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Letting
Parents Decide (06/28/02) new
By Editors of The Washington Post
“In affirming yesterday the constitutionality of Ohio’s use
of vouchers in Cleveland — one of the country’s most dramatically
failed school systems — the Supreme Court’s conservative majority
rightly created wiggle room for states, localities and potentially even
Congress to try carefully designed voucher programs. The case split the
court along ideological lines, with the court’s more liberal justices
all but declaring this voucher program to signify the end of church-state
separation. We don’t belittle the dangers. But the dangers of vouchers
are hypothetical ones at this stage. The crisis in education is real.
And the court should not be insisting that the only lawful policies are
the ones that have already failed.”
A
Win for America’s Children (06/28/02) new
By Rod Paige in The Washington Post
“The No Child Left Behind Act, when fully implemented, will make
it easier to determine what works and what doesn’t in America’s
schools, and it will carry consequences for failure. Among the consequences
are public school choice and access to supplemental educational services,
both underwritten by federal dollars. Now the Supreme Court has opened
the door to even broader school choices, not only ushering in a new era
in American education policy but also potentially starting a reformation
in American public education. What must emerge through this education
reformation should be a focus on students and achievement, rather than
on the ‘system.’”
Federal
Appeals Court Rules Pledge of Allegiance Unconstitutional (06/26/02) new
In The Washington Post by David Kravets of Associated
Press
“Harvard scholar Laurence Tribe predicted the U.S. Supreme Court
will certainly reverse the decision unless the 9th Circuit reverses itself.
‘I would bet an awful lot on that,’ Tribe said. The 9th Circuit
is the nation’s most overturned appellate court – partly because
it is the largest, but also because it tends to make liberal, activist
opinions, and because the cases it hears – on a range of issues from environmental
laws to property rights to civil rights – tend to challenge the status
quo.”
“One
Nation Under God” (06/27/02) new
By Editors of The New York Times
“This is a well-meaning ruling, but it lacks common sense. A generic
two-word reference to God tucked inside a rote civic exercise is not a
prayer. Mr. Newdow’s daughter is not required to say either the words
‘under God’ or even the pledge itself, as the Supreme Court
made clear in a 1943 case involving Jehovah’s Witnesses. In the pantheon
of real First Amendment concerns, this one is off the radar screen. The
practical impact of the ruling is inviting a political backlash for a
matter that does not rise to a constitutional violation.”
One
Nation Under Blank (06/27/02) new
By Editors of The Washington Post
“If the court were writing a parody, rather than deciding an actual
case, it could hardly have produced a more provocative holding than striking
down the Pledge of Allegiance while this country is at war. We believe
in strict separation between church and state, but the pledge is hardly
a particular danger spot crying out for judicial policing. And having
a court strike it down can only serve to generate unnecessary political
battles and create a fundraising bonanza for the many groups who will
rush to its defense. Oh, yes, it can also invite a reversal, and that
could mean establishing a precedent that sanctions a broader range of
official religious expression than the pledge itself.”
The
risks in the Rome Statute (07/02/02) new
By Editors of Ha’aretz
“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court goes into force
today, establishing for the first time a permanent institution for investigating
and judging people accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The court, which will begin operating from The Hague next year, will have
the authority to judge individuals, based on complaints made to it by
governments or the UN Security Council.”
Lone
stand for justice (07/01/02) new
By Editors of The London Telegraph
“Hitherto, legal systems have been rooted in democratic assemblies.
Laws are passed by national legislatures, which are responsible to their
peoples, and treaties signed by accountable governments. But, from today,
the ICC will cast off the guy-ropes that attach it to its constituent
states. From now on, it will function as an international body answerable
to no one. The idea that laws ought to be made by the people’s representatives
will be replaced by the pre-modern concept that law-makers are answerable
to no one but themselves.”
President
Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership (06/24/02) new
George W. Bush in The Rose Garden at The White House
“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not
compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy,
based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue
these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts.
If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach
agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements
for independence.”
Democracy
for Palestinians: Bush’s bold plan for Mideast peace.
(06/25/02) new
By Editors of The Wall Street Journal
“It’s important to understand how radical this idea of democracy
is for Palestine. For years the U.S. and Israel both winked at the brutality
of Arab leaders, in the Faustian hope that they would provide ‘stability’
and ‘peace.’ This was the flaw at the heart of the Oslo peace
process, in which the U.S. sub-contracted with Yasser Arafat to stop attacks
against Israel. But this was impossible as long as Mr. Arafat and other
Palestinian leaders derived all of their political legitimacy from the
struggle against Israel. Yesterday Mr. Bush said this day is over.”
