JustOneMinute

Out With The Old, In With The Older

Mitt Romney bows out for 2016, clearing the path for... Jeb Bush?

Oh, why not? In 2012 the bright lights of the Republican establishment picked the one candidate who couldn't bang the table against ObamaCare. So now the establishment is poised to back the one guy who is older news than Hillarity! Instead of offering a fresh face against more of the same, they are going to get behind the one guy who actually danced to "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" back when young Bill represented the future. Groan.

Not Enough One-Percenters

Josh Barro explains the death of Obama's proposed tax on 529 college savings accounts and deplores the dearth of one-percenters:

A ‘Rich’ Person Is Someone Who Makes 50 Percent More Than You

Why Obama’s Proposal for 529s Had No Chance

The first rule of modern tax policy is raise taxes only on the rich. The second rule is that your family isn’t rich, even if you make a lot of money.

President Obama’s State of the Union proposal to end the tax benefits for college savings accounts ran afoul of these rules, which is why he abandoned it, under intense pressure from both political parties, within a week.

Tax-free college savings accounts, like the mortgage interest deduction and the state and local tax deduction, principally benefit people who range from affluent to wealthy. In pushing its proposal, the White House pointed to Federal Reserve data showing that 70 percent of balances in the college accounts were held by families making at least $200,000 a year. In theory, tax reform is supposed to be built around cutting back preferences like these, in order to pay for some combination of lower tax rates and tax preferences aimed at people with lower incomes.

But in practice, politicians from both parties have made a point of holding the group you might call the “merely affluent” harmless from tax increases. If you make $150,000 to $225,000, you make about two to three times the national median income for a married couple. The list of occupations that can get you into this income bracket — government official, academic, lobbyist, journalist — can sometimes make it hard for people in political circles to remember that 92 percent of American married couples make less than $200,000 a year.

So in other words, after all the heated progressive rhetoric about yachts, private jets, offshore accounts, buying the political system with max donations of $32,400 and "one percenters", Obama ran into trouble by trying to tax the "eight percenters" earning over $200 per annum. It's the classic rhetoric-policy mismatch driven by pesky arithmetic - those one-percenters and even five-percenters don't earn enough to pay for all of Obama's proposed free stuff.

Too Dumb Even For Environmentalists

Biofuels make little sense - who knew?

New Report Urges Western Governments to Reconsider Reliance on Biofuels

Western governments have made a wrong turn in energy policy by supporting the large-scale conversion of plants into fuel and should reconsider that strategy, according to a newreport from a prominent environmental think tank.

Turning plant matter into liquid fuel or electricity is so inefficient that the approach is unlikely ever to supply a substantial fraction of global energy demand, the report found. It added that continuing to pursue this strategy — which has already led to billions of dollars of investment — is likely to use up vast tracts of fertile land that could be devoted to helping feed the world’s growing population.

 

A Trial Balloon

The New England Patriots "DeflateGate" has now met "The Big bang Theory":

N.F.L. Investigator Seeks to Consult Columbia Physicist Over Patriots’ Deflated Footballs

A law firm hired by the N.F.L. to investigatefootballs used by the New England Patriots has formally asked the Columbia University physics department for help in understanding how weather and temperature could affect the pressure in footballs, according to a summary of the communication obtained by The New York Times.

Oh, brother.

Let me chime in. The temperature change from room temperature to the on-field temperature should not be enough to have the balls deflate from 12.5 psi to 10.5 psi. And one might presume that the balls used by the Colts, which did not deflate, were subjected to the same temperature change.

Some bright lights have suggested that the Patriots' footballs were inflated in a sauna and measured by the refs before they had cooled. Hmm, the refs didn't notice the footballs were very hot? Whatever.

If I were an imaginative physicist, I would suggest a slicker ploy - inflate the Patriots' footballs with a mix of helium and oxygen or regular air (deep sea divers are familiar with this, so we are not talking about science-fiction levels of availability). As every party-goer knows, helium leaks from balloons much more quickly than regular air, for a perfectly logical scientific reason - the helium atom is smaller.

Obviously, a bit of trial and error would have been needed to find the optimal helium/air mix given the desired leakage rate and the elapsed time before (and during) the game. But if, for exammple, the original mix was fifteen percent percent helium and all of the helium escaped a football bladder in the two hours between testing and game-time, then the Patriots footballs would be at roughly 100 percent regular air at 10.5 psi come game time.

OK, I am not really serious. A simpler answer is that the "person of interest" who disappeared into the men's room for ninety seconds with the bag of footballs stuck an inflation/deflation pin in each ball and used a well-developed sense of feel to check for the new, lower pressure. The big thing that theory has going for it is that it is slightly less ludicrous than the helium idea.

My guess - the refs never checked the pressure except by feel, and now everyone is covering up.

As to how the refs managed to spot the ball before every Patriots play without noticing anything amiss, well, I am now certain that I will never be smart enough to be an NFL fan.

The Morality Of Torture

The NY Times throws a bucket of cold water into the faces of their Upper West Side readership - torture can be morally justified, says a Deep Thinking Philosopher. In frare instances, of course:

My interviewee is Jeff McMahan, White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of “The Ethics of Killing.” — Gary Gutting

Gary Gutting: What’s your overall view on the morality of torture?

Jeff McMahan: I think that torture is almost always morally wrong and that, for moral reasons, it ought to be prohibited absolutely in law. Torture has been used to extract confessions, to terrorize people associated with the victims, to punish presumed wrongdoers, and even to gratify and amuse sadists and bullies. These uses are always morally wrong. The only use of torture that has any chance of being morally justified is to gain important information. But even when torture is used to gain information, the torturers are usually wrongdoers seeking information that will help them to achieve their unjust aims. And even when those seeking information have just aims, their victims are often innocent, or lack the information sought, or are sufficiently strong-willed to mislead their torturers, so that the torture is ineffective or counterproductive. 

So if a drug cartel tortures a cop to learn the identity of a confidential informant, that is morally wrong. Do philosophers make these tough calls every day?

However, there are clear cracks shining through the "Torture Is Wrong" wall:

G.G.: But you do agree that torture can, in extreme cases, be moral. Why do you reject the absolute view that any instance of torture is immoral?

