Maggie's Farm

Founder and Board Member of HRW Blast HRW's Anti-Israel Bias

Until Joe Stork and his boss, Sarah Leah Whitson, are fired from Human Rights Watch -- her for pandering to anti-Semitism in Saudi Arabia and him for being a flat-out terrorist sympathizer -- the organization will have no credibility to weigh in on the most important conflict in the Middle East.

It truly is a shame that HRW, which does some very valuable work – particularly in Asia – has let itself be hijacked.  Repent and Change.  Please.

Yeah!

The California Supreme Court turned thumbs down Wednesday on a lawsuit challenging the constitutional requirement that new taxes be approved by a two-thirds legislative vote. The suit claimed the requirement, enacted as part of Proposition 13 in 1978, was a constitutional revision that could not be made via initiative. The suit apparently ran afoul of the Supreme Court's previous rejection of that contention. It was denied with a curt "petition dismissed."

While on the subject, my local well-informed Sacramento watcher-critic points out that much more is needed than putting the state legislature on a part-time schedule.  I agree.  And, still, part-time has worked pretty well in Texas and many other states, although mosts’ politicians just do their harms faster.

Want to really understand what’s up in Af-Pak in the New Great Game?  Must read, by Sol Sanders, one of the very few truly experienced and knowledgeable old-hands, who explains it to you.

On the other hand. I’ll leave criticism, much deserved, of Ted for others.  And, let’s not forget that he did some things right.

A friend emails:

Interesting, Atty Genl Holder killed the prosecution of the New Black Panther thugs at the voting place, and now has done the same for a probe of a major Democrat politician.  Why kill a probe, if there's nothing criminal to be found, the persons involved are cleared?  If any of this happened in reverse under Bush, with skinheads toting billy clubs at a polling place or a GOP governor suddenly let off the hook, the NYTimes would have had it in large print headlines, and the major networks would have been all over it, the talk shows would all be babbling about it, etc.  But as they say "that was then, this is now".  Aren't "Chicago politics" great?

More info here. And, of course, Malkin has more.

Do campaign contributions help win pension fund deals? Hey, it’s only our tax-$ and millions’ retirement.  What’s the big deal? (with link in article to your state)

Even in cases with no charges of illegality, watchdogs argue that the campaign contributions — known as pay-to-play — create conflicts of interest.

"The selection of investment advisers to those plans shouldn't be based on campaign contributions. They should be based on the merits," said Mary Schapiro, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which she said is probing potential pay-to-play cases "in multiple states."

Porkulus failed!  Who woulda known, at least if listening to the MSM.  Ed Morrissey knows. We pay, and pay, and pay.

Allahpundit:

Hidden camera video: How much does a left-wing astroturfer get paid, anyway?

Answer: There are no left-wing astroturfers, silly. They do it because they love the cause and the “fight” and the Unicorn King currently installed in the White House.

That $33,000 a year plus benefits is just their share of the wealth that belongs to all of us.

Insty steers us to the Take A Vet To Lunch program.  Please, enlist.

A guest post at my friend Zenpundit’s blog, What’s this about the Mahdi and a call for Islamic mobilization?.  The guest  “specializes in forensic theology, with a deep interest in millennial, eschatological and apocalyptic religious sects of all stripes.”  Good read, even with some of the big words.

CATO:

Recently Anheuser-Busch  hit upon the marketing idea of selling Bud Light beer in cans decorated with the college-team colors.  As the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) doesn’t have much else to do - it’s not like there’s been say fraud going on in the mortgage market – it quickly turned its attention to the issue, expressing “grave concern” that these team-colored cans would encourage underage and binge drinking.

Personally, I prefer jugs to cans.  Er, what was the subject?