What
it Means: Politically, Arafat is a dead man walking (06/25/02) new
By David Landau in The Ha’aretz
“Yasser Arafat, the seemingly immortal leader of the Palestinian
national movement, was politically assassinated Monday by President George
W. Bush. His role as Israel’s prospective partner in any future diplomatic
process was effectively snuffed out by a stern-sounding American president,
delivering his verdict on two years of violent intifada and his recipe
for a turnabout towards peace in this war-torn region. Bush’s verdict:
Arafat is the guilty party.”
An
End to Pretending (06/26/02) new
By Michael Kelly in The Washington Post
“There is some limited truth in seeing what Bush is trying to do
in the Middle East in traditional terms — hard-liners vs. State Department
softies, etc. — but this is missing the elephant on the settee. For
better or worse — a great deal better, I think — Bush has set
the Palestinian issue within the context of a larger approach that is
fundamentally, historically radical: a rejection of decades of policy,
indeed a rejection of the entire philosophy of Middle East diplomacy.
This philosophy has rested on a willingness to accept a U.S. role as a
player in a running fraud.”
Admit
terrorism’s Islamic link (06/24/02) new
By Michael Medved in USA Today
“Ideas — including religious ones — have consequences,
and examining those consequences is the best way to judge them. Americans
are mature enough to handle the inescapable truth that our daily dangers
come not, as Hollywood would have it, from freelance misfits and nostalgic
Nazis, but from a serious and frightening Islamic mass movement implacably
devoted to our destruction.”
Judgement
Day in Dallas (06/22/02)
In The Tablet by Richard Major
“Greater than any constitutional shift is a change in the way the
American Catholic Church and society see each other. They are not mutually
comprehending; they do not now trust each other. In Dallas justice required
the Church to humble itself before society and accept the demands of public
opinion. But the shattering effect of its humiliation will make the Church
think more freshly of its role. Cardinal George, cool and sad, declared
that this scandal would be ‘providential’ if it made the Church
look beyond the particular and attend to the wider context of American
society. He said: ‘The Church was weakened even before this crisis
began; for a generation we have experienced profound loss. How are we
to be the Catholic Church within this kind of culture?’ Then the
cardinal spelled out his view of American civilisation, and the journalists
began squirming, stirring in their seats, laughing nervously and snorting
— which is the effect truth sometimes has on journalists. ‘Our
culture is secularised protestantism, self-righteous and decadent at the
same time’, Cardinal George said baldly. In such a culture, how can
the Church understand itself? How can it, ‘smaller perhaps but faithful’
as it is likely to be, he said, understand anew celibacy, or homosexuality,
which society does not pretend to understand either? ‘To whom do
we really listen?’ he asked.”
Trying
to Restore a Faith (06/15/02)
By Frank Keating in The New York Times
“Yesterday I accepted a request by the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops to become chairman of a special lay commission that will
address the crisis of confidence — and in too many cases, a crisis of
faith — in my church. I undertook this task after much thought and prayer,
and only after specific criteria were established defining the powers
and goals of the commission. Those goals can be easily summarized: to
protect the innocent from abuse and exploitation, and to restore faith
in the church and its leadership.”
God
Save Us From Democracy (06/20/02)
By J. P. Zmirak at FrontPage Magazine
“The Vatican, for all its reputation as an international power broker,
is little more than a (very tall) bully pulpit; the pope has a staff of
a few hundred overworked men and women, a budget smaller than most Fortune
500 corporations, and no legal leverage. Under these constraints, it labors
around the world, nudging bishops, persuading statesmen, sending missionaries,
mediating wars, caring for the poor, trying to keep the Moslems from slaughtering
nuns and the West from eating its young. It’s an inhuman task; that the
Church succeeds at all, and has not already collapsed, ought to impress
any skeptic that there’s something mysterious about this organization....
Would that happen, if ordinary Catholics — not just trouble-making, orthodox
intellectuals like me — got involved in choosing bishops? In changing
Church policy? You bet it would. Andrew Greeley, erotic novelist and weathervane,
is probably right when he says that the average American Catholic wants
both condoms and altar rails, easy divorce and ‘Ave Maria,’
sung at his daughter’s third church wedding. Subject Church teachings
to plebiscite — remembering that a majority of American Catholics voted
for Clinton and Gore — and what will you get? God only knows. And that’s
why he’s protecting the Church from democracy.”
Throw
Away the Key: Well, not really — but hold Padilla for as long as
necessary. (06/20/02)
By Rich Lowry at National Review Online
“Embedded in all this heated rhetoric is the idea that there is no
check on the executive’s authority in the Padilla case. But habeas
corpus has not been repealed (if it had been, that would indeed be news,
and actually endanger our rights). Which means that if the heavy-breathers
are correct and Padilla’s rights are so obviously being trampled,
his lawyer can challenge the constitutionality of his detention in court.
