Columnist.
The Ferguson, Missouri police department released convenience store surveillance tape that showed Michael Brown allegedly stealing some cigars minutes before he was shot by a police officer. Aware that the release of this footage might look like posthumous character assassination of the shooting victim, Captain Ronald Johnson of the Ferguson police explained that the tape was released pursuant to freedom of information requests. Maybe, though the behavior of the police in other respects doesn't exactly scream respect for the Fourth Estate. Journalists from the Washington Post and Huffington Post were arrested, and a team from Al-Jazeera was tear-gassed.
The United Nations plays a supporting role in every war between Hamas and Israel. U.N. spokesmen routinely issue statements, accusations and denials about everyone's conduct, including their own (most recently they had to account for why they returned rockets, discovered in a U.N. school, to Hamas). Israel was denounced worldwide for an "attack" on a U.N. school said to be housing 3,000 civilians, but it was actually an attack on particular terrorists on the adjoining street. It's time to reconsider the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
"Meet the Press" featured a segment this week that illustrates the planted liberal axioms that dominate our political culture. The topic was Congress's failure to "get anything done" this term. Political director Chuck Todd set the stage: "New polling from NBC News, The Wall Street Journal and Marist ... shows that three out of four voters agree that Congress hasn't done much this year ... And guess what? The public's right. Congress hasn't been productive. In fact, this Congress ... is on track to be the least productive in history."
Last week, The Washington Post's Tehran, Iran, correspondent was arrested. The charges are unspecified, but according to the paper, Jason Rezaian, 38; his Iranian wife, Yeganeh Salehi; and two other U.S. citizens were detained. State Department spokesman Marie Harf issued a protest that didn't even rise to the level of tepid, saying "Our highest priority is the safety and welfare of U.S. citizens abroad." Reassured? Rezaian and the others join a list of Americans held captive -- many for years and years.
In the last several weeks, I've heard people confidently declare that the 70 percent of Jewish Americans who voted for Obama are finally sorry. I'm skeptical, but even if they are, they're probably telling themselves that Hillary Clinton would be a better friend to the Jewish state than the current president. They have short memories. Remember the way first lady Hillary Clinton sat mute while Suha Arafat accused Israelis of poisoning children? She then embraced Arafat and kissed her on both cheeks. Clinton learned to mouth the right words when seeking a Senate sinecure from the (heavily Jewish) state of New York, and later the presidency. But her recent book and interviews suggest that her sympathies are by no means clear, and her judgment is worse.
The bodies of 298 passengers and crew of Malaysia Air Flight 17, 80 of them children, lie unburied in a Ukrainian field while Vladimir Putin's men fire their weapons into the air to keep international investigators from approaching the site. Yes, "Putin's men." Calling them "Russian separatists" unnecessarily dignifies them. They are supplied, armed and trained by the despot in the Kremlin.
You needn't be clairvoyant to deduce what the Democratic Party wants to run on in 2016. It really doesn't matter whether their nominee is Hillary Clinton or someone else. Democrats won't be campaigning on the thriving economy under President Barack Obama, global stability under American leadership, the successful routing of al-Qaida or Obamacare. No, the Democratic Party is the ladies' party now -- dependent completely on the lopsided votes of single females for their electoral success. To the degree possible, 2016 will be about women's sex lives and who should pay for IUDs. Republicans have perfectly good responses to these juvenile arguments, starting with "buy your own blankety-blank contraceptives" and moving up to sensible health care reform. Still, Republicans (and grown-ups) are not well-served if the election revolves around condoms and morning after pills.
"The heartlessness and nativist pandering that have broken America's immigration system must give way to providing proper food, clothing, shelter and medical care to the Central American children streaming into the country," so pronounced the editors of the New York Daily News. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. echoed the theme in his "Bordering on Heartless" column, noting that Glenn Beck has "come under fierce attack" for his proposal to bring food, water, teddy bears and soccer balls to the children stuck at the border. "It's one more sign," Dionne writes, "of how the crisis at the border has brought out the very worst in our political system and a degree of plain nastiness that we should not be proud of as a nation." Charges of Republican or conservative heartlessness about the children flooding the border have been common. Some journalists seemingly cannot type the word Republican without the modifier "heartless." But where is the evidence of this supposed callousness, and why is it any greater among Republicans than Democrats?
Two University of Miami football players have been arrested and dismissed from the university after being criminally charged with sexual battery on a 17-year-old girl. According to ESPN, the two admitted to buying drinks for the girl and then bringing her back to a dorm room where they engaged in nonconsensual sex acts with her. Six Vanderbilt students have filed a suit claiming that their allegations of sexual assault were not taken seriously. Students at Amherst, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Yale and dozens of other colleges have filed similar complaints.
Could the flood of underage, would-be immigrants over the southern border be "Obama's Katrina" as Susan Page of USA Today warned? No, it's worse. Even the most virulent George W. Bush denigrator would not suggest that the former president actually created the hurricane. This president, by contrast, bears a heavy responsibility for creating the deluge of unaccompanied minors who have recently crashed ashore. To say President Barack Obama is largely responsible is not to say that he intended this result. If this episode serves to remind people about the law of unintended consequences, we'll learn far more valuable lessons than those we drew from Hurricane Katrina.
