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Archive for July, 2006

Bush quote bogus (“Constitution is just a ***-damned piece of paper”)

July 22nd, 2006

One of the most famous quotes allegedly showing President Bush’s real frame of mind has proven to be false, a lie from (we are told) a source that proved not to be credible. Because the source doesn’t exist.

Capitol Hill Blue’s Apology for the mistake doesn’t actually mention the quote itself. But with a hat tip to Classical Values, we now see that Capitol Hill Blue (CHB) has quite a bit to explain.

CHB simply removed the story, which used to be Article 7779 according to Google’s cache of the site. Now, as of this writing, the page has no article on it, and just the current date with the site’s motto. It will be interesting to see, if in the weeks ahead, the numerous web pages citing the bogus quote will issue their own retraction. CHB is busy excising the quote, which they used repeatedly in many of their stories, and appending a disclaimer that the article had been edited since publication. But they don’t mention in those various edits that it is the very famous “piece of paper” quote that was excised.

Now there are qeustions about whether the CHB editor, William D. McTavish, really exists. But I’ll leave that to the good folks like those at Classical Values.

I hereby certify that I do exist, and will clearly and prominently post any corrections within the context of the original post. Bloggers would be well advised to do so, as the Internet is a place with a very long memory, what with competing bloggers, Google’s cache, and the Internet Wayback Machine at Archive.org.
Read more…

Politics

Brokaw to Stanford Grads: Yeah, he gets it.

July 19th, 2006

I’ve always liked Tom Brokaw … yeah, he’s a privilaged member of the MSM, and a liberal, but he does seem to get it. He wrote “The Greatest Generation,” a wonderful book about the sacrifices of our fathers and mothers. And he’s still “getting it”, including his recent commencement address at Stanford.

Some excerpts, in case that link breaks after the San Jose Mercury News changes its web site:

This is a day for us to celebrate and enjoy. This is also an occasion for us to remember other young people your age, because while we are gathered here in this place of privilege and promise, other young men and women, your fellow citizens, many of them without the advantages that brought you to this ceremony of hope and celebration, at this hour are in uniform and in harm’s way. However you may feel about the decision that placed them in peril, you must not forget them or their families, for they have volunteered to risk their lives if necessary to ensure your security and to defend this country.

They come from, as I know firsthand from having lived and traveled with them, the working-class families in places such as Big Timber, Montana, and the barrios of East Los Angeles, the African American neighborhoods of Greater Detroit, the red soil of the American South, the backwoods of New England. They are involved in hard duty with a high price, as we have all learned so painfully. It is about death and lifelong debilitating wounds, about policies gone awry, about terrible mistakes, and successes, and heroic noble actions.

It is a duty and a burden not to be borne by the military families alone. You come to this ceremony with many choices before you. Those choices must include a commitment to honor the personal sacrifices of those in uniform, to act in a meaningful fashion to their families and to become involved in the debate on the course of national security for this country now and in the future. You have so many choices and so many opportunities.

Good for you, Tom. Good for you.

Politics

SWIFT: Planned Testimony Highlights Left’s Moral Bankruptcy

July 11th, 2006

While the hearings are underway, readers can see the “Planned Testimony” of Stuart Levey, Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, for the Department of the Treasury before the committee in a PDF found HERE!

Secretary Levey stresses the importance of tracking financial dealings, and in the process points out one of the most egregious examples of the Left’s moral bankruptcy in cheering the release of the secret SWIFT financial tracking program by the NY and LA Times:

As this Committee knows well, tracking and combating terrorist financing are critical facets of our overall efforts to protect our citizens and other innocents around the world from terrorist attacks. This is true for two main reasons. First, when we block the assets of a terrorist front company, arrest a donor, or shut down a corrupt charity, we deter other donors, restrict the flow of funds to terrorist groups and shift their focus from planning attacks to worrying about their own needs. While any single terrorist attack may be relatively inexpensive to carry out, terrorist groups continue to need real money. They depend on a regular cash flow to pay operatives and their families, arrange for travel, train new members, forge documents, pay bribes, acquire weapons, and stage attacks. Disrupting money flows stresses terrorist networks and undermines their operations. In recent months, we have seen at least one instance of what we look for most – a terrorist organization indicating that it cannot pursue sophisticated attacks because it lacks adequate funding.

Second, “following the money” is one of the most valuable sources of information that we have to identify and locate the networks of terrorists and their supporters. If a terrorist associate whom we are watching sends or receives money from another person, we know that there’s a link between the two individuals. And, while terrorist supporters may use code names on the phone, when they send or receive money through the banking system, they often provide information that yields the kind of concrete leads that can advance an investigation. For these reasons, counter-terrorism officials place a heavy premium on financial intelligence. As the 9/11 Commission staff pointed out – and as Chairman Hamilton testified before this Committee – “following the money to identify terrorist operatives and sympathizers provides a particularly powerful tool in the fight against terrorist groups. Use of this tool almost always remains invisible to the general public, but it is a critical part of the overall campaign against al Qaeda.” The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was just such an invisible tool. Its exposure represents a grave loss to our overall efforts to combat al Qaida and other terrorist groups.

The Left has issued a steady drumbeat of concern over the innocent Iraqi lives and American soldiers killed in our invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet at the same time, the Left wants to handcuff law enforcement activities in the name of “civil rights” by decrying any attempt to spy on international terrorists and their supporters.