Which is exactly what she — with plenty of help from the ACLU —
is going to do.”
Powell’s
Trial Balloon (06/17/02)
By William Safire in The New York Times
“1. Statehood, even if qualified as provisional or interim, confers
a degree of sovereignty. That means control of borders, the ability to
make treaties, and to import arms from Iraq and by sea from Iran. 2. Partial
statehood would give Arafat control of an airport. A plane loaded with
fuel or explosives could hit a major Tel Aviv building within three minutes,
too quickly for Israeli jets to scramble. Ritual condemnation would follow.
3. Any form of statehood would limit Israel’s ability to search out
bomb factories and arrest terrorist leaders. What is now a tolerable sweep
into disputed territory would be denounced in the U.N. as invasion pure
and simple. That would trigger European economic boycotts and draw Arab
allies into a wider war.”
Qaeda’s
New Links Increase Threats From Global Sites (06/16/02)
In The New York Times by David Johnston, Don Van Natta
Jr. and Judith Miller
“A group of midlevel operatives has assumed a more prominent role
in Al Qaeda and is working in tandem with Middle Eastern extremists across
the Islamic world, senior government officials say. They say the alliance,
which extends from North Africa to Southeast Asia, now poses the most
serious terrorist threat to the United States. This new alliance of terrorists,
though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning and carrying out
potent attacks on American targets as the more centralized network once
led by Osama bin Laden, the officials said.”
Arrests
Reveal Al Qaeda Plans: Three Saudis Seized by Morocco Outline Post-Afghanistan
Strategy (06/16/02)
In The Washington Post by Peter Finn
“Besieged by U.S. and allied forces in December in the mountains
of eastern Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden commanded his fighters to disperse
across the globe to attack ‘American and Jewish interests,’
according to accounts officials here say they have obtained from three
al Qaeda operatives who were captured in Morocco. The three men, citizens
of Saudi Arabia, have told interrogators that they escaped Afghanistan
and came to Morocco on a mission to use bomb-laden speedboats for suicide
attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar, senior
Moroccan officials said. The men were captured in May in a joint Moroccan-CIA
operation.”
Scholar
warns West of Muslim goals (06/18/02)
At United Press International by Uwe Siemon-Netto
“A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement warned the
West Tuesday against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes
an intensive dialogue with Islam. ‘The dialogue is not proceeding
well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the
one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the
other,’ said Bassam Tibi.”
Iraq’s
tortured children (06/22/02)
By John Sweeney of BBC News
“Ali talked about the paranoid frenzy that rules Baghdad — the
tortures, the killings, the corruption, the crazy gangster violence of
Saddam and his two sons. And the faking of the mass baby funerals. You
may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through the streets
of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning
Western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq. Usefully, the ages
of the dead babies — ‘three days old’, ‘four days
old’ — are written in English on the coffins. I wonder who did
that.”
2
FBI Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible Espionage
(06/19/02)
In The Washington Post by James V. Grimaldi
“In separate cases, two new FBI whistle-blowers are alleging mismanagement
and lax security — and in one case possible espionage — among
those who translate and oversee some of the FBI’s most sensitive,
top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations.
The allegations of one of the whistle-blowers have prompted two key senators
— Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles E. Grassley
(R-Iowa) — to pose critical questions about the FBI division working
on the front line of gathering and analyzing wiretaps.”
Stop
— in the Name of Hate! (06/19/02)
By Chris Weinkopf at FrontPage Magazine
“To the champions of hate-crime legislation, not all victims —
and not all criminals — are the same. Race, sex, religion, or sexual
preferences are crucial. They distinguish truly ghastly crimes from the
mundane. Which groups are entitled to special protection (or extra prosecution)
depends entirely on which biases the self-proclaimed enemies of bias enshrine
that day.”
Web
Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash (06/21/02)
In The Washington Post by Anick Jesdanun of Associated
Press
“The Internet’s potential for promoting expression and empowering
citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash
with the medium’s long-standing culture of openness, some leading
Internet thinkers warned. At the annual Internet Society conference this
week in Arlington, the engineers who built the Internet and many of the
policymakers who follow its development urged caution as governments try
to exert control and businesses look to maximize profits.”
Prepare
for the big chill (06/22/02)
By Andrew Kenny in The Spectator
“When the global warmers tell us that the stakes are very high, they
are quite right. Global warming has become an immense international gravy
train worth billions of dollars. It is now one of the largest recipients
of government research money in the world. It finances jobs, grants, conferences,
international travel and journals. It not only keeps a huge army of people
in comfortable employment but also fills them with self-righteousness
and moral superiority, and satisfies those deep instincts in the Green
movement for meddling, hectoring, controlling and censuring.”