My ballsy, beautiful friend Pamela Geller has a link at her Atlas Shrugs blog to her article in the Washington Times.  Pamela has been leading the defense of Rifqa Bary.  If you don’t know about this situation, read about it.  BTW, here’s Pamela:

Katyn: In 1962, one of my later mentors published the first definitive book proving that the Soviets committed the massacre of Poland’s military elite at Katyn.  This is a very important key to understanding the Captive Nations outcome of WWII and the Cold War.  I just rented the film, Katyn, directed by Poland’s most famous director.  Anne Applebaum, steeped in Soviet history, has an interesting review of the film, “A Movie That Matters.” An excerpt:

Certainly its Polish viewers know how it will end, long before they enter the cinema. Katyn, as its title suggests, tells the story of the near-simultaneous Soviet and German invasions of Poland in September 1939, and the Red Army's subsequent capture, imprisonment, and murder of some 20,000 Polish officers in the forests near the Russian village of Katyn and elsewhere, among them Wajda's father. The justification for the murder was straightforward. These were Poland's best-educated and most patriotic soldiers. Many were reservists who as civilians worked as doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, and merchants. They were the intellectual elite who could obstruct the Soviet Union's plans to absorb and "Sovietize" Poland's eastern territories. On the advice of his secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria, Stalin ordered them executed.

But the film is about more than the mass murder itself. For decades after it took place, the Katyn massacre was an absolutely forbidden topic in Poland, and therefore the source of a profound, enduring mistrust between the Poles and their Soviet conquerors. Officially, the Soviet Union blamed the murder on the Germans, who discovered one of the mass graves (there were at least three) following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941. Soviet prosecutors even repeated this blatant falsehood during the Nuremberg trials and it was echoed by, among others, the British government.

Unofficially, the mass execution was widely assumed to have been committed by the Soviet Union. In Poland, the very word "Katyn" thus evokes not just the murder but the many Soviet falsehoods surrounding the history of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Katyn wasn't a single wartime event, but a series of lies and distortions, told over decades, designed to disguise the reality of the Soviet postwar occupation and Poland's loss of sovereignty.

Obama snubbing Poland for 70^th anniversary of WWII? Poland was the most screwed over country going into, during, and after WWII.  Those of its soldiers who escaped the Nazis and Soviets were among the bravest fighters with the Allies. Poland and Poles deserve more respect.

Hanoi cracks down on another set of dissidents. Bush was weak on this, for commercial reasons and the illusion that somehow Vietnam would be a counter to China is we ever came to blows.  How come the Left isn’t complaining that Obama is continuing this Bush policy?

Lawyers are about to smother the war on terror.  The rule of law is essential to our thinking and mores.  And, law is not the end but a means to moral ends.  Is discomfiting a terrorist to be avoided, or avoiding the murder and mutilation of many other innocents?  The latter is more moral.

Betsy brings us a valuable Reagan-Obama contrast.

Obama made one other mistake that Reagan avoided. Though it is true that Reagan concentrated on only one large item in his first-year agenda (the tax and budget cuts), while Obama is trying to "do too much," the deeper problem is that Obama lost control of the details of his agenda. He didn't just lose control--he inexplicably gave it away. Starting with the stimulus in January and continuing with the cap and trade bill--and now the health care reform plan--Obama surrendered the details to Congress to work out. Reagan never did that. He may have bargained with individual members of Congress, but he always made sure Congress faced an up-or-down vote on his plan, and he attacked alternative bills that came out of the congressional sausage factory and favor machine.

Remember this? Reagan showing the country on TV what Congress, unintelligibly, produces in such abundance:

At the request of a reader, the entire translated The Law by Frederic Bastiat is available here, for free.  I admit to not having read it since over 40-years ago, but do remember how impressed I was and influenced. Many believe it very applicable today, as in 1850 when written.

Oy vey of the day! Even higher taxes coming for Californians: Lower brackets and reduced deductions mean yet higher payments to Sacramento for 2009. California is even having a tag sale, “a two-day sell-off of items drawn from every corner of the state’s pack-rat bureaucracy.” And, Toyota to close its California factory. 

Get ready for gruesome pictures on cigarette packages. Research says it works.

This really is an important dilemma: Glimmers of hope for future pollination.  No bees, no or few fruits and vegetables.  How’s that hi-fiber cardboard gonna taste?

Kennedy's Death a TV Ratings Flop. I was watching the Miss Hooters competition. (Yeah, there was one on TV. Lucky channel surfing.)

Theo tells us that’s the end. Stay cool.