From the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, WSB-TV:

Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday, October 12, 2007.

John Lewis Switches Support To Obama

February 27, 2008

WASHINGTON — Georgia Congressman John Lewis told WSB-TV Channel 2′s Monica Pearson Wednesday that he is switching his support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

Pearson met with Congressman John Lewis Wednesday afternoon in Washington. She was the only Atlanta TV reporter Lewis spoke to about his switch.

Talk had been swirling that Lewis might switch his endorsement from Clinton to Obama. Lewis is a superdelegate who will cast his ballot at the Democratic National Convention.

Lewis told Pearson he was switching his support because his district voted for Obama and he believes Americans are looking for a great change. He also said he had not spoken to Clinton or Obama about his decision.

Oh, my sides.

There will be some ashtrays and expletives flying around the Hillary HQ tonight.

From a relieved New York Times:

William F. Buckley Jr. in his office at the National Review in 1965.

William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

Mr Buckley, 82, suffered from diabetes and emphysema, his son Christopher said, although the exact cause of death was not immediately known. He was found at his desk in the study of his home, his son said. “He might have been working on a column,” Mr. Buckley said.

Mr. Buckley’s winningly capricious personality, replete with ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare with an anteater’s, hosted one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine, National Review.

He also found time to write more than 45 books, ranging from sailing odysseys to spy novels to celebrations of his own dashing daily life, and edit five more.

The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 biweekly newspaper columns, “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-sized books.

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.”

“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.

“And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”

The liberal advance had begun with the New Deal, and so accelerated in the next generation that Lionel Trilling, one of America’s leading intellectuals, wrote in 1950: “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.”

Mr. Buckley declared war on this liberal order, beginning with his blistering assault on Yale as a traitorous den of atheistic collectivism immediately after his graduation (with honors) from the university.

“All great biblical stories begin with Genesis,” George Will wrote in the National Review in 1980. “And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration.”

Mr. Buckley weaved [sic] the tapestry of what became the new American conservatism from libertarian writers like Max Eastman, free market economists like Milton Friedman, traditionalist scholars like Russell Kirk and anti-Communist writers like Whittaker Chambers. But the persuasiveness of his argument hinged not on these perhaps arcane sources, but on his own tightly argued case for a conservatism based on the national interest and a higher morality.

His most receptive audience became young conservatives first energized by Barry Goldwater’s emergence at the Republican convention in 1960 as the right-wing alternative to Nixon. Some met in Sept., 1960, at Mr. Buckley’s Connecticut estate to form Young Americans for Freedom. Their numbers — and influence — grew…

Many of varied political stripes came to see his life as something of an art form — from racing through city streets on a motorcycle to a quixotic campaign for mayor of New York in 1965 to startling opinions like favoring the decriminalization of marijuana. He was often described as liberals’ favorite conservative, particularly after suavely hosting an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” on public television in 1982…

Mr. Buckley’s vocabulary, sparkling with phrases from distant eras and described in newspaper and magazine profiles as sesquipedalian (characterized by the use of long words) became the stuff of legend. Less kind commentators called him “pleonastic” (use of more words than necessary)…

William Francis Buckley Jr., was born in Manhattan on Nov. 24, 1925, the sixth of the 10 children of Aloise Steiner Buckley and William Frank Buckley Jr. (According to “William F. Buckley, Jr., Patron Saint of the Conservatives,” a biography written by John B. Judis, Mr. Buckley’s sister Patricia said he was christened Francis instead of Frank because there was no saint named Frank. Later, in “Who’s Who” entries and elsewhere, he used Frank.)

The elder Mr. Buckley made a fortune in the oil fields of Mexico, and educated his children with personal tutors at Great Elm, the family estate in Sharon, Conn. They also attended exclusive Roman Catholic schools in England and France.

Young William absorbed his family’s conservatism along with its deep Catholicism. At 6, he wrote the King of England demanding he repay his country’s war debt. At 14, he followed his brothers to the Millbrook School, a preparatory school 15 miles across the New York state line from Sharon.