J.M.: Torture can be morally justifiable, and even obligatory, when it is wholly defensive – for example, when torturing a wrongdoer would prevent him from seriously harming innocent people. It could do that by forcing a person to reveal the location where he has planted a bomb, or hidden a hostage who will die if not found. It can be morally justifiable to kill a person to prevent him from detonating a bomb that will kill innocent people, or to prevent him from killing an innocent hostage. Since being killed is generally worse than being tortured, it should therefore be justifiable to torture a person to prevent him from killing innocent people. In cases in which torture is defensive in this way, the person tortured is not wronged. Indeed, he could avoid the torture simply by doing what he is morally required to do anyway – namely, disclose the location of the bomb or hostage.

Which fits directly into the "No Kidding" file.

We get an explanation for a reliably amusing bit of progressive theatre:

G.G.: Do you worry that even saying that torture can be moral will provide an excuse for immoral torture?

J.M.: Yes, very much. The philosopher Henry Shue has a story of being thanked for his influential 1978 article [“Torture,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 7, no. 2 (1978): 124-43] by a pair of American agents who had tortured people. The article had argued vigorously against torture but conceded at the end that the moral prohibition of torture is not absolute. The agents were grateful for the concession, as that made them feel they could engage in torture without doing wrong. I think this is the explanation of why many people who aren’t absolutists about any other moral issue say they are absolutists about torture. They rightly want to avoid giving any aid or comfort to those who seek to justify torture in the circumstances in which it is actually practiced. But there is a dilemma here, for it can seem morally obtuse, and therefore discrediting, to deny that torture is permissible in those cases in which it obviously is permissible – for example, when it would in fact force a kidnapper to reveal the location of hostages who will otherwise die.

What, progressives seeming morally obtuse for objecting to the torture of 9/11 plotter (and maybe more!) Khalid Sheik Mohammed? Say it ain't so!

There's lots more, including some much-too-late-to-prevent-aneurysms Bush-bashing.

 

Saturday Morning

Away we go. And in recognition of something or other, I found this bit of Super Bowl trivia interesting - what two Super Bowl MVPs have the same initials?

Spoiler Alert - The answer will be all over the news all week.

And Back In Yemen

Was it really just four months ago that Obama was explaining (to bipartisan derision) that his new operation against ISIS would be modeled on our Big Success in Yemen?

Well, the government of Yemen has fallen and the country is splintered:

SANA, Yemen — The American-backed government of Yemen abruptly collapsed Thursday night, leaving the country leaderless as it is convulsed by an increasingly powerful force of pro-Iran rebels and a resurgent Qaeda.

The resignation of the president, prime minister and cabinet took American officials by surprise and heightened the risks that Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, would become even more of a breeding ground for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has claimed responsibility for audacious anti-Western attacks — including the deadly assault on Charlie Hebdo in Paris this month.

...

Charles Schmitz, an analyst with the Middle East Institute and an expert on the Houthis, said that of all Yemen’s many political crises, Thursday’s was among the worst yet.

“We’re looking at the de facto partitioning of the country and we’re heading into a long negotiating process but we could also be heading toward war,” he said.

Deep in the Silver Lining Briefing Book is the news that an Iranian backed rebel group hates the US but hates Al Qaeda even more, so Obama's got that going for him.

Although the Houthis, who are believed to be financed by Iran, are strongly anti-American, they are even stronger opponents of Al Qaeda. The Houthis are dominated by a Shiite Muslim sect, the Zaydis, while Al Qaeda is rabidly anti-Shiite.

While the Houthis now control the capital, Sana, and many parts of northern Yemen, Al Qaeda has been strongest in Sunni tribal areas in Yemen, and has used Sunni anger at the swift rise of the Houthis as an effective recruiting tool — particularly in oil-rich areas of eastern and southern Yemen.

So mark up your scorecards - we are counting in Iran to carry the fight in Iraq against ISIS as well as the fight against Al Qaeda in Yemen, even as we pretend to talk tough on ongoing sanctions (and we all deal with $50 oil). Great - the enemy of my enemy is my other enemy.

COMING SOON: I see John Kerry starring in 'The Bad, The Worse and the Stupid'.

No Federal Charges Against Officer Wilson

Here's a shocker:

Justice Dept. to Recommend No Civil Rights Charges in Ferguson Shooting

 

Obama's Plan To Tax "The Rich"

Ryan Ellis, contributing at Forbes, notes a predictably bizarre proposed Obama tax increase:

Obama's New State Of The Union Tax Hike On Middle Class 529 College Savers

One tax hike in particular was very odd, since it’s aimed almost exclusively at middle class families with kids–the exact demographic the goodies in the tax plan is targeting.

The levy in question would increase taxes on college savings accounts known as “529 plans” (after their section in the Internal Revenue Code). By definition, these accounts are really only used by middle class families. Poorer households don’t have the extra income to save (and even if they have a little, there are much higher priorities like retirement or saving for a home). Very wealthy families might use 529 plans, but it’s far more likely that they have complex trust arrangements set up for their children.

According to the Investment Company Institute (the trade association for the mutual fund industry), there was $245 billion accumulated in 529 plans in 2014. With just south of 12 million accounts open, that means there’s an average balance of about $21,000 in these plans. This is not a mechanism for rich Democrats like the Kennedys or the Gates to shelter wealth.

The tax hike in question - currently, interest, dividends and capital gains from invested assets are not subject to taxes even when withdrawn. Under Obama's proposal, the plan assets can grow tax-deferred but atre subject to taxation upon withdrawal.

As to the notion that plan investors are "middle-class", well, yes but...

A GAO study from December 2012 suggests that these plan investors were basically too rich, too well educated and too white to be deserving of any special treatment from Obama. How rich?

Families with 529 plans or Coverdells typically had much more wealth than families without these accounts, according to our analysis of SCF data. Based on our analysis of the 2010 SCF, we estimate that the median financial asset value for families with 529 plans or Coverdells was about $413,500, which is about twenty-five times the median financial asset value for families without 529 plans or Coverdells (about $15,400). 

For example, families with 529 plans or Coverdells had more retirement assets than other families. Of families with 529 plans or Coverdells, about 94 percent had retirement assets, such as those in 401(k) accounts or traditional pensions. In contrast, approximately 49 percent of families without 529 plans or Coverdells had these retirement assets. Further, the median value of retirement assets was much greater for those with 529 plans or Coverdells. Specifically, the median value in retirement accounts was about $213,600 for families with 529 plans or Coverdells, while the median value for families without 529 plans or Coverdells was about $40,300. A larger share of families with 529 plans or Coverdells (27 percent) also believed they will have more than enough retirement income from pensions and Social Security to maintain current living standards than the share of families without 529 plans or Coverdells (16 percent), which may put them in a better position to save for college.

