Kagan is clearly qualified to join the court, Thompson said, “We hope Ms. Kagan’s views on civil rights and equal justice will become apparent during the confirmation hearings. To date, the NBA has withheld its endorsement due to insufficient information to ensure that Ms. Kagan’s views are consistent with the core missions of the organization.”

Barbara R. Arwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, said her organization voted not to take a position on Kagan.

“There isn’t a judicial record to review, indicating her views on critical civil rights matters,” she told the Washington Post. “And otherwise, the civil rights record that exists is thin and mixed.”

Judicial Crisis Network: The Case Against Kagan

You can read a JCN opposition brief to the Kagan nomination, in PDF format, at this link.

Washington Times: Elena Kagan v The Bill of Rights

From today's Washington Times:

In short: Yes, Congress has the constitutional right to make you eat your fruits and veggies. Forget freedom; if the government chooses to be coercive, the government can coerce.

Ms. Kagan hemmed and hawed about whether the Constitution should be interpreted in the context of natural rights as described in the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Coburn asserted "that we have certain God-given, inalienable rights that aren't given in the Constitution, that they're ours, ours alone, and that the government doesn't give those to us." The best Ms. Kagan could do in reply was to provide a jumbled double-negative: "I'm not saying I do not believe that there are rights preexisting the Constitution and the laws, but ..."

Indeed, Ms. Kagan's record indicates that she doubts the Constitution serves preexisting rights. She has spoken of government "redistribut[ing] expression" and of "dol[ing] out" speech rights "as favors." On economics, she wrote, "corporate wealth derives from privileges bestowed on corporations by the government. ... Individual wealth also derives from government action."

Ms. Kagan seems to think the federal government is responsible for just about anything and has the power to dictate just about everything in the realm of speech or economics. It's not a set of beliefs fit for a Supreme Court justice.

Charles Crawford on US-Russian Spy Swap

From his blogoir:

Are we about to see a major 'spy swap'?

"Why waste time on all those tedious legal processes and prisons? We get our spies back, and so do you."

Hard for me at least to see why the Russians would want to do this unless the illegals/sleepers rounded up in the USA were likely to spill so many operational beans during their looming long years on trial and then in prison that it is worth Moscow eating great slabs of humble pie to end the agony asap.

Maybe the Americans likewise feel that in fact so many KGB/SVR beans have been spilled already that they can afford to be magnanimous.

However, look at the world from the point of view of the hapless Russian spies.

They have been living agreeable and comfortable lives in leafy US suburbs. Now they face abrupt repatriation to Russia, where they will be regarded as failures and losers for ever.

Plus they face sustained and stressful interrogations from the SVR as the Russian agencies try to find out where it all went wrong - and what they have confessed about Russian operations and methodology.

Gulp. Political asylum bid, anyone?

The more you look at it, the more this looks like a five-star triumph for the Americans in general and the FBI in particular.

Frank Gaffney: Kagan Koshered Shariah Compliant Finance at Harvard

From The Washington Times:

Worse yet, Dean Kagan had an even more direct connection to the Saudis' Shariah-recruitment efforts at Harvard. She personally officiated in 2003 over the establishment of an Islamic Finance Project at the law school. The project's purpose is to promote what is better known as Shariah-compliant finance (SCF) by enlisting in its service some of the nation's most promising law students.

Consequently, it is absolutely appropriate for senators to explore Ms. Kagan's attitude toward Shariah - an anti-constitutional, supremacist legal doctrine that is a threat not only to homosexuals, but also to our civil liberties and society more generally.

hariah-compliant finance dates back to the 1940s, when it was invented by leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood. This international organization has as its stated mission "destroying Western civilization from within ... by its own miserable hand." SCF is designed to further these seditious purposes by: legitimating Shariah in non-Muslim societies; compelling non-Shariah-adherent Muslims to use SCF rather than conventional financial products (in particular, arrangements that involve charging or paying interest); and diverting funds through techniques known as "zakat" (tithing) and "purification" to support jihad. In fact, one of the driving forces behind the SCF industry, Qatari Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has called SCF-generated zakat "jihad with money."

Ms. Kagan's Islamic Finance Project also has played a prominent role in encouraging the U.S. government to endorse Shariah-compliant finance. Notably, a founding adviser to the project, Harvard professor Samuel Hays III, conducted a "seminar for the policy community" in November 2008. It was sponsored by a former Goldman-Sachs-executive-turned-assistant-treasury-secretary, Neel Kashkari, who at the time was responsible for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The signal thus sent could not have been clearer, either to Mr. Kashkari's colleagues in government or to those in the financial sector: At a moment when the very viability of major banks and investing institutions critically depended on this individual's favor, it would be advisable to embrace Shariah-compliant finance.