In his spare time at Millbrook, young Bill typed schoolmates’ papers for them, charging $1 a paper, with a 25-cent surcharge for correcting the grammar.

He did not neglect politics, showing up uninvited to a faculty meeting to complain about a teacher abridging his right to free speech and ardently opposing United States’ involvement in World War II. His father wrote him to suggest he “learn to be more moderate in the expression of your views.”

He graduated from Millbrook in 1943, then spent a half a year at the University of Mexico studying Spanish, which had been his first language. He served in the Army from 1944 to 1946, and managed to make second lieutenant after first putting colleagues off with his mannerisms.

“I think the army experience did something to Bill,” his sister, Patricia, told Mr. Judis. “He got to understand people more.”

Mr. Buckley then entered Yale where he studied political science, economics and history; established himself as a fearsome debater; was elected chairman of the Yale Daily News, and joined Skull and Bones, the most prestigious secret society.

As a senior, he was given the honor of delivering the speech for Yale’s Alumni Day celebration, but was replaced after the university’s administration objected to his strong attacks on the university. He responded by writing his critique in the book that brought him to national attention, in part because he gave the publisher, Regnery, $10,000 to advertise it.

Published in 1951, “God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of ‘Academic Freedom,’” charged the powers at Yale with having an atheistic and collectivist bent and called for the firing of faculty members who advocated values not in accord with those that the institution should be upholding — which was to say, his own…

After a year in the Central Intelligence Agency in Mexico City (his case officer was E. Howard Hunt, who went on to win celebrity for his part in the Watergate break-in), Mr. Buckley went to work for the American Mercury magazine, but resigned after spotting anti-Semitic tendencies in the magazine.

Over the next few years, Mr. Buckley worked as a freelance writer and lecturer, and wrote a second book with L. Brent Bozell, his brother-in-law. Published in 1954, “McCarthy and His Enemies” was a sturdy defense of the senator from Wisconsin who was then in the throes of his campaign against communists, liberals and the Democratic Party.

In 1955, Mr. Buckley started National Review as voice for “the disciples of truth, who defend the organic moral order” with a $100,000 gift from his father. The first issue, which came out in November, claimed the publication “stands athwart history yelling Stop.” …

Circulation increased from 16,000 in 1957 to 125,000 at the time of Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964, and leveled off to around 100,000 in 1980. It is now 155,000. The magazine has always had to be subsidized by readers’ donations… 

Mr. Buckley’s personal visibility was magnified by his “Firing Line” program which ran from 1966 to 1999. First carried on WOR-TV and then on the Public Broadcasting Service, it became the longest running show hosted by a single host — beating out Johnny Carson by three years. He led the conservative team in 1,504 debates on topics like “Resolved: The women’s movement has been disastrous.”

There were exchanges on foreign policy with the likes of Norman Thomas; feminism with Germaine Greer and race relations with James Baldwin. Not a few viewers thought Mr. Buckley’s toothy grin before he scored a point resembled nothing so much as a switchblade.

To New York City politician Mark Green, he purred, “You’ve been on the show close to 100 times over the years. Tell me, Mark, have you learned anything yet.” …

At age 50, Mr. Buckley added two pursuits to his repertoire — he took up the harpsichord and became novelist. Some 10 of the novels are spy tales starring Blackford Oakes, who fights for the American way and bedded the Queen of England in the first book.

Others of his books included a historical novel with Elvis Presley as a significant character, another starring Fidel Castro, a reasoned critique of anti-Semitism, and journals that more than succeeded dramatizing a life of taste and wealth — his own…

Mr. Buckley’s spirit of fun was apparent in his 1965 campaign for mayor of New York on the ticket of the Conservative Party. When asked what he would do if he won, he answered, “Demand a recount.” He got 13.4 percent of the vote…

Unlike his brother James who served as a United States senator from New York, Mr. Buckley generally avoided official government posts. He did serve from 1969 to 1972 as a presidential appointee to the National Advisory Commission on Information, and as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations in 1973…

In his last years, as honors like the Presidential Medal of Freedom came his way, Mr. Buckley gradually loosened his grip on his intellectual empire. In 1998, he ended his frenetic schedule of public speeches (some 70 a year over 40 years, he once estimated). In 1999, he stopped “Firing Line,” and in 2004, he relinquished his voting stock in National Review. He wrote his last spy novel the 11th in his series), sold his sailboat and stopped playing the harpsichord publicly.

