Month: October 2007

Burma Stirs Again

After the hideous crackdown, it says a lot that some monks are marching in protest again:

More than 100 monks in Pakokku Township in Burma’s Magwe Division marched in a peaceful demonstration through the town on Wednesday morning. The monks paraded through the streets chanting the “Metta Sutta” (the Buddha’s words on loving kindness)…

On Wednesday, the monks started out at Pakokku’s Shwegu Pagoda, marching for nearly an hour and chanting Buddhist prayers without incident, and then returned to their respective monasteries. Sources said many residents bowed before the protesting monks. The authorities did not intervene.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy by telephone from his hiding place last week, U Obhasa, a leading monk and one of four being hunted by the junta, said monk-led demonstrations could resume in Burma in late October. It could not be confirmed, however, whether Wednesday’s march in Pakokku was organized by the underground network of monks who describe themselves as the “Alliance of All Burma Buddhist Monks.”

Filibuster Mukasey

Mukaseymarkwilsongetty

Hilary gets it right:

There is an easy way for Mukasey to get around the fact that he has not been briefed on what the CIA did: just define waterboarding, say whether waterboarding so defined is torture, and add that not having been briefed on what the CIA did, he doesn’t know whether or not what they did meets his definition. That Mukasey has not taken this obvious route suggests that he is not motivated by his own uncertainty, but by the desire to keep people he believes have engaged in torture from being punished for their crimes.

Marty Lederman chimes in here. The corollary is that those in the administration who have engaged in or authorized torture, under the plain meaning of English and the plain language of the law, must at some point be prosecuted for war crimes. It’s time to take a stand: filibuster this nomination until we have an attorney general who can uphold the rule of law.

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)

Why The Ron Paul Campaign Has Resonated

He puts it best himself:

Young ideas, a fantastic idea about individual freedom and allowing people to do what they want and take care of their lives, their lives belong to them, and get the government off their backs, and offer them low taxes, and make sure I never mess around with the Internet. Don’t tax the Internet, and don’t regulate the Internet.

You know, freedom is a very popular idea, and young people love it, and they’re open to ideas. And they like principled answers to our problems.

And older people seem to be stereotyped. You know, they get set in their ways, and they’re not as open to the ideas of freedom, yet, to me, freedom is a relatively new idea. It was an experiment, you know, with our country, but we have forgotten about it, and I’m reminding them about this great experiment of freedom, and they love it.

Freedom: I wonder if today’s GOP leaders have heard of the idea?

(Photo: Eric Thayer/Getty.)

Clinton On the Ropes?

My take on the debate last night can be found here. A reader adds:

I’m an Obama supporter, too, but like you I worry that his dispassionate presentation, what you call "high-mindedness," will hurt his chances, because it makes it hard for voters to connect with him emotionally. But part of me is also extremely impressed by his cool-headedness. Isn’t this exactly what we need to face complicated, dangerous times? Someone who does not get ruffled easily, who stays focused and calm, even with everyone inciting him from the sidelines to throw punches? I think we’ve forgotten what this kind of demeanor looks like, because we’ve been led for 8 years by an easily excitable and vain man, whom others have found easy to manipulate.

Obama is not Dukakis or Mondale. He has a good sense of humor and incredible grit, but he wears it lightly. And if he has a chip on his shoulder about anything, it doesn’t show. Isn’t that what we need, as a respite from Bush II’s Oedipal dramas and petulance, and from Clinton’s simmering frustration?

Edwards got in some good punches, and you could see a fine litigator in his combinations of attack and positive rhetoric. But I don’t think his populist take on socioeconomic issues resonates with enough voters.

On the lighter side, poor Bill Richardson, crawling up under Clinton’s skirts looking to be veep.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I think that you’ve been out of college for so long that maybe you don’t realize how bad the leftist, self-loathing of the West really, truly is. David Horowitz is a conscious bomb thrower, and loves to go onto college campuses to get a rise out of them. By "them" I don’t, unfortunately, just mean the twenty-somethings hopped up on American history 101, and an overwrought sense of injustice. I’m not talking about those who will grow out of it some day.

I mean the powerful and persuasive professors and speakers, genuine adults, who believe that by far the greatest threat to humanity is America itself, and liberty as we know it.

There are many people on college campuses as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, that genuinely hope that the Islamofascists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world prevail, just to poke a finger in America’s and the West’s eye.

Perhaps like so many leftist do, they don’t think past their intentions and their feelings to what outcomes would actually take place if say, Iraq became a nation state ran by the equivalent of a Taliban.  They of course would claim that they are violently against "fascism," but wouldn’t dare apply that term to a non-white, non-Western group.

There is a sickness as vile and nihilistic as the Islamofascists themselves.  Whether or not they consciously support the beheaders and bus bombers, they for all practical purposes do support the Islamofascist enemy.  I don’t think Horowitz’s comment is out of line in the least.