USA Today reported that Kagan was paid by Goldman Sachs for her services:

WASHINGTON — A top prospect for the Supreme Court was a paid member of an advisory panel for the embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs, federal financial disclosures show.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, according to the financial disclosures she filed when President Obama appointed her last year to her current post. Kagan served on the Goldman panel from 2005 through 2008, when she was dean of Harvard Law School, and received a $10,000 stipend for her service in 2008, her disclosure forms show.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Radio Netherlands on Dutch World Cup Win

The Dutch broadcaster calls it Orange Madness. (Full disclosure, I'm rooting for Holland, too...)

John McCain Says "No" to Kagan Nomination

From USA Today:

McCain's reason: The restrictions Kagan put on military recruiters when she was dean at Harvard Law School. "She unmistakably discouraged Harvard students from considering a career in the military," writes the senator, a decorated Navy veteran who spent more than five years in a Vietnamese prison camp.

During her confirmation hearing, Kagan said she did so because she felt the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which allows gays to serve only if they keep their sexual preferences secret. Kagan said that violated Harvard's anti-discrimination policy.

McCain isn't buying her argument, for reasons you can read in his column.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) has joined McCain in opposition to Kagan.

Martin Schram: Journolist Scandal Damages Washington Post's Integrity

From Scripps News Service:

Weigel had previously also joined another blog, a debate-and-chat group called "Journolist" that was formed by another Post blogger, Ezra Klein. Its members were limited to liberals or leftish centrists -- conservatives were banned. There Weigel cut loose -- opining such frat-chat yuks as: Matt Drudge would do well to "set himself on fire," Rush Limbaugh should die of a heart attack and so on. (Apparently assuming remarks to lots of journalists would stay off the record (Mr. Weigel, meet a fellow humorist, Gen. McChrystal.) Weigel's wee-giggles were collected and outed in the conservative media. Weigel resigned from the Post; but that is not the point here. The integrity of The Washington Post is.

BTW, when I was working on the PBS issue, years ago, I was repeatedly told that it was impossible to classify journalists as "liberal" or "conservative." Furthermore, it was wrong to do so, because it could lead to blacklisting...

So, how come it apparently was OK for Journolist to classify reporters as "liberal" (or further left) and to blacklist those who were conservative? In other words, I'm still waiting for someone to explain why the 400 members of Journalist weren't practicing McCarthyism, themselves.

BTW, I'd wager Breitbart never gets his list of Journolist members, nor the archives of listserv. It would be the end of the career of the person who turned it over. That's worth more than 100K to any journalist who wants to work again.

They'd be blacklisted, and they know it.

NiceDeb: Republican Senators Taking Dive for Kagan

NiceDeb doesn't understand why Republicans don't stop the Kagan nomination.

It makes no sense. The woman has no judicial experience, she’s clearly a radical with a judicial philosophy hostile to the Constitution, she’s manipulated science to further her extreme position abortion, and worst of all she’s young and healthy, which means we’ll be dealing with her destructive views for the next 30 years….

And what are our Republican Senators doing? Rolling over and playing dead.

Maybe it has something to do with the $476 million she raised from fat cats for Harvard Law School? After seeing Republicans defend BP and Wall Street, I guess that could explain it...

UK CRU FOIA Secrecy Enabled Climategate Fraud

From The Guardian (UK) report on Muir Russell's investigation of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia:

The report is far from being a whitewash. And nor does it justify the claim of university vice-chancellor Sir Edward Action that it is a "complete exoneration". In particular it backs critics who see in the emails a widespread effort to suppress public knowledge about their activities and to sideline bloggers who want to access their data and do their own analysis.

Most seriously, it finds "evidence that emails might have been deleted in order to make them unavailable should a subsequent request be made for them [under Freedom of information law]". Yet, extraordinarily, it emerged during questioning that Muir Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this.

Secrecy was the order of the day at CRU. "We find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness," says the report. That criticism applied not just to Jones and his team at CRU. It applied equally to the university itself, which may have been embarrassed to find itself in the dock as much as the scientists on whom it asked Sir Muir to sit in judgment.

The university "failed to recognise not only the significance of statutory requirements" -- FOI law in particular – and "also the risk to the reputation of the university and indeed the credibility of UK climate science" from the affair.