But he began a new historical novel and kept up his columns, including one on the “bewitching power” of “The Sopranos” television series. He commanded wide attention by criticizing the Iraq war as a failure.

On April 15, 2007, his wife, the former Patricia Alden Austin Taylor, who had carved out a formidable reputation as a socialite and philanthropist but considered her role as a homemaker, mother and wife most important, died. Mr. and Mrs. Buckley called each other “Ducky.” …

In the end it was Mr. Buckley’s graceful, often self-deprecating wit that endeared him to others. In his spy novel “Who’s on First,” he described the possible impact of his National Review through his character Boris Bolgin.

“‘Do you ever read the National Review, Jozsef?’ asks Boris Bolgin, the chief of KGB counter intelligence for Western Europe, ‘it is edited by this young bourgeois fanatic.’”

So many, including myself, were first introduced to conservatism by this extraordinary man.

In that, Mr. Buckley did more good for this country than most of our putative political leaders ever have. His brilliant mind and distinctive voice will be sorely missed.

But thankfully his ideas will live on in his writings and the generations he has and will continue to inspire.

From the UK’s Telegraph:

Mohammed Hamid who was accused of encouraging his followers to murder non-believers and of running a terrorist training camp, has been found guilty, in London on February 26, 2008.

BBC knew of link to failed 21/7 bombers

27/02/2008

A BBC producer failed to give police information that would have helped track down the July 21 bombers, the trial was told.

[A program called] Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, which featured the group paintballing and an interview with Mohammed Hamid, was shown on BBC2 on June 12, 2005.

Nasreen Suleaman, the producer, told the court that Hamid said he would use his £300 fee to settle the fine he had been given by magistrates for racially abusing two policemen at his Oxford Street stall.

Called as a defence witness, Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to Hamid in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.

She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under “no obligation” to do so.

Miss Suleaman claimed she told BBC managers of the situation but no one passed on the information to the authorities.

She looked visibly shaken when told that two of the July 21 bombers, had joined Hamid on another paintball trip two weeks before the bombings.

Miss Suleaman saw Hamid a few days after July 21, 2005 and he seemed “very shocked that the men he knew were accused of this”.

Duncan Penny, prosecuting, said: “Did you tell him to go to the police?”

Ms Suleaman replied: “I don’t think I needed to.”

BBC News “journalist” Nasreen Suleaman.

Apparently the BBC is even more biased than we thought.

From the District’s Washington City Paper:

Washington Times “Scare Quotes” Are History

Posted by Erik Wemple on Feb. 25, 2008

John Solomon took over the Washington Times on Jan. 28.

But he arrived today, via a message from the paper’s copy operation.

The news, in short: No more scare quotes.

Longtime Washington Times readers know well what this is all about: Under the regime of Wesley Pruden, the Times, unwilling to acknowledge anything so radical and immoral as gay marriage, treated the term in its pages as gay “marriage.”

Likewise other terms. In the old Washington Times, there were no illegal immigrants, just “illegal aliens”; no gays, just “homosexuals.”

Now comes the following memo from the Solomon regime, wiping out this legacy in one flick of the wrist:

All:

Here are some recent updates to TWT style.

1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.

3) The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).

4) Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.

5) We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.

What a big ‘mistake.’

Furthermore, wasn’t their former way more accurate? And isn’t that a goal of journalism, to be as accurate as possible?

For whatever homosexual ‘marriages’ are, they are not marriages in the usual sense of the word.

Similarly, the problem the country faces is not a problem with “illegal immigrants.” That would more accurately describe folks who want to come to this country with the full intention of becoming citizens — but who have somehow screwed up the process.