$400,000 in retirement savings? Obama's agent will make more than that on Barack's big book deal when he finally leaves office. My goodness, Sasha and Malia's agent may make that much.

And income?

Further, the median income of families with 529 plans or Coverdells was about three times the median income of families without these accounts. Specifically, families with 529 plans or Coverdells had median incomes of about $142,400 per year compared to $45,100 for other families.

A full $142,000 per annum? Break out the private jets! Folks with long memories will remember candidate Obama pledging not to raise taxes on families earnng less than $250K, but we are long past the sell-by date with that one.

And I mentioned "too white". For whatever reason, this was a key point in the study:

Also, a larger proportion of respondents in families who had 529 plans or
Coverdells were non-minorities, according to our analysis of SCF data. Specifically, about 84 percent of respondents whose families had 529 plans or Coverdells identified as white (non-Hispanic). In contrast, about 69 percent of respondents in families without these accounts said they were white (non-Hispanic). Moreover, only 5 percent of respondents in families with 529 plans or Coverdells identified as Black/AfricanAmerican, compared to 14 percent without these accounts. While SCF does not provide insight on why more white families use 529 plans than others, a 2010 Sallie Mae study found that a larger percentage of white parents saved for college in general when compared to African-American and Hispanic parents. Further, the study found that white families save more for college even when controlling for income.

White people earn more and save a higher percentage of their income? Then stick it to 'em. As to whether this has a disparate impact on Asians, who are likely to be high savers and college-oriented, well, stick it to them, too.

A summary table was included:

So now a family earning $140K per year is among "the rich" who are over-saving for college and their retirement. Fortunately Barack is here to battle for social justice! And even better, this plan is DOA in the Republican Congress.

BUT THEN AGAIN: Reihan Salam reminds us that these college subsidies often simply subsidize higher tuitions.

Gay Marriage And Political Cover

The NY Times discuses a silver lining in the Supreme Courts decison to hear (and presumably endorse) a Federal right to gay marriage:

Gay Marriage Case Offers G.O.P. Political Cover

WASHINGTON — The news Friday that theSupreme Court will rule on same-sex marriagebrought elation from gays and lesbians who are hopeful the justices will grant them the constitutional protections they have long sought.

But another group also saw a possible reason to celebrate if the court does indeed rule that way: Republicans.

If the high court resolves the issue as expected in June, it could deliver a decision that has the benefit of largely neutralizing a debate that a majority of Americans believe Republicans are on the wrong side of — and well ahead of the party’s 2016 presidential primaries.

To have the question disposed of and dispensed with, many Republicans say, could make their opinions on the matter largely moot, providing a political escape hatch that gives them an excuse to essentially say: “It’s been settled. Let’s move on.”

But then again...

With the center-right 2016 hopefuls expressing a certain sense of acceptance that same-sex marriage in all 50 states could be a foregone conclusion, there is an opening for socially conservative candidates like Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, and Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, to make gay rights a wedge.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another possible Republican contender, has also signaled that he would push hard on the issue.

The impact of a decision allowing gay couples to marry could also echo beyond that narrow question, prompting greater demands on the right for commitments from candidates about who they would or would not appoint to the bench.

“A decision redefining marriage will highlight even more the importance of Supreme Court appointments,” said Russell Moore, a senior official with the Southern Baptist Convention. “Evangelicals and other social conservatives will want to hear from candidates what sort of judicial philosophy they will look for in making appointments. The usual clichéd slogans won’t be enough.”

Surely the apparent importance of judicial nominees will be affected by just how many of the current justices end up supporting a right to gay marriage. In the unlikely event of a 9-0 ruling, it will be hard for any candidate to insist that they won't nominate softies and activists like Scalia, Thomas and Alito.

OK, 9-0 is not likely - Scalia was unhappy with Lawrence v. Texas and unhappy with Windsor, so he is likely to deliver another blistering dissent this summer. But there were three dissents in Windsor (Scalia, joined by Thomas and Roberts in part, Roberts and Alito) and Roberts will be voting with at least one eye on the history books, so Supreme Court savants can tell me whether the right to gay marriage has a shot at seven or more votes.

Saturday Afternoon This And That

Away we go again. 

I should add that Vermont is leading the way with a nuanced RAND study of the many variations of marijuana legalization.

Live From Paris, It's Saturday Night!

Kidding, oui?

 

SCORE ONE FOR THE SMART DIPLOMACY: "Voulez vous couchez avec moi?" had to be on the short list of make-up songs, but was maybe too friendly.

Hail Obama!

Obama was unexpectedly modest back during his Dem primaries victory speech in June 2008 when he proclaimed that "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow...".

Slow?!? Actually, his ascension has reversed the rise of the seas! OK, a lot of his early supporters are backing away and why should Neptune be any different? But let's be dazzled by science!

A team of researchers reported Wednesday that the ocean did not rise quite as much as previously believed in the 20th century. They proposed a seemingly tiny adjustment that could make a big difference in scientific understanding of the looming problem of sea-level rise.

Instead of rising about six inches over the course of the 20th century, as previous research suggested, the sea actually rose by approximately five inches, the team from Harvard and Rutgers Universities found. 

So there you go!

 

Send Better Grievance Columnists

Charles Blow of the NY Times is still going on about cops, race and guns, and he won't let facts get between him and the narrative.

Another video in another police shooting emerged this week — and it shows yet another case that demands empathy, and an understanding of the fraught moments that can lead to such an outcome, and the complexity of the legal process that follows.

The video showed an officer in Montana shooting and killing a passenger in a car at a traffic stop in a “high crime” area of Billings.

The dashcam video shows the young police officer, Grant Morrison, approaching the passenger side of the car and immediately saying...

The incident results in Richard Ramirez, who was high on methamphetamines, getting fatally shot.

Ramirez’s family was not happy. As CBS News reported: “Ramirez’s family wanted criminal charges against the officer and said Ramirez was a victim of racial profiling.” Morrison is white, Ramirez was “half-Mexican.”