Kate O'Beirne: "I Would Vote No" on Kagan

The Washington editor of National Review votes "No." From NewsBusters:

KATE O'BEIRNE: I would vote no, and unlike Margaret because the fundamental reason I am voting no is because my deep respect for the Constitution. So I wouldn't even try to vote twice like Margaret. I would only vote once. And It is not because she is not qualified even though she hasn't been a judge. I don't think you have to had been a judge. She has enough of a background in federal and constitutional law. She certainly is an extremely likable person. But, it is wholly permissible for the Senate in their advise and consent role to see somebody as Elena Kagan, and everything in her background tells me this is the case, she is going to be a liberal on the bench. She is going to, I think, fall into the liberal mistake of wanting laws to reach certain results and go there whether or not the Constitution permits it.

Conservative Website Launches "Stop Kagan Campaign"

Joseph Farah's World Net Daily has announced a campaign to block Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination. Farah posted this protest letter (which he plans to deliver by FedEx to Senate offices):

Defeat the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court by lobbying every member of the U.S. Senate. It's as easy as a click of the mouse. The "Stop Kagan Campaign" is designed to impress senators with a heavy volume of mail over a sustained period of time -- the kind of campaign generated by previous WND efforts. All messages are delivered by Fed Ex to ensure they get to their destination and for added impact.

Here's the letter that will be sent, individually addressed, to each senator above your name:

Dear Senator:

In a few months, the American people will have a chance to speak at the polls again. Almost every analyst and every public opinion survey suggests the electorate is angry about the direction of the country. I strongly urge you not to show contempt for the will of the people and the Constitution by confirming the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan.

Kagan is not what Americans want and she is not what the country needs.

At a time when federal central control is strangling the American economy, she calls for more regulatory authority, not just in Washington, but for the president himself.

At a time when American security is facing internal and external threats and our nation is still engaged in two foreign wars simultaneously, she advocates banning military recruitment on campuses because of her compulsion to see open homosexual behavior flaunted in the ranks.

At a time when Americans have been stripped of their ability to write their own laws protecting the lives of the unborn, she advocates the creation of task forces to investigate and prosecute peaceful pro-life activities.

At a time when Americans are recognizing the unique blessings of their Constitution, she advocates the consideration of foreign laws in shaping Supreme Court rulings.

For all of these reasons and more we will surely learn about in the days ahead, please reject the nomination of Elena Kagan.

Sincerely,

Your Name Here.

There's also a Stop Kagan Facebook Page sponsored by Americans United for Life.

Barry Rubin on the Obama-Netanyahu Summit

(White House photo by Pete Souzs)
 From the Gloria Center (Israel) website (ht) Martin Peretz):

Continuing to freeze construction on settlements will give Netanyahu a domestic problem but he can hold his coalition together, if necessary by adjusting it. Parties are constrained from walking out of the government because if elections were to be held Netanyahu would win in a landslide partly at their expense.

Another thing Netanyahu wants is for Obama to escalate pressure on Iran regarding that country's nuclear weapons' drive. The new sanctions, thanks to Congress, are going to hurt Iran and undermine support for the regime there. Not enough, of course, to stop the program. Still, when Iran does get nuclear weapons, Israel will need the United States to take a strong stand in containing Tehran.

Does Israel's government trust Obama? Of course not. Israel's government and Israelis in general are under no illusions about Obama's view of their country, his willingness to battle revolutionary Islamists, or his general reliability and toughness.

For example, last October the Obama Administration, through the State Department, did endorse the "settlement bloc" commitment, but then appeared to have forgotten about it. The U.S. government also broke its promises over the settlement freeze (accepting Jerusalem's exclusion and then howling about it a few months later) and regarding the nonproliferation conference (pledging to oppose any reference to Israel's nuclear weapons and then going back on that point).

There is also clarity about the possibility of Obama turning to a much tougher stance on Israel after the congressional elections are over. Yet with a plummeting popularity at home and lots of domestic problems, perhaps Obama will have more on his mind than playing Middle East peacemaker.

The Palestinian Authority is so uneager for a peace agreement that anything said by Israel on the subject is most unlikely ever to be implemented. And it seems that the Obama Administration has at least some sense that it isn't going to get an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement so it doesn't want to look foolish in making this a high priority and then failing.

Thus, Israel's strategy is as follows: try very hard to get along with the administration, seek to keep it happy, and avoid confrontation without making any major irreversible concessions or taking serious risks. Have no illusions, but keep the U.S. government focused on Iran as much as possible.

The next Congress will be more likely to constrain the president and who knows what will happen in future. A building freeze might be ended on strong grounds the next time. It is quite possible that Iran, Syria, and other radical forces will so assault the United States and trample on its interests that Obama will be forced to alter course. And there's always the 2012 presidential election.