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Cartoon: Uncivil War

Jul 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From Cox and Forkum:

Writes Allen Forkum:

Some conservatives used the "states' rights" argument to condemn the recent Supreme Court sodomy ruling. Objectivist scholar Dr. Harry Binswanger concisely explained why that argument is mistaken in this letter to the editor of The New York Sun:

"Scalia in his dissent on the sodomy decision writes: 'It is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste.'

"Sounds like he's trying to keep meddlesome government out of people's lives doesn't it? But look at the switch he has pulled: the 'judgments' he wishes to protect are the laws passed by the Texas legislature -- laws arresting individuals for behavior that, whatever one thinks of it, is clearly within their rights. The meddlesome 'governing caste' is the Texas legislature, which the Supreme Court properly told: stop arresting individuals for private, peaceful, consensual activity.

"Yes, I'm sure the Texas law does reflect the will of the majority of Texans. So what? Slavery represented the will of the majority in the ante-bellum South. Hitler's Reich reflected the will of the majority of Germans in the Nazi era.

"Unlimited majority rule is a form of statism, not Americanism. Our system, contrary to Scalia's notion, holds individual rights above the power of any majority to infringe, 'and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.' A right is the individual's protection against the will of any collective, whether that collective is called 'the State,' 'the people,' or 'Das Volk.'"

Canadian Journalist ‘Beaten to Death’ Iran

Jul 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From the BBC:

" Iran has acknowledged that a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist was beaten to death after her arrest outside a prison in Tehran. Vice President Ali Abtahi said Zahra Kazemi died "of a brain haemorrhage resulting from beatings". Ms Kazemi, 54, was detained on 23 June for taking pictures of Tehran's Evin prison. She was later pronounced dead after falling into a coma. But officials in Tehran are still refusing to allow Canada to conduct its own investigation into the photographer's death. "We are knowledgeable enough to examine the body and find out the cause of her death, so we will not allow foreign teams to investigate," Health Minister Massoud Pezeshkian told the AFP news agency."

I don't think it is Iran's "knowledge" that people are questioning; but, Tehran's truthfulness. Reporters Without Borders reports that Five More Journalistes Arrested:

"We are very worried", Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said, "not only because fourteen journalists have been arrested by Iranian authorities within the last month -- a sad record in the history of this country -- but also because the five new arrests bring to twenty-two the number of journalists presently imprisoned in Iran." [Hat Tip: Allen Forkum]

Lastly for gruesome photos of what happened to Tehran students advocating freedom click here.

Cartoon: Democrats Desperately Seeking a Scandal

Jul 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From Cox and Forkum:

Comments Allen Forkum: "Fox News reports Dems Switch Gears, Attack President Rather Than Each Other. But apparently NAACP President Kweisi Mfume didn't get the memo. In the same article, he attacked the Democratic presidential candidates that didn't show up for his meeting. "In essence, you now have become persona non grata. Your political capital is the equivalent of Confederate dollars," he said. "

The Moral Sewer That Leads Africa

Jul 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From the Telegraph:

President Robert Mugabe's regime pulled off an extraordinary diplomatic coup yesterday when it was given a senior position within the African Union, the grouping set up to promote good governance in Africa.

Then again the U.N. bastards made Kaddafi head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission. (Hat Tip: Paul Blair)

Over Israel’s Dead Body

Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From Yahoo News:

[A] groundbreaking poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, showed only 10 percent of respondents questioned in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan and Lebanon would wish to rebuild their homes under Israeli rule....

"The refugees who didn't choose to return to 1948 lands ... know that life in Israel means Israeli citizenship, Israeli laws, and an Israeli social environment," the center's head, Khalil Shikaki, told The Associated Press.

When Shikaki called a news conference to present his findings, about 200 Palestinian refugee activists stormed his Ramallah office Sunday, smashing furniture, throwing eggs and assaulting Shikaki and some other center staff.

"We are here to announce that our right of return is a sacred right," said a leaflet distributed by the protesters. "We will resist any attempt to sabotage our right of return." [July 14, 2003]

Wal-Mart vs. The Unions

Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Excerpts from a letter by Robert S. McAdam, Wal-Mart Vice President, State and Local Government Relations, published in the SF Chronicle: 

...The Contra Costa [County] Board of Supervisors recently passed a law prohibiting Wal- Mart Supercenters. Union leaders, the mainstay of campaign funding for elected officials, were at the forefront of this effort....

...The real reason union leaders want to stop Wal-Mart is because we represent a threat to their political and economic power. If Wal-Mart continues to provide good jobs while lowering the cost of products for the average family, the role of union leaders would be severely diminished.

The issue is choice. It is a value that we believe most citizens embrace. Union leaders don't want people to have shopping choices, don't want voters to decide and don't want to let people pay less for groceries.

Message to the NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN

Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Here is a crib sheet for all those media broadcasters who are complaining that Bush "lied" when he made his case for going into Iraq.