Left unexamined is whether Mr. Ramirez might be a "white Hispanic" like George Zimmerman. From an earlier line-up photo, that is not a tough call:

Let's press on:

By the way, this was not the first time in Morrison’s five-year career that he had shot and killed an unarmed man who was high on methamphetamine and who failed to comply with his instructions. In February of 2013, Morrison shot and killed Jason James Shaw. In that case, another officer testified that Morrison said, “I know you have a gun!” and “I will shoot you.” Morrison was also cleared by a jury of wrongdoing in that killing.

Oh, and by the way, or by the wayside, since Mr. Blow neglects to mention it - Mr. Shaw was white. Actually, in the Times stylebook he is probably "white supremacist white" despite an absence of tatoos (it's a Montana thing...).

Among the issues raised by Mr. Blow is, inevitably, race:

There is also the question of whether bias and profiling play a role in officers’ propensity to use deadly force, as Ramirez’s family suggest. There is some conflict here. Studies using simulations in 2002 and 2005 showed that people were more likely to shoot unarmed black men, while, in the case of the latter study, letting armed white people slip by. On the other hand, a study published last year found that participants “were more likely to feel threatened in scenarios involving black people. But when it came time to shoot, participants were biased in favor of black suspects, taking longer to pull the trigger against them than against armed white or Hispanic suspects.”

These are not apples-to-apples studies, and the scenarios don’t neatly align with the Morrison shootings, but it is worth considering that the science around the issue does not make for simple talking points.

"[T]he scenarios don’t neatly align with the Morrison shootings". Can't disagree there, but let's talk about the role race played anyway.

Greatest Paper Ever

The NY Times continues to encroach on the intellectual space occupied by The Onion.

First, economics columnist David Leonhardt writes about wage stagnation in the US. We have a no-prize for guessing what he does not mention:

After almost 15 years of a disappointing economy, it’s easy to get pessimistic. Incomes for the middle class and poor have now been stagnating over a two-term Republican presidency and well into a two-term Democratic one. Thegreat wage slowdown of the 21st century has frustrated Americans, polls show, and raised serious questions about what kind of policies, if any, might change the situation.

Yet if you look around the world, you can find reasons for hope.

While wages and incomes have stagnated in the United States (as well as in Japan and large parts of Europe), they have not done so everywhere. In Canada, a broad measure of incomes has risen about 10 percent since 2000, even as it’s fallen here. In Australia, it’s up 30 percent.

These aren’t just any countries, either. They’re among those most similar to the United States: far-flung, once ruled by Britain, with a frontier culture and a commitment to capitalism. Though Australia and Canada obviously are not identical to the United States, it certainly seems worth asking what they’re doing differently.

It may be worth asking, but it won't be worth answering if the answer includes "restricted, skill-based immigration".

And for more grins, Margaret Sanger-Katz has good news on ObamaCare!

Financial Distress Connected to Medical Bills Shows a Decline, the First in Years

Whee hee! And a big "Told ya so!" to the haters out there!

Left unmentioned by Ms. Sanger-Katz is the self-declared mission of the Commonwealth Fund behind this study:

The mission of The Commonwealth Fund is to promote a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.

So ACA cheerleaders are cheering for the ACA - did anyone see that coming?

Fortunately this is not a pro-pharma study funded by Big Pharma or a global-warming skepticism piece funded by Big Oil or libs would be leaping from window ledges.

I will leave it to the pros to pick apart this study. My quick thought is that the data surveys are from 2001, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2012, and 2014, with a lot of "Peak Bad" occurring in 2010 and 2012, as we emerged from the recession.

I am also intrigued by the news that among those earning over $200,000 with insurance coverage, 25% skipped a prescription or treatment becausee of cost (high earners without insurance skipped at a 55% rate.) That makes me think it ain't all about the money.

As to the Times headline, the brief includes this:

Fewer Americans reported medically related financial difficulties in 2014. The number of adults who said they had problems paying their medical bills in the past 12 months or were paying off medical debt declined from 75 million people in 2012, or 41 percent, to 64 million, or 35 percent, in 2014 (Exhibit 7, Table 3). This is the first time since The Commonwealth Fund began asking these questions in 2005 that these numbers have dropped. The 2014 rates were similar to those reported by adults in 2005.

Again, was 2005 a halcyon year for health insurance or just a better economic year than 2010-2012?

And the link between medical bills, health insurance and bankruptcy has been and continues to be phony. The loss of income and lack of disability insurance are surely bigger drivers of an eventual bankruptcy than the actual medical bills. And in any case, if bankruptcy was the problem, catastrophic coverage would be the solution, not the free annual physicals touted by the ACA.

SOME RECENT FLAVOR: A couple of days back the Commonwealth Fund explained why charging smokers higher health insurance premiums is unfair. I'll have more if/when I recover from the eyeburn.

Transcending Even The Hip Flask

The future is coming at us like a freight train:

At a recent Seahawks football game in Seattle, Shy Sadis, 41, took a drag on a slim vapor pen that looked like a jet black Marlboro. The tip glowed red as he inhaled.

But the pen contained no nicotine. Instead, it held 250 milligrams of cannabis oil loaded with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

“Nobody noticed,” said Mr. Sadis, who owns several marijuana dispensaries in Washington State. “You pull it out of your pocket, take a hit like a cigarette, put it back, and you’re done. It’s so discreet.”

The device, called a JuJu Joint, heralds a union that seems all but inevitable: marijuana and the e-cigarette, together at last in an e-joint. For years, people have been stuffing marijuana in various forms into portable vaporizers and into the cartridges of e-cigarettes. But the JuJu Joint is disposable, requires no charging of batteries or loading of cartridges, and comes filled with 150 hits. You take it out of the package and put it to your lips — that’s it. There is no smoke and no smell.

Sure, its illegal in most states (now!), but good luck enforcing laws against it.

Meanwhile, Back At UVA

Not exactly a surprise, but:

Police Investigation Clears Fraternity At The Center Of The Controversial Rolling Stone Article

A police investigation into the University of Virginia chapter of Phi Kappa Psi has "has not revealed any substantive basis to confirm" gang-rape allegations raised in a controversial Rolling Stone feature on the school last November, the university announced Monday.

The Cavalier Daily has more. And Ashe Schow reports that the investigation into what, if anything happened is ongoing.

Lafayette, We Are Not Here

Barack Obama and other top Administration officials take a pass on the huge (but strangely exclusive) pro-liberty, anti-terror demonstrations in France. Thank heaven the days of "Go it alone" cowboy diplomacy are over!