No, the problem is with “illegal aliens.”

But the most troubling aspect of this is that this follows the editorial change once the great Abe Rosenthal stepped down (or rather, was forced out) as the editor of the New York Times.

And we all know what has happened to them.

Can we not have at least one national newspaper that ‘speaks truth to power’?

From United Church Of Christ’s website:

Obama’s General Synod speech prompts IRS to investigate UCC’s tax-exempt status

Bennett Guess
February 26, 2008

The Internal Revenue Service has notified the United Church of Christ’s national offices in Cleveland, Ohio, that the IRS has opened an investigation into U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s address at the UCC’s 2007 General Synod as the church engaging in “political activities.”

In the IRS letter dated Feb. 20, the IRS said it was initiating a church tax inquiry “because reasonable belief exists that the United Church of Christ has engaged in political activities that could jeopardize its tax-exempt status.”

The Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC’s general minister and president, called the investigation “disturbing” but said the investigation would reveal that the church did nothing improper or illegal.

Obama, an active member of the United Church of Christ for more than 20 years, addressed the UCC’s 50th anniversary General Synod in Hartford, Conn., on June 23, 2007, as one of 60 diverse speakers representing the arts, media, academia, science, technology, business and government. Each was asked to reflect on the intersection of their faith and their respective vocations or fields of expertise. The invitation to Obama was extended a year before he became a Democratic presidential candidate.

“The United Church of Christ took great care to ensure that Senator Obama’s appearance before the 50th anniversary General Synod met appropriate legal and moral standards,” Thomas told United Church News. “We are confident that the IRS investigation will confirm that no laws were violated.”

Before Obama spoke to the national gathering of 10,000 UCC members, Associate General Minister Edith A. Guffey, who serves as administrator of the biennial General Synod, admonished the crowd that Obama’s appearance was not to be a campaign-related event and that electioneering would not be tolerated. No political leaflets, signs or placards were allowed, and activity by the Obama campaign was barred from inside the Hartford Civic Center venue.

In an introduction before Obama’s speech, Thomas said Obama was invited as “one of ours” to provide reflections on “how personal faith can be lived out in the public square, how personal faith and piety is reflected in the life of public service.”

Thomas said the IRS’s investigation implies that Obama, a UCC member, is not free to speak openly to fellow UCC members about his faith.

“The very fact of an IRS investigation, however, is disturbing,” Thomas said. “When the invitation to an elected public official to speak to the national meeting of his own church family is called into question, it has a chilling effect on every religious community that seeks to encourage politicians and church members to thoughtfully relate their personal faith to their public responsibilities.”

Don Clark, a Chicago attorney who serves as the UCC’s national special counsel, said the IRS investigation will afford the UCC the opportunity to correct “inaccuracies and misperceptions.”

“It’s disconcerting, since the IRS did not communicate with us, or seek any facts from us, in advance of their coming to this understanding,” Clark said. “But we feel confident that once they are made aware of the facts that they’ll draw a different conclusion.

“This inquiry will provide an opportunity for the United Church of Christ to correct any factual inaccuracies and misperceptions that may have prompted the underlying concern, and to reaffirm the importance of the constitutional rights of free speech and association that have been implicated,” Clark said…

Heck, Mr. Obama has even used a video of this speech (featured above) on his campaign site.

The campaign site also enables supporters to upload the email addresses of other church members to encourage their support for Obama:

And of course he (and Mrs. Clinton) have also campaigned (ahem) religiously in churches across the country throughout the race.

So it’s about damn time somebody at the IRS noticed.

By the way, during this same (illegal) speech the great man managed to attack the so-called “religious right.”

From Fox News via YouTube:

Barack Obama says Christian right has hijacked faith

Barack Obama spoke before the United Church of Christ saying that the Christian right has hijacked faith and is driving people apart.

Whatever happened to your holy mission of ‘bringing us together,’ Mr. Obama?