Constitutional protections of privacy do not apply to financial transactions. As I’ve stated before, the Bank Secrecy Act requires all transactions of a certain size to be reported to the government by the banking institution for all citizens. However, we have no such reporting requirements for transactions originating and ending in foreign countries with foreign funds. The SWIFT tracking program gave us the opportunity to data mine the transactions to see who was funding terrorists, track back the links and capture … CAPTURE … terrorists.

Notice I wrote “CAPTURE” in caps up there? This was a law enforcement action, and except for the brave men and women who go out to actually apprehend the terrorists, there was no “collateral damage”. No children bombed, no fires in residential neighborhoods started by the explosions, no innocents harmed.

Hugh Hewitt mentions, in his blog entry on the bombings in India, that the revelation of the SWIFT tracking activities can lead to more of this kind of activity.

Non-existent privacy rights are weighed against the lives of innocents, and the innocents lose.

We need increased ability to track financial transactions, as well as all other peaceful means to isolate, corner and capture terrorists. Combined with the aggressive attack by our military on terrorist targets, pursuing all avenues against the terrorists will enable continued success. The Left, which claims to care about human life, shows itself instead to be selfish, blinded by hate for a particular President, and incapable of making the moral distinctions necessary in modern life.

Politics

SWIFT Hearings Starting Tomorrow

July 11th, 2006

Congress is holding hearings on the SWIFT (financial transaction) revelations which compromised our efforts to use peaceful means to bring terrorists to justice.

July 11, 2006

House Financial Services Committee
Terror Finance Tracking Program
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on “The Terror Finance Tracking Program.”
Witnesses: Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey
Location: 2128 Rayburn House Office Building. 10 a.m. (July 11, 2006)
Contact: 202-225-7502

The committee members are:

Michael G. Oxley OH Chairman
James A. Leach IA
Richard H. Baker LA
Deborah Pryce OH
Spencer Bachus AL
Michael N. Castle DE
Edward R. Royce CA
Frank D. Lucas OK
Robert W. Ney OH
Sue W. Kelly NY Vice Chairman
Ron Paul TX
Paul E. Gillmor OH
Jim Ryun KS
Steven C. LaTourette OH
Donald A. Manzullo IL
Walter B. Jones, Jr. NC
Judy Biggert IL
Christopher Shays CT
Vito Fossella NY
Gary G. Miller CA
Patrick J. Tiberi OH
Mark R. Kennedy MN
Tom Feeney FL
Jeb Hensarling TX
Scott Garrett NJ
Ginny Brown-Waite FL
J. Gresham Barrett SC
Katherine Harris FL
Rick Renzi AZ
Jim Gerlach PA
Stevan Pearce NM
Randy Neugebauer TX
Tom Price GA
Michael G. Fitzpatrick PA
Geoff Davis KY
Patrick T. McHenry NC
John Campbell CA
Barney Frank MA
Paul E. Kanjorski PA
Maxine Waters CA
Carolyn B. Maloney NY
Luis V. Gutierrez IL
Nydia M. Velázquez NY
Melvin L. Watt NC
Gary L. Ackerman NY
Darlene Hooley OR
Julia Carson IN
Brad Sherman CA
Gregory W. Meeks NY
Barbara Lee CA
Dennis Moore KS
Michael E. Capuano MA
Harold E. Ford Jr. TN
Rubén Hinojosa TX
Joseph Crowley NY
Wm. Lacy Clay MO
Steve Israel NY
Carolyn McCarthy NY
Joe Baca CA
Jim Matheson UT
Stephen F. Lynch MA
Brad Miller NC
David Scott GA
Artur Davis AL
Al Green TX
Emanuel Cleaver MO
Melissa L. Bean IL
Debbie Wasserman Schultz FL
Gwen Moore WI
Bernard Sanders VT

Other hearings this week deal with the Supreme Court decision on detainees (Hamdan v Rumsfeld), Iraqi Victory and chemical weapons. See the full listing at Andrew Cochran at CounterTerrorism.org.

Politics

Is the Latin Left Losing?

July 10th, 2006

Mexico’s elections saw the centrist Felipe Calderon elected to the Presidency, in a move that shows the Mexican middle and lower classes are looking ahead to the future. Leftist candidate Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador looked like he would win to me; he was promising too much to a people weary with poverty. Among the goodies promised were a doubling of old-age pensions, elimination of utility costs for the poor, and an across the board 20% raise.

Calderon countered with a frank appraisal that such actions would plunge Mexico into a debt crisis like that seen just a scant 10 years ago, when the peso collapsed due to excesses in the two decades earlier.

Dick Morris and Eileen Mc Gann provide a good analysis at Real Clear Politics HERE! I’m not comfortable enough to say that the Hugo Chavez Effect is gone completely as Morris and Mc Gann alllude, but it is heartening to see the numbers regarding the growth of the middle class in Mexico (up to 40% of the population now).

I haven’t been impressed with Vicente Fox’s progress as reported in the media, and I thought his PAN party had missed its opportunity. But the statistics tell a different story: a growing middle class is the best antidote to Marxism, even if it requires a slide toward a social support system that is more socialistic than free market. And its good to see healthy competition in an election in Mexico. They have come a long way since Fox’s revolutionary win after virtual single party rule in Mexico.

Bueno, muy bueno.

Politics