Barack Obama n’est pas Charlie — or at least, he wasn’t this weekend.

Don’t look for the president or vice president among the photos of 44 heads of state who locked arms and marched down Boulevard Voltaire in Paris. Nor did they join a companion march the French Embassy organized in Washington on Sunday afternoon.

...

Joe Biden was back home in Wilmington, Delaware. Neither they nor any high-level administration official attended either event.

France’s top diplomat in the U.S. tried, diplomatically, to make the best of it.

“Thank you to Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary at the Department of State, who has represented the U.S. Authorities at the demonstration in DC. A friend,” Ambassador Gérard Araud tweeted Sunday evening, as criticism of the administration mounted.

Geez, a full Assistant Secretary of State? And of course we sent our Ambassador, Obama bundler Jane Hartley, who most people could not pick out of a lineup. What, no Deputy Postmasters General were available?

Speculation is that security concerns kept top officials away. That is not implausible - if the Secret Service can't even secure the White House they will be lost in Paris. Fortunately, not even this Administration is stupid enough to admit that they skipped a rally against terrorism for fear of terrorism.

Of course, maybe Obama was being polite and was afraid that his presence would steal the spotlight from French President Hollande and the European and other leaders. Or more probably, Obama was afraid that his presence would not steal the spotlight.

As they say in DC: Liberté, egalité, keep away.

Of course, we should note that this was not really a National Unity rally - the "far-right" party that won 25% of the French vote in European elections last spring was not invited. So, this was a Partial Unity rally in favor of constrained free expression - vivé la France! Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker has more on the French politics behind the non-invitation. On the other hand:

Le Pen claims she is ready to participate, just like she attended a ceremony in March 2012 to honor the victims of the Mohamed Merah terrorist attack. The French presidential campaign was fully underway at the time, and Nicolas Sarkozy invited all electoral candidates to Montauban. At the time, it would have been awkward for a candidate not to be invited or for a candidate to refuse to participate.

Still more at France24. And the Paper of Broken Record did note the omission:

On the streets, people said it was impressive that world leaders had gathered, but Pablo de Gastines, a French illustrator, said the moment went “way beyond politics.” He held up a work he had painted that was inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” in which he had inserted pens and pencils as symbols of freedom.

“There is a very strong feeling here,” Mr. de Gaskins said.

Echoing many others in the crowd, Mr. de Gaskins said his main concern now was that the far-right National Front party would try to use the situation to divide the French public. “We need to make sure that they do not capture our liberty by capitalizing on what extremists did,” he said. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, was excluded from the rally.

Exclusion of Evil Rightiesl Righties makes a timeless fit to the Times narrative, free expression and national unity notwithstanding.

IRONY LOST: The NY Times editorializes in support of the rally:

United in Outrage

...

But with the horror and fears raised by the attacks still fresh, it was important and proper that the first response in Paris — as elsewhere in France, across Europe and across the Atlantic — was a resounding and united demonstration of outrage and solidarity. Simply by turning out in vast numbers, the marchers eloquently demonstrated a shared conviction that Charlie Hebdo was exercising a right fundamental to democracy, the right of free expression. No perceived provocation, no grievance and certainly no religious conviction justifies killing those who wield only a pen.

Read casually, one could mistake that for a call for free speech. But don't be fooled by their use of "exercising a right fundamental to democracy, the right of free expression".

What the Times editors really support is clarified in the next sentence - they are opposed to murder, not censorship. David Brooks, William Saletan, and Nick Gillespie all looked at this.

Back to the editors:

Perhaps the greatest danger in the wake of the massacres is that more Europeans will come to the conclusion that all Muslim immigrants on the Continent are carriers of a great and mortal threat. Anti-immigrant sentiments were already at a dangerous level, making it essential for national and pan-European leaders in coming days to underscore that extremism is not inherent to the Muslim faith, and that the Islamists themselves are hardly a single entity.

So shutting out the National Front was simply a response to the "greatest danger". With these guys the danger is never the terrorism, it is always the expected right-wing over-reaction.

PUTTING THE 'SPECIAL' BACK IN THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP: Blistering criticism of Team Obama in the Daily Mail masks the news that at least the Brits now realize it is not just them.

STOP THE MUSIC! Matt Yglesias reads the National Front policy prescriptions and finds something sensible - France needs to dump the Euro.

Bracing For Bush

It's not enough that we are supposed to be Ready for Hillarity! Now we have to brace for (yet another) Bush.

Let's have a quick Readers Poll:

The prospects of a Jeb Bush candidacy makes me want to:

(a) Move to New Hampshire so I can vote for him in their primary.

(b) Move even further north to Canada.

(c) Move to Mexico so I can re-enter illegally after he is elected.

(d) Hold out for a Belichick-Brady ticket.

And a follow-up:

If the two main candidates on the November 2016 ballot are Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton I will:

(a) Stay home and let Hillarity! triumph. Yeah, that'll teach 'em!

(b) Hold my nose, vote for Jeb, and clean the voting booth with my left-over Ebola wipes.

(c) Study "Interstellar" for ex-migration ideas.

Tough decisions await.

I'll Pass This Along

The NY Times delivers 'the story behind the story' on the recent David Kirkpatrick piece about Muslims and violence. There is comic gold early on, so I pressed ahead. The hook:

After the killing of 132 schoolchildren by the Pakistani Taliban last month, my editor, Michael Slackman and I started talking about the reactions among non-Muslim Americans. The world had watched the bloody rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Now horrific violence under the banner of Islam seemed to be breaking out around the world.

Michael said he heard many non-Muslims Americans wondering whether Islam was inherently violent — or simply asserting as fact that it was (Bill Maher comes to mind). We decided to report an article of some kind providing an honest, informed, head-on examination of the question. At the risk of sounding grandiose, it struck us both as a public service.

It took the Pakistani massacre to prompt some reporting on that question? Not the ISIS beheadings over the summer, or the "Bring Back Our Girls... or take more, whatever" debacle, or the Rushdie/Satanic Verses fatwa or, just thinking out loud here, the 9/11 attack on New York City, which I know did not escape the attention of the Times? Hmm, Newsweek included religion among the answers to their famous "Why Do They Hate Us?" post 9/11 cover.

Is it possible that these Timesmen are so cocooned that no one they speak to ever broaches the possibility that there is a violent strain of Islam loose in the world? I guess so.