And, once again it is a photo from the Associated Press:

Enlarge

Or course we are no African wardrobe experts, but Mr. Obama seems to be wearing either a dashiki or a boubou, with what would appear to be kufi hat.

Dashikis and kufi are worn by Christians and Muslims, as well as followers of African traditional religions.

From Wikipedia:

Kufi

African and African-American Usage

In West Africa, a kufi cap is the traditional hat for men. The kufi has no religious significance. It is worn equally by Christians, Muslims, and followers of African traditional religion. Many grandfathers and other older men wear a kufi everyday to symbolize their status as wise elders, religious people, or family patriarchs.

Among Africa’s Muslims, white kufis are worn for Friday prayers, by very religious men, and those who have performed the Muslim pilgrimage, see Hajj…

Muslim Usage

Muslims also wear kufis. The companions of Muhammad were never seen without their heads being covered. In order to emulate their actions, Muslims throughout the world wear a variety of kufis, caps, and other headgear. Another goal of wearing a kufi is to be more like Muhammad and therefore obey and follow his tradition…

But also according to Wikipedia Boubous, as opposed to dashikis, are worn almost exclusively by Muslims. There are supposedly subtle differences between the two, but alas they are beyond our ken.

But given that Obama’s father and his other African relatives are indeed Muslims, this ensemble is probably more Islamic than not.

Moreover, it does not seemed to have been donned as a courtesy to Mr. Obama’s hosts or for a ‘photo op.’

Once again, however, please note that nobody here is suggesting this makes Mr. Obama a Muslim.

It is just a curious thing that we should have so rarely seen such photos before, if they are in indeed the possession of the Associated Press.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign site has posted her latest “foreign policy” pronouncements as delivered at George Washington University last night.

And, as usual, the speech contains a reference to Hillary’s amazing foreign policy triumph, when she ‘spoke truth to power’ in China in 1995, as an example of the kind of fearless leader of the free world she will be:

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, delivers a foreign policy speech at George Washington University in Washington, Monday, Feb. 25, 2008.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Remarks on Foreign Policy at George Washington University

February 25, 2008

Thank you. It’s a great personal honor for me to be here with extraordinary leaders of our nation’s military forces and to thank them for their long and dedicated service to our country. I am grateful for their confidence in my ability to lead our nation in difficult times…

We are here at such an extraordinary moment in American history. The stakes have rarely been higher. I’ve had numerous historians tell me that America’s point in our arch of destiny, today is perhaps most similar to the situation confronting President Truman when he became our president and commander in chief.

Dramatic events during this past week have reminded us how volatile our world has become and how essential it is that we have sound strategy and strong leadership. From Kosovo to Cuba, from Iraq to Pakistan, to our embassy being burned in Belgrade, these are some of the most challenging spots on our global map. The world is being transformed with [sic] enormous risks and possibilities that we must meet with confidence, optimism, resolution and success.

The next president will inherit all of these global challenges and more from a president who failed to handle them well. A war in Afghanistan and a war in Iraq. America’s reputation at an all-time low.

Countries rushing to acquire nuclear weapons. Crushing poverty that stymies economic and political progress in too many regions of the world. Global warming and global health pandemics…

Over the past seven years, we’ve seen what happens when the president presents the American people with a series of false choices and then is indifferent about the consequences: force versus diplomacy, unilateralism versus multilateralism, hard power versus soft. We’ve seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security. We can’t let that happen again. America has already taken that chance— one time too many.

The symbol of our presidency – the American Eagle – holds arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. Both are symbolic tools of what we need to keep our democracy strong and our nation safe— tools that a President must know how to use in the daily course of events, but also when that 3 a.m. phone call comes to the White House because an unforeseen crisis has erupted without warning. In that split second the president has to respond and make a decision that could affect the safety and lives of millions of people here in our country and around the world. Whoever sits at that desk in the Oval Office on January 20th, 2009 needs all the tools available, all the resources at our disposal, and the wisdom to know how to use them…

We need a president who understands there is a time for force, a time for diplomacy, and a time for both, who understands that we enhance our international reputation and strengthen our security if the world sees the human face of American democracy in the good works, the good deeds we do for people seeking freedom from poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, and oppression.