On July 4, I plan to celebrate this nation's birth with something approaching devotion. I will so despite the fact that each day's news brings fresh reasons to worry about the future. I could list the things that worry me, but you know what they are. They probably worry you, too, but the Fourth of July is a time to elevate and celebrate rather than fret. So here's a story: Last week, I was in Europe and had dinner with a European gentleman. He is very successful and pretty happy with his lot. As sometimes happens when people of different cultures speak, I didn't understand something he was telling me.
The major media's account of the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case was typical of the way the case has been misreported from the start. The New York Times headline read, "Supreme Court Rejects Contraceptives Mandate for Some Corporations." Politico led with "SCOTUS sides with Hobby Lobby on birth control." Others were similar. That's not what the case was about, and you'd think that major news organizations might at least get the basic facts straight. The litigants -- the Green and Hahn families, owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties respectively -- did not have religious objections to contraception. They might have if they were Catholic, but they weren't, and they didn't.
An estimated 50,000 Iranian exiles and supporters from Europe and North America are here to remind the world that no cooperation with the brutal, expansionist regime in Tehran can possibly advance Western interests. This annual gathering of MeK (People's Mujahedin of Iran), an Iranian resistance group, was already scheduled. But it might have been called just to rebut Secretary of State John Kerry's comments about possible cooperation between the U.S. and Iran in Iraq. "I think we need to go step by step," Kerry mused, "and see what, in fact, might be a reality, but I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability, a respect for the constitution, a respect for the election process, and a respect for the ability of the Iraqi people to form a government that represents all of the interests of Iraq, not one sectarian group over another. It has to be inclusive, and that has been one of the great problems of the last few years."
Among Republicans, the debate over America's proper world role is vigorous. Sen. Rand Paul blames the current disarray in Iraq on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. "Were they right in their predictions? Were there weapons of mass destruction there? Was the war won in 2005, when many of those people said it was won?" Cheney, civil but direct, defends his decisions and warns that Paul's "isolationism" is unwise. "He doesn't believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world. That didn't work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won't work in the aftermath of 9/11." That, ladies and gentlemen, is how a substantive debate about serious matters is conducted. One side makes its case; the other side responds. May the better argument win.
A few questions for President Barack Obama. At your press conference, you said, "It is in our national security interest not to see an all-out civil war in Iraq." If that is the case, why did you withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011? Were you motivated by something other than U.S. national interests? Did no one advise you that the current disaster was possible when you proclaimed in December 2011: "We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We're building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war, not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making."
President Barack Obama has flouted the law again and again -- unilaterally rewriting the health law at least 18 times since passage; changing immigration law by executive fiat (after having explained that to do so would be beyond the scope of his constitutional authority); dictating that union claims should trump creditors in the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts; altering the welfare laws by regulation; making recess appointments when Congress was not, in fact, in recess; and many more. After each arrogation of power, critics have protested, "He can't do that!" Yes, he can -- because there is nothing to stop him. What Obama has done is plainly unconstitutional, but there is no magic buzzer that sounds when a public official violates his oath to uphold the Constitution. Lightning bolts do not issue from the heavens staying the errant executive. The only guardrail that keeps our leaders from abusing their power is the vigilance of the people. Key to that vigilance is the press -- so much the worse for us.
Have you seen the "Ready for Hillary" bumper stickers? I've seen one already and wondered about the implied insult to the current occupant of the White House. You're "Ready for Hillary" when the greatest statesman of our age isn't even halfway through his second term? Are you ready because Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state was such a rousing success? As of this writing, Islamist forces are marching south from newly conquered Mosul and Tikrit in Iraq. Wasn't Clinton the chief architect of our foreign policy when we failed to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement with Iraq in 2011? Reviewing that history in September of 2012, The New York Times quoted an administration spokesman: "As we reviewed the 10,000 option, we came to the conclusion that achieving the goal of a security partnership was not dependent on the size of our footprint in-country, and that stability in Iraq did not depend on the presence of U.S. forces."
Considering how easy it would be for the Iranian regime to get everything it wants from the current administration, it's a little startling to see the "supreme leader" brazenly poking his finger into the president's eye. President Barack Obama's fond hopes -- nurtured since before his first inauguration -- to forge a new, better relationship with the "Islamic Republic" have come to this: Speaking to a large crowd assembled to mark the 25th anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death, "Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei declared his continuing belief that America is the Great Satan. "Battle and jihad are endless," he said. "This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors' front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought." Arrayed behind the cleric was a banner reading, "America cannot do a damn thing!"
Though President Barack Obama's first term was characterized by anemic economic growth, decreasing household income, prolonged joblessness, an unpopular health law, foreign policy blunders and bitter partisanship, the electorate seemed stubbornly unwilling to lay any of it at his feet. As late as July 2013, 35 percent of Americans assigned George W. Bush a "high degree" of blame for the economy versus only 19 percent who named Obama alone. Now the spell appears to have been decidedly broken. The benefit of the doubt Obama enjoyed for more than four years has been depleted. The Benghazi, IRS and Veterans Affairs scandals; the disastrous rollout of Obamacare (and the revelation of presidential dishonesty); the molasses economy; the Syria "red line" fiasco; the feeble response to the Ukraine mess; the new EPA taxes on coal; and the utterly tone-deaf treatment of the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl trade have combined to convince the country that Obama is out of his depth. A Washington Post poll found that 55 percent of voters believe that Obama has made the country weaker. CNN found that 61 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy, along with 63 percent who disapprove of his handling of the health care law, and 57 percent who disapprove of his management of foreign policy (the poll predated the Bergdahl trade).