Pressing on:

Many Muslims find the question itself bigoted. 

And if you ask it they will kill you. NO, they didn't write that, but don't be drawing or publishing any Mohammed cartoons or there will be riots.

The Revolution Will Be Delayed, or, Give Peace No Chance

Eric Holder and the FBi are keeping us safe from all enemies foreign and domestic. if the politics work, anyway:

3 Rome men now face domestic terrorism charge

Yup, we are down in Georgia with some militia nutjobs who had something that, with a bit more time in the oven, might have become a half-baked plan:

Three Rome men accused of conspiring to obtain explosives now face a much more serious domestic terrorism charge — conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

Terry Eugene Peace, Brian Edward Cannon and Cory Robert Williamson on Monday waived arraignment and pleaded not guilty to the domestic terrorism charge as well as charges of conspiring to defraud the government.

Oooh, WMDs!!! However, the affidavit backing the initial search warrant is much less alarming (my emphasis):

During this monitored conversation, Chief wrote, 'We will be using Guerrilla style warfare tactics. I have been arguing with myself on what level of violence or what level of damage is acceptable. I do not want to kill or injure fellow Americans. So, at least for the guys with me we will restrain the violence toward people and target infrastructure. Then respond to violence with reciprocal violence."

By way of example, later in the affidavit we learn that the thermite bombs were intended "to go through the engine block of an MRAP" (A Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, i.e., the high-tech military equipment police forces are getting).

The rest of the plan was that, taking their inspiration from the Georgia uprising, militia around the clountry would get out of their defensive crouch and rise up. Whew, we dodged a close one here!

The good news is that Eric Holder has come back to reality with his opposition to bombing. Back in the day, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of some Puerto Rican nationalists who were part of a group (the FALN) associated with bombings, robberies, and deaths:

By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.

Eric Holder led the charge in the Justice Department in support of his boss. And the political angle?

Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.

Ancient history. Yet today Holder can scarcely get a headline with this breakthrough bust.

 

Does Islam Mean Peace?

The NY Times boldly takes on the Big Question - is Islam inherently violent? Their nuanced take will surprise no one, but it is interesting nonetheless. And the recent speech by Egyptian President el-Sisi calling (yet again) for an Islamic reformation finally gets noticed by the Times:

Raising Questions Within Islam After France Shooting

...

The rash of horrific attacks in the name of Islam is spurring an anguished debate among Muslims here in the heart of the Islamic world about why their religion appears cited so often as a cause for violence and bloodshed. 

The majority of scholars and the faithful say Islam is no more inherently violent than other religions. But some Muslims — most notably the president of Egypt — argue that the contemporary understanding of their religion is infected with justifications for violence, requiring the government and its official clerics to correct the teaching of Islam.

“It is unbelievable that the thought we hold holy pushes the Muslim community to be a source of worry, fear, danger, murder and destruction to all the world,” President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt lamented last week in a speech to the clerics of the official religious establishment. “You need to stand sternly,” he told them, calling for no less than “a religious revolution”. 

On the other hand...

Others, though, insist that the sources of the violence are alienation and resentment, not theology. They argue that the authoritarian rulers of Arab states — who have tried for decades to control Muslim teaching and the application of Islamic law — have set off a violent backlash expressed in religious ideas and language. Promoted by groups like the Islamic State orAl Qaeda, that discourse echoes through Muslim communities as far away as New York or Paris, whose influence and culture still loom over much of the Muslim world.

“Some people who feel crushed or ignored will go toward extremism, and they use religion because that is what they have at hand,” said Said Ferjani, an official of Tunisia’s mainstream Islamist party, Ennahda, speaking about the broader phenomenon of violence in the name of Islam. “If you are attacked and you have a fork in your hand, you will fight back with a fork.”

So we are all forked.

Know Your Enemy (Radley Balko Is Wrong)

Radley Balko of Reason tweeted that the USA Today editors have "lost their fucking minds" for giving space to a marginal and extreme British 'imam' who explained why the Charlie Hebdo victims brought their fate upon themselves by deliberately offending Muslims.

I disagree. Far too often the first reaction of the progressive elites is to bleat about the likely over-reaction to Islamist outrages by the Great Unwashed in the West. Nick Kristof provides a uesful example of the "Islam means peace" genre with a column that, with minor changes, could have been written any time in the last decade:

Is Islam to Blame for the Shooting at Charlie Hebdo in Paris?

His answer will surprise you. Kidding:

Many ask, Is there something about Islam that leads inexorably to violence, terrorism and subjugation of women?

The question arises because fanatical Muslims so often seem to murder in the name of God, from the 2004 Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people to the murder of hostages at a cafe in Sydney, Australia, last month. 

No mention of 9/11? Whatever. A quick list of outrages and then:

So, sure, there’s a strain of Islamic intolerance and extremism that is the backdrop to the attack on Charlie Hebdo. 

...

Terror incidents lead many Westerners to perceive Islam as inherently extremist, but I think that is too glib and simple-minded. Small numbers of terrorists make headlines, but they aren’t representative of a complex and diverse religion of 1.6 billion adherents. My Twitter feed Wednesday brimmed with Muslims denouncing the attack — and noting that fanatical Muslims damage the image of Muhammad far more than the most vituperative cartoonist.

The vast majority of Muslims of course have nothing to do with the insanity of such attacks — except that they are disproportionately the victims of terrorism.

Yeah, yeah. He then makes the inevitable pivot to the deplorable blood-lust of the West:

The great divide is not between faiths. Rather it is between terrorists and moderates, between those who are tolerant and those who “otherize.”

In Australia after the hostage crisis, some Muslims feared revenge attacks. Then a wave of non-Muslim Australians rose to the occasion, offering to escort Muslims and ensure their safety, using the hashtag #IllRideWithYou on Twitter. More than 250,000 such comments were posted on Twitter — a model of big-hearted compassion after terror attacks.

Bravo! That’s the spirit.

Bravo indeed! When bitter-clinging Westerners profile all Muslims as terrorists on the basis of ongoing terror attacks around ther world (which virtually no one does), color us savages. When Muslims and Westerners profile the Great Unwashed as an angry mob with plenty of rope and lamposts and lacking only some useful Muslims, well, bravo!

Maybe Mr. Kristof will read the USA Today piece by Anjem Choudary and re-think the role of Islam in all this. OK, who's kidding now?