With me, this is not theoretical. This is very much who I am, what I have done, and what I will do. The American people don’t have to guess whether I understand the issues or whether I would need a foreign policy instruction manual to guide me through a crisis or whether I’d have to rely on advisers to introduce me to global affairs.

I’m lucky to have had a pretty good inside view, over eight years in the White House and now over seven years in the Senate, of what the president goes through day in and day out dealing with all of these challenges. Obviously the work that I have done on human rights, democracy, international development gives me a deep appreciation of the importance of winning the hearts and minds of those in societies whether or not they are for us today. I believe that we can seed democracy and create new strong alliances overseas…

Dealing with the rising power of China provides an example. I went to Beijing in 1995 and spoke out for women’s rights and human rights. The Chinese government wasn’t happy; they pulled the plug on the broadcast of my speech. But I took that as a compliment. Because it was important for the United States both to be represented and to make absolutely clear that human rights is an integral part of our foreign policy and that women’s rights is key to that. What we have learned is that where women are oppressed and denied their basic rights we are more likely to have regimes that are more adversarial to American interests and values…

Electing a president should not be an either/or proposition when it comes to national security. We need a president who knows how to deploy both the olive branch and the arrows, who will be ready to act swiftly and decisively in a crisis, who will pursue strategic demands of hard diplomacy to re-establish moral authority and our leadership. In this moment of peril and promise, we need a president who is tested and ready, who can draw on years of real world experience working on many of the issues that we now confront, who knows when to stand ones ground and when to seek common ground, who has the strength and fortitude to meet the challenges head on without fear and without sowing fear.

I believe I am the candidate most ready today to be that kind of president and commander in chief…

If you go to Hillary’s campaign’s site and read the speech you will see her usual rant against “cowboy diplomacy” and her desire to turn our foreign policy and military into an international charity.

But as Mrs. Clinton herself suggests, let’s look at her shining example of how she dealt with the rising power of China as an example of what kind of President and Commander In Chief she will make.

From her ghostwritten autobiography, “Living History,” pp 354-363:

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

… The U.N. women’s conference was expected to provide an important forum for nations to address issues such as maternal and child health care, microfinance, domestic violence, girls’ education, family planning, women’s suffrage, property and legal rights.

It would also offer a rare opportunity for women from around the world to share stories, information and strategies for future action in their own countries. The conference is held roughly every five years, and I hoped my presence would signal the U.S. commitment to the needs and rights of women in international policy…

Sensitive to concerns across the political spectrum, I worked with Melanne Verveer and the President’s staff to assemble a delegation for Beijing. Bill named people from varied backgrounds to represent our nation, including Republican Tom Kean, the former Governor of New Jersey; Sister Dorothy Ann Kelly, President of the College of New Rochelle; and Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, Vice-Chair of the Muslim Women’s League. Madeleine Albright, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was the official head of the delegation…

I stayed up all night in the little cottage we occupied at Kaneohe Marine Base, working on my book and the latest draft of my speech for Beijing… All eyes were now on Beijing, and I knew that all eyes would be on me too. My staff and I had been working on remarks that would forcefully defend the U.S. position on human rights and expand conventional notions of women’s rights. I would criticize Chinese government abuses, including coerced abortions and the routine squelching of free speech and free assembly…

After we ate dinner on the plane, the cabin lights were turned off and most of the passengers bundled themselves in blankets and curled up to sleep as we crossed the Pacific. But the speech team still had work to do. We were on our fifth or sixth draft, and we needed to show the text to our resident foreign policy experts, who had joined us in Honolulu along with other administration officials and support staff. Winston Lord, the gentlemanly former Ambassador to China whom Bill appointed Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Eric Schwartz, a human rights specialist on the National Security Council; and Madeleine Albright huddled at a dimly lit worktable and pored over the text. Their job was to catch any inaccuracies or inadvertent diplomatic gaffes. Given all that had preceded it, one wrong word in this speech might lead to a diplomatic brouhaha. Their review was critical, I knew, but I was always wary whenever the experts weighed in. Often they were so intent on leaving their carefully nuanced, diplomatic imprint on a draft that they turned a good speech into mush. Not so in this case.