Q. Why did the U.S. Invade Iraq?
A. Sept 11th.

See even Gumble and Couric can remember that! (For further elaboration click here.)

Of course, if the anti-Bushites are saying the U.S. should not have gone into Iraq, because they think the U.S. should have gone into Iran first, then we agree with them.

Bush’s Credibility Gap–with the Anti-Bush Media

Jul 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From the folks at the Media Research Center:

Democratic presidential candidates may be attacking President Bush's credibility over the single sentence in his State of the Union address, but they are aided by the media which are becoming obsessed as a summer scandal with how Bush "misled" the public and "deliberately exaggerated the case for war." Multiple stories on the "controversy" have led the evening newscasts since the middle of last week with the morning shows devoting a top of the show interview segment to it.

On Saturday night, ABC anchor Claire Shipman declared: "The firestorm over false intelligence that President Bush used to help justify war in Iraq is intensifying." Over on CBS on Sunday night, anchor John Roberts referred to the "swirl of controversy over whether" the Bush administration "knowingly put dubious intelligence into this year's State of the Union address." In a self-fulfilling statement, Roberts argued that "the issue refuses to go away."

But as ABC News Political Director Mark Helperin suggested on World News Tonight/Sunday, the media are enabling the Democratic presidential candidates: "Why are the Democrats now directly going after Mr. Bush in the very area where he has been so strong?" Over a shot of the cover of Time magazine with "Untruth & Consequences" over photo of Bush delivering State of the Union address, Halperin answered: "For one thing, there's the daily drumbeat of media questions." Halperin had noted how "the Democrats hope to break the presidential monopoly on national security and credibility, to return the Bush image to one some Americans held of candidate Bush after this famous campaign pop quiz:"

Reporter in 2000: "The Prime Minister of India?"
Bush: "The new Prime Minister of India is ah, ah, no."
Halperin: "And after a shaky start on September 11th."
A hesitant Bush: "We will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans."

[Hey my parents are from India, and I don't know who their Prime Minister is either.--Editor]

For a flavor of the media's hyperbolic focus, some intros to the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts on Friday and Sunday:

-- ABC's World News Tonight on Friday. Peter Jennings teased: "On World News Tonight, an ABC News poll that will not please the President: Half the public thinks he deliberately exaggerated the case for war. The Democrats are demanding a public investigation." Jennings then opened the program: "Good evening everyone. It has happened to other Presidents. They go off on a trip to some part of the world and as much as they would like the news to be about them and where they are, sometimes they cannot avoid the news at home or from somewhere else. President Bush's trip to Africa -- and it's an important trip -- had been overshadowed for several days by the war in Iraq. An ABC News/Washington Post poll which has just been finished, finds that 52 percent of Americans, a majority for the first time, find the level of U.S. casualties in Iraq unacceptable. And 50 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration in arguing for the war intentionally exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."

-- NBC Nightly News on Friday. Brian Williams began: "It was just one sentence in a long State of the Union speech that the President delivered in January. But it was a major accusation, one part of the President's case for possible war with Iraq. The facts have turned out differently. The accusation was wrong. And now, with 148,000 Americans on the ground there, with over 200 dead and over a thousand wounded, the questions for this White House are heating up. We begin tonight with NBC's David Gregory traveling with the President in Nigeria."

-- ABC's World News Tonight/Sunday. Anchor Dean Reynolds: "On World News Tonight this Sunday, new details on just who approved that controversial passage in the President's State of the Union address as the White House continues to deflect questions. Did the President mislead the nation on the road to war with Iraq? Democratic rivals sense an opportunity."

-- CBS Evening News on Sunday. Anchor John Roberts announced: "The White House tried to lay to rest today the swirl of controversy over whether it knowingly put dubious intelligence into this year's State of the Union address. Top administration officials said again today that the claim Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa should not have been in the speech, but they denied any attempt to deceive the American people or hype the evidence against Iraq. But as Joie Chen reports, the issue refuses to go away."

The media certainly won't let it.

No thanks to the U.N.

Jul 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From BBC News:

Iraq has taken its first step towards self-government since the fall of Saddam Hussein with the inaugural meeting of a governing council composed of Iraqi nationals. ...

...Its first decision was to declare a national holiday on 9 April - the day US-led forces overthrew the old regime - and to scrap holidays and festivals linked to the formerly ruling Baath Party...

...Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations special representative in Iraq, described the day as "historic" and said it was an important step in returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people. "Freedom, dignity and security must from now on be taken for granted by all Iraqis," he said, adding that the UN would be "here for you in any way you wish and for as long as you need". ["Iraq moves towards self-rule" July 13, 2003]

Wait a minute--wasn't it the U.N. who voted to keep Saddam in power? Who needs them?