FWIW: The notion of the inhibition of free expression takes on a different coloring after reading about the various groups that Anjem Choudary founded in Britain that were subsequently banned for instigation, agitation and extremism. And the Wikipedia entry does note this:

In 2013 the British pressure group Hope not Hate presented a report which identified Choudary as "a serious player on the international Islamist scene", saying that although there was no evidence that he was directly responsible for instigating any terrorist plots, "he helped shape the mindset of many of those behind them" and "through his networks linked them up to terror groups and supporters across the world." Choudary dismissed the claims as "fanciful", that if they were true, UK security services would have arrested him.

Or this:

The Conservative Party leader David Cameron said that Choudary "is one of those people who needs to be looked at seriously in terms of the legality of what he's saying because he strays, I think, extremely close to the line of encouraging hatred, extremism and violence."^[

I don't want to come within a million miles of condoning what the gunmen did in Paris. And of course, Choudray is operating in the UK and Charlie Hebdo is publishing under different laws in France. Still, if French authorities had disbanded Charle Hebdo for encouraging hatred and extremism, as the Brits disbanded various Choudray groups, we might be talking about the appropriate role of government censorship rather than the deaths of twelve people.

Obviously, that sort of hypothetical suggests that maybe I am the one who has lost his effign mind. If (I say IF) the response to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons mocking Islam had been (or might plausibly have been) a mini-Kristallnacht in Paris where right-wing neo-Nazis burned Muslim shops and killed Muslims, then yes, censoring Charlie Hebdo might look sensible. That is not where we are.

On the other hand, it is plausible to argue that the response to Islamist agitators is in fact violence by their followers, which may support some level of British censorship. A lot of fine lines.

MORE ASYMMETRIES: From the National Post in Canada:

The heads of two Canadian organizations promoting secularism will ask the Department of Justice to abolish a section of the criminal code that makes blasphemy illegal, following Wednesday’s attacks on Charlie Hebdo.

Section 296 of the Criminal Code makes “blasphemous libel” punishable by up to two years in jail in Canada.

No one been prosecuted under the law since 1935. As late as 1980, the law was used to charge the Canadian distributor of Monty Python’s film Life of Brian; the charges were later dropped.

...

The United Kingdom abolished its blasphemy law in 2008; the United States has never had one at the federal level. The French region of Alsace-Moselle does have one, dating back to its history as part of Germany, but it’s not easy to use. Last February, a group of French Muslims actually tried to sue Charlie Hebdo itself for blasphemy under the Alsace law, after it published a cover they’d found offensive. The suit failed because Alsace law only protects Catholicism and not Islam.

Meanwhile, Canada’s law has expanded in application beyond Christianity, to religion in general. The Canadian law was first used in 1892 and was originally intended to protect Christianity from blasphemy. Case law since then has broadened its application.

And an interesting related point:

“The conservative right gets bents out of shape about hate speech provisions because they see it as an unconstitutional restriction of their freedom of expression. But that’s exactly what people who are [irreligious] would say about the blasphemy prohibitions — that they cannot say what they want without freedom of prosecution,” Mr. From said.

A lot of US campuses have hate speech provisions - what, one wonders, is their stance on blasphemy?

Over at YouGov, we see that 51% of Democrats support "hate speech" legislation here in the US, as do 25% of Republicans; 21% of Dems and 49% of Reps are opposed. The poll question:

“Would you support or oppose a law that would make it a crime for people to make public comments that advocate genocide or hatred against an identifiable group based on such things as their race, gender, religion, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation?”

Genocide?!? But should inciting hatred that festers without leading to action be a crime? Dems say yes!

William Saletan of Slate was all over this back when the anti-Muslim video was sparking riots and getting a US filmmaker busted (on other charges). More on Europe here.

PILING ON: Nick Gillespie at Reason develops the hate speech theme.

Shooting In Paris

The Times:

Gunmen in Paris Kill 12 at Offices of Satirical Newspaper Charlie Hebdo

PARIS — Masked gunmen opened fire in the offices of a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday in Paris, the police said, with initial reports saying that as many as 12 people had been killed and 10 wounded.

Xavier Castaing, the head of communications for the Paris Police Headquarters, said that 11 people had died, The Associated Press reported. However, a senior French prosecutor said the toll was 12, including two police officers, in the early afternoon.

The news channel France Info quoted a witness as saying that he saw the episode from a nearby building in the heart of the French capital.

“About a half an hour ago, two black-hooded men entered the building with Kalashnikovs,” the witness, Benoît Bringer, told the station.

“A few minutes later, we heard lots of shots,” he said, adding that the men were then seen fleeing the building.

Mr. Castaing, the police spokesman, said that the three armed men, wearing masks, had forced their way into the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and had fired indiscriminately at people in the lobby, hitting many. He said that they were carrying AK-47 weapons, and that the attack had lasted several minutes before the attackers fled by car.

The police said that an abandoned car used by the gunmen had been discovered by police in the 20th Arrondissement of Paris, a neighborhood with a large immigrant population.

President François Hollande was headed to the scene of the shooting, in the 11th Arrondissement. He said the shooting was “undoubtedly a terrorist attack” and ordered the nation’s terror alert status raised to the highest level. 

...

Charlie Hebdo has been attacked in the past for satirizing Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after publishing a cartoon of the prophet on its cover promising “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing!”

The cover of the newspaper on Wednesday featured a caricature of Michel Houellebecq, a controversial novelist whose sixth novel, “Submission,” predicts a future France run by Muslims, in which women forsake Western dress and polygamy is introduced. On the cover, Mr. Houellebecq is depicted as a wizard and smoking a cigarette. “In 2022, I will do Ramadan,” he is shown saying.

 HE'S A GOOD MAN: Errata from the Times:

The weekly was born in controversy in 1970 with the ban of a publication called Hara-Kiri after it mocked the death of former President Charles de Gaulle. That prompted its journalists to set up a new weekly, Charlie Hebdo, a reference to its reprint of Charlie Brown cartoons from the United States.

 Terrorists attacked Charlie Brown?!?

Keystone, Veto Threats, And Constitutional Headscratching [UPDATED/Resolved]

When is a Presidential veto threat not a Presidentail veto threat? When it is presented as reported by The Hill:

The White House said on Tuesday that President Obama would veto legislation that approves construction of the Keystone XL pipeline if it passes Congress. 