“What do you want to accomplish?” Madeleine had asked me earlier.

“I want to push the envelope as far as I can on behalf of women and girls,” I said.

Madeleine, Win and Eric recommended that I strengthen a section defining human rights and refer to a recent affirmation of those rights at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. They suggested beefing up passages about the effects of war on women, particularly the devastating proliferation of rape as a tactic of war and the increasing number of women refugees resulting from violent conflict. Most important, they understood that the power of the speech lay in its simplicity and emotion. They kept me out of trouble but were careful not to intrude with a heavy hand.

Brady Williamson, a Wisconsin lawyer who led my advance team, received daily inquiries from Chinese officials as to what I was going to say in my speech. They made it clear that while they welcomed my physical presence at the conference, they didn’t want to be embarrassed by my words and hoped that I “appreciated China’s hospitality.” …

Finally, it was time to enter the Plenary Hall, which looked like a mini United Nations. Although I had delivered thousands of speeches, I was nervous. I felt passionately about the subject, and I was speaking as a representative of my country. The stakes were high―for the United States, for the conference, for women around the world and for me. If nothing came out of the conference, it would be viewed as another missed opportunity to galvanize global opinion on behalf of improving conditions and increasing opportunities for women and girls. I didn’t want to embarrass or let down my country, my husband or myself And I didn’t want to squander a rare opportunity to advance the cause of women’s rights.

Our delegation had been busy negotiating with other delegations over the language in the conference’s plan of action. Some delegates clearly disagreed with the American agenda for women. The fact that women’s rights was an emotional issue made the delivery of my speech harder for me. I had learned during health care reform that my own strong feelings rarely help me in my delivery of a public address. Now I had to make sure that the tone or pitch of my voice would not confuse the message. Like it or not, women are always subject to criticism if they show too much feeling in public.

Looking out into the audience, I saw women and men of all complexions and races, some in Western garb and many dressed in their nation’s traditional clothing. The majority wore headphones to listen to simultaneous translations of the speeches. That was a curveball that I hadn’t anticipated: as I spoke, there was no response to my words, and I found it difficult to get into a rhythm or gauge the crowd’s reaction because the pauses in my English sentences and paragraphs didn’t coincide with those in the dozens of other languages the delegates were hearing.

After thanking Gertrude Mongella, the Secretary-General of the conference, I began by saying that I appreciated being a part of this great global gathering of women:

This is truly a celebration―a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in the community, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens and leaders…. However different we may appear, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future. And we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world-and in so doing, bring new strength and stability to families as well.

I wanted the speech to be simple, accessible and unambiguous in its message that women’s rights are not separate from, or a subsidiary of, human rights and to convey how important it is for women to make choices for themselves in their lives. I drew on my own experiences and described women and girls I had met all over the world who were working to promote education, health care, economic independence, legal rights and political participation, and to end the inequities and injustices that fall disproportionately on women in most countries.

Pushing the envelope in this speech meant being clear about the injustice of the Chinese government’s behavior. The Chinese leadership had blocked non-governmental organizations from holding their NGO forum at the main conference in Beijing. They forced NGOs devoted to causes ranging from prenatal care to micro-lending to convene at a makeshift site in the small city of Huairou, forty miles north, where there were few accommodations or facilities. Although I didn’t mention China or any other country by name, there was little doubt about the egregious human rights violators to whom I was referring.

I believe that on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights…. For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

The voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loud and clear: It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages fourteen to forty-four is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights … and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.