Cartoon: Fresh Meat

Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From Cox and Forkum:

Related articles:

Reducto Ad Totalitarianism by Robert W. Tracinski
Imagine a society in which an unelected, few people, qualified for power only by their mastery of esoteric terminology and incantations, are able to dictate our everyday lives in the most minute detail--growing rich in the process by siphoning off unearned billions from the nation's economy. Does this sound like life in some dictatorship, like the reign of the theocratic mullahs in Iran? In fact, it is the system that a cabal of trial lawyers is trying to impose here in America.

Where are the Peace-niks?

Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From Scott McConnell at the Ayn Rand Institute:

Where are they all?

The placard-waving throngs of former hippies; Jesse Jackson pretentiously speechifying to foreign multitudes; Jimmy Carter pontificating to Larry King--all those peaceniks protesting the deaths of Iraqi civilians?

Where are they now that they are really needed--to support and defend the Iranians rising up to shake off the shackles of dictatorship?

The Iranian people are oppressed by the Mullahs like the Iraqis were oppressed by Saddam Hussein. They have lost their right to free speech, free movement and assembly, freedom of (or from) religion, and the freedom to live their lives by their own freely chosen values, not those of their rulers.

Could it be that these alleged peace protestors were really demonstrating, not for Iraqis and their rights, but against America?

Is that why they are not supporting the Iranian people (or the Venezuelans or Zimbabweans for that matter)--because the U.S. government is (albeit timidly) on the side of these freedom yearning people?

Anyone who truly values individual rights should be cheering and supporting those brave Iranians who want and deserve something very moral and simple: freedom.

US Government Should Not Spend Money to Fight AIDS in Africa

Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From David Holcberg of the Ayn Rand Institute:

President Bush's pledge to spend $15 billion to combat AIDS in Africa is an outrageous misuse of taxpayers' money. Those who want to help AIDS victims--or any charitable cause at home or abroad-- should do it privately, on their own initiative, with their own money. President Bush, however, has no moral right to force taxpayers to bankroll his "charitable" causes. Thus our government should stop giving away our money and stick to its proper purpose: the protection of our individual rights.

Altruism: The Central Axiom of Left-liberal Foreign Policy, Part 2

Jul 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From the Washington Post:

The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America's strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but also a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest--i.e., national selfishness--is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those that are morally pristine, namely, those that are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.

Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States....

What should be our criteria for military intervention? The answer is simple: strategic and moral necessity. Foreign policy is not social work. Acting for purely humanitarian reasons is wanton and self-indulgent. You don't send U.S. soldiers to die to assuage troubled consciences at home. Their lives should be risked only in defense of their country. [Washington Post , July, 10, 2003]

We're making inroads, though as is evident from the last paragraph (and the rest of his column), Krauthammer still thinks that self-interest is something entirely separate from morality.

Inverted Priorities on Reporting on Iran

Jul 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

From Cox and Forkum:

Comments Allen Forkum:

It's bad enough when a crucial story goes virtually unreported by the major media ...but the BBC takes the cake in this story: Tehran jammed by protesters. They provide a list of actions taken by the tyrannical regime to suppress the protests, such as jamming outside radio and TV signals, disabling mobile phone systems, and arresting student leaders. The problem is that the BBC lists them under the subhead "Safety measures," which I'm sure is exactly the way mullahs categorize of them. (The BBC gets credit for even reporting the evening protests, which I could find no mention of in the U.S. media.) [July 10, 2003]

Altruism: The Central Axiom of Left-liberal Foreign Policy

Jul 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Shades of Ayn Rand from James Taranto this Thursday:

Howard Dean, who emerged as the Democratic presidential front-runner with his uncompromising antiwar stand, now favors military intervention--in Liberia, where he'd like to send 2,000 U.S. troops...

Iraq's history of invading its neighbors, using chemical weapons and pursuing nuclear ones, and backing terrorists actually made it a threat beyond its borders--and thus the U.S. had a strategic interest, not just a moral one, in removing the dictatorship. Some on the left seem to think U.S. intervention is just fine, so long as its moral purity isn't tainted by self-interest.... [OJ]

U.N. Sanctions Dictatorships

Jul 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses

Three leading Iranian student activists were arrested minutes after holding a press conference to blast the Islamic regime for banning events marking the fourth anniversary of bloody student clashes with security forces.

The arrests were made after activists from the Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) -- a pro-reform student umbrella group -- said President Mohammad Khatami had failed in his drive for reforms and alleged the hardline-controlled judiciary was trying to prevent freedom of thought. [Yahoo News, "Iranian student leaders arrested on riots anniversary after blasting regime", July 9. 2003]

Writes CapMag.com reader J. Clarke:

The Iranian students deserve the full moral--and possibly financial or military--support of America. Unfortunately, the students are mistaken in thinking that an appeal to the United Nations will help their cause. The UN was founded on the principle that a dictatorship (Soviet Russia and Red China) and a free nation (U.S. and Taiwan) are morally equivalent. Such principles have led to the U.N.'s recognition of damn near every slave-pen as legitimate. The Iranian students should steer completely clear of the U.N.

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