"If this bill passes this Congress the president won't sign it either," White House press secretary Josh Earnest vowed Tuesday of the pending Keystone legislation.

The WaPo had this:

President Obama would veto a bill that would allow for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House said Tuesday.

"If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn’t sign it," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The NY Times also ran the 'won't sign" language. Until we see the full transcript (WhiteHouse.gov) for more context, that is the best we've got. And it's not good enough! [But the language in the UPDATE is a clear veto threat.] Lest you have forgotten your civics, here we go:

Bill becomes law without president's signature
When Congress is not adjourned, and the president fails to either sign or veto a bill sent to him by the end of the 10-day period, it becomes law without his signature.

We all remember the "pocket veto", where the President simply holds the bill while Congress adjourns within the ten-day window.

But a threat to "not sign" a bill is different from a threat to send it back with a veto message. Is this deliberate ambiguity, or just a chronic inability to articulate a clear message? well, if this is one more case of the mumble-mouths, at least it is only baffling a domestic audience and not, e.g, Putin or Kim Jong-Un. 

One would hope that our Capitol Hill reporters would appreciate these Constitutional distinctions in presenting the news and the nuance, but who knows? In any case, this sort of parsing will be the daily norm under President Hillarity, so let's warm up now.

Pending clarification, we score this a Hmm...

ERRATA: This is more than a century old but even Ezra can follow Article I Section VII; still, I emphasized the key bit:

Section. 7.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

UPDATE: From the National Journal:

"I can confirm that the president would not sign this bill," Earnest said at a White House press briefing when asked about legislation set to advance in Congress this week that would green-light the project.

"We indicated that the president would veto similar legislation considered by the previous Congress, and our position on this hasn't changed," Earnest said. "I would not anticipate that the president would sign this piece of legislation."

That is clear enough.

MAJOR PROPS TO AN UNNAMED REPORTER. From the WH transcript, after much back and forth:

Q    Thanks, Josh.  The language you used on the Keystone issue -- you said that the President would not sign it.  If I remember civics correctly, that's different from a veto.  Are we correct in reporting this as a veto threat?
 
MR. EARNEST:  Yes.

 

Holiday Cheer We Overlooked

Last spring the internet lit up with the absurd story of a woman who lost her quarter-million dollar home over an unpaid  $6.30 tax bill. As Boldly Predicted, a court eventually found in her favor:

Beaver County officials broke a state rule when they auctioned a widow's $280,000 home because of a $6.30 delinquent tax fee and related charges, an appeals court in Harrisburg ruled.

A Commonwealth Court panel said the county Tax Claim Bureau failed to offer homeowner Eileen F. Battisti, 54, of Center an installment payment plan as real estate tax law requires.

The 14-page opinion and the order Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt signed Thursday reverses the September 2011 sale of Battisti's house to S.P. Lewis of Imperial, who bought the Rosewood Drive property for $116,000, according to court records.

This is not necessarily over, although the clock is ticking:

[Battisti's lawyer] Santillan took the matter back to Commonwealth Court on a second appeal. He said Lewis and the county could attempt to overturn the latest order if it files another appeal within 30 days in the state Supreme Court. It wasn't clear whether either party intends to appeal.

 

Calling For An Islamic Reformation - Game Change, Or More Cheap Talk?

Glenn links to a Roger Simon post about a potentially dramatic moment in Egypt:

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made an extraordinary speech on New Year’s Day to Cairo’s Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry calling for a long overdue virtual ecclesiastical revolution in Islam.  This is something no Western leader has the had the courage to do, certainly not Barack Obama, despite his Muslim education.

Accusing the umma (world Islamic population) of encouraging the hostility of the entire world, al-Sisi’s speech is so dramatic and essentially revolutionary it brings to mind Khrushchev’s famous speech exposing Stalin. Many have called for a reformation of Islam, but for the leader of the largest Arab nation to do so has world-changing implications.

The translation of the speech is presented by Raymnd Ibrahim, who apparently follows these things. I know virtually nothing about the likelihood of an Islamic reformation, but I do know that Raymond Ibrahim also presented this in Human Events on Dec 18:

‘MUSLIM REFORMERS’: FOREVER TALKING THE TALK, NEVER WALKING THE WALK

Due to its rarity, it’s always notable whenever a top Islamic leader publicly acknowledges the threat of Islamic radicalism and terror. And yet, such denunciations never seem to go beyond words—and sometimes not even that.

...

In fact, this sort of equivocation is typical of ostensibly moderate leaders and institutions throughout the Islamic world. Consider Egypt. One of the most appealing characteristics of President Sisi has been his outspokenness concerning the need for a more modern, moderate Islam. 

For example, months before Sisi was elected president, I reported/translated the following:

During his recent speech at the Dept. of Moral Affairs for the Armed Forces [in January 2014], Gen. Abdul Fateh al-Sisi—the man who ousted former President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in response to the June Revolution and who is seen as the nation’s de facto ruler—declared that “Religious discourse is the greatest battle and challenge facing the Egyptian people, and pointed to the need for a new vision and a modern, comprehensive understanding of the religion of Islam—rather than relying on a discourse that has not changed for 800 years.”

Sisi further “called on all who follow the true Islam to improve the image of this religion in front of the world, after Islam has been for decades convicted of violence and destruction around the world, due to the crimes falsely committed in the name of Islam.”

As with the pronunciations of Bahrain’s crown prince, so far so good.  Yet what has Sisi actually done about renewing Islamic discourse since becoming president?  “Absolutely nothing,” says one prominent Egyptian journalist.  Speaking recently on his popular TV show, Ibrahim Eissa said:

What is the position of the Egyptian government concerning religious radicalization among the religious parties?  And now I specifically refer to the position of President Sisi concerning this matter.  Five months have passed since he became president, after his amazing showing at elections.  Okay: the president has, more than once, indicated the need for a renewal of religious discourse….  But he has not done a single thing, President Sisi, to renew religious discourse.  Nothing at all.

Talk may be cheap but rewarding, however, since continued Western aid may be one outcome of this moderate rhetoric.

 

 

 

Happy New Day!

I am probably not alone in edging back towards a normal routine here...

Starting The New Year

Here is a fun-for-the-family outing, with a few clear caveats:

Obviously this is more fun is you like, or at least don't hate the Yankees. 

And do keep in mind: no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.