Silent Spring
at 40: Rachel Carson’s classic is not aging well. (06/12/02)
By Ronald Bailey at Reason Online
“So 40 years after the publication of Silent Spring, the legacy
of Rachel Carson is more troubling than her admirers will acknowledge.
The book did point to problems that had not been adequately addressed,
such as the effects of DDT on some wildlife. And given the state of the
science at the time she wrote, one might even make the case that Carson’s
concerns about the effects of synthetic chemicals on human health were
not completely unwarranted. Along with other researchers, she was simply
ignorant of the facts. But after four decades in which tens of billions
of dollars have been wasted chasing imaginary risks without measurably
improving American health, her intellectual descendants don’t have the
same excuse.”
Federal
Judge Throws Out Charge in Shoe Bomb Case (06/11/02)
By The Associated Press at FOXNews
“A judge threw out one of nine charges Tuesday against a man accused
of trying to blow up a jetliner with explosives in his shoes, ruling that
an airplane is not a vehicle under a new anti-terrorism law. The charge
— attempting to wreck a mass transportation vehicle — was filed
under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks. U.S. District Judge William Young said that although
an airplane was engaged in mass transportation it is not a vehicle as
defined by the new law.”
Dispatcher
Says She Was Told Not to Report Shoe-Bomb Incident (06/13/02)
In The New York Times by Matthew L. Wald
“The American Airlines dispatcher who was monitoring a trans-Atlantic
flight when the captain reported that a passenger had a shoe bomb said
today that her supervisor tried to prevent her from notifying the authorities.
The supervisor worried that law enforcement officials would delay the
plane on the ground, the dispatcher said. In a complaint filed with the
Federal Aviation Administration, the dispatcher said her supervisor ‘instructed
me to hold off informing the authorities because the flight would be remotely
parked, and “it would be forever before we could get the plane out
of there.”’”
Shoe-bomb
flight conduct criticized (06/13/02)
In The Dallas Morning News by Jim Morris
“The American Airlines dispatcher who helped guide the flight carrying
a suspected shoe-bomber to a safe landing in December alleged in a whistle-blower
complaint Wednesday that airline supervisors interfered with her during
the incident and threatened her afterward. In a complaint filed with the
director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Whistleblower Protection
Program, Julie Robichaux, a 12-year American employee, said she was subjected
to ‘intimidation, threats and disciplinary action’ after criticizing
the airline’s handling of Flight 63 on Dec. 22.”
Post-Sept.
11 “Backlash” Proves Difficult to Quantify (06/12/02)
In The New Jersey Law Journal by Jim Edwards
“With five lawsuits filed in three states last week by the American
Civil Liberties Union, all alleging racial profiling of Arabs and Asians
on airplanes, Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had turned the country into
a nation of vigilantes and bigots. But 10 months after the events, the
official numbers tell a less alarming story. While there certainly was
a hike in such bias claims since September, it’s hard to say that
the increase was serious or even statistically significant.”
Much
of Sept. 11 Charity Remains to Be Disbursed (06/11/02)
In The Washington Post by Lena H. Sun, Sarah Cohen and
Jacqueline L. Salmon
“Of the $2.3 billion raised by the largest charities in the nine
months since the terrorist attacks, 29 cents of each dollar has gone to
the survivors of those killed. A survey by The Washington Post of the
major charities, which raised virtually all of the funds that flowed in
after Sept. 11, found that roughly 20 cents of each dollar has gone to
displaced workers and others affected by the attacks and an additional
40 cents has yet to be distributed. Several charities reported that money
continues to come in — in one case an average of $21,500 a day —
even though the organizations have long since ended their appeals for
donations.”
The
State of the Special Relationship (June 2002)
By Robin Harris in Policy Review
“If America’s European allies only France and Britain possessed a
significant capacity to assist in the war on terrorism, and only Britain
had the will. A British task force was accordingly deployed in the Gulf;
British submarines fired Tomahawks against Taliban targets on two occasions.
Within Afghanistan, members of Britain’s SAS regiment — without doubt
the most skilled special service forces in the world — performed
taxing and dangerous tasks with great success, notably in attacking the
al Qaeda training camp outside Kandahar and in hand-to-hand fighting in
the Tora Bora region. British forces are still involved in mopping-up
operations against the enemy. The pity is that from first to last these
exploits have mattered little in the overall outcome. This has been America’s
war, and the U.S. has fought it according to its own battle plan and almost
entirely with its own resources.”
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