I ended the speech with a call to action to return to our countries and renew our efforts to improve educational, health, legal and political opportunities for women. When the last words left my lips―“Thank you very much. God’s blessings on you, your work and all who will benefit from it”―the serious and stony-faced delegates suddenly leaped from their seats to give me a standing ovation. Delegates rushed to touch me, shout words of appreciation and thank me for coming. Even the delegate from the Vatican commended me for the speech. Outside the hall, women hung over banisters and rushed down escalators to grab my hand. I was thrilled that my message had resonated, and it was a relief that the press reports, too, were good. The New York Times editorial page wrote that the speech “may have been her finest moment in public life.” What I didn’t know at the time was that my twenty-one-minute speech would become a manifesto for women all over the world. To this day, whenever I travel overseas, women come up to me quoting words from the Beijing speech or clutching copies they want me to autograph.

The reaction of the Chinese government was not so positive. I learned later that the government had blacked out my speech from closed-circuit TV in the conference hall, which had been broadcasting highlights of the conference…

So this doesn’t quite add up to Mrs. Clinton’s claim in her speech:

The Chinese government wasn’t happy; they pulled the plug on the broadcast of my speech. 

The speech was not being “broadcast.” There was only a closed circuit feed to the rest of the conference hall.

And it doesn’t even seem like they cut that since:

Outside the hall, women hung over banisters and rushed down escalators to grab my hand.

Why would the people outside of the room be so excited if they had not heard what she said?

And so much for Hillary’s claims that, unlike Mr. Obama, she won’t need to depend upon advisors and policy experts:

The American people don’t have to guess whether I understand the issues or whether I would need a foreign policy instruction manual to guide me through a crisis or whether I’d have to rely on advisers to introduce me to global affairs.

Her “Living History” account is replete with advisers helping her to prepare for the UN Women’s Rights Conference speech that so clearly changed the world. 

Mrs. Clinton lists her staff, her “speech team” and numerous other advisors:

We were on our fifth or sixth draft, and we needed to show the text to our resident foreign policy experts, who had joined us in Honolulu along with other administration officials and support staff. Winston Lord, the gentlemanly former Ambassador to China whom Bill appointed Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Eric Schwartz, a human rights specialist on the National Security Council; and Madeleine Albright huddled at a dimly lit worktable and pored over the text…

Madeleine, Win and Eric recommended that I strengthen a section defining human rights and refer to a recent affirmation of those rights at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. They suggested beefing up passages about the effects of war on women, particularly the devastating proliferation of rape as a tactic of war and the increasing number of women refugees resulting from violent conflict. Most important, they understood that the power of the speech lay in its simplicity and emotion. They kept me out of trouble but were careful not to intrude with a heavy hand.

No, she doesn’t need any help at all.

Also note how Hillary was so courageous that she didn’t even dare to mention China by name in her speech.

And never mind that her speech itself was so vague and tautological as to be virtually meaningless. After all, who is for the breaking of little girls’ spines?

But bear in mind, this is what Hillary endlessly cites as her most heroic moment — giving a speech about women’s rights at a United Nations conference discussing “women’s rights.”

Oh yeah, she is ready to be President all right.

How can anyone doubt that?

From the New York Post:

THE MYSTERY SMEAR

February 26, 2008 — Just how desperate is the faltering Hillary-for-President team? Desperate enough for overt race-baiting?

Consider the flap over a photo that popped up on the Drudge Report yesterday, depicting Sen. Barack Obama in traditional Somali garb during a 2006 trip to Kenya – his father’s homeland.

Matt Drudge says it came from Clinton staffers – and Obama himself has no doubts: “The notion that the Clinton campaign would be trying to circulate this as a negative . . . is sad,” he said late yesterday.

The photo was e-mailed to Drudge, who promptly posted it. He reported that unnamed Clinton campaign staffers sent it, asking: “Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?”

That would be Hillary Rodham Clinton – who yesterday spoke on the issue of the day.

“I know nothing about it,” she said.

Not exactly a robust denial.

Then she added: “This is in the public domain. But let’s just stop and ask yourself: ‘Why is anybody concerned about this?’ ”

Why?

For starters, clearly somebody meant to suggest that anti-Clinton media outlets are deliberately suppressing evidence that there’s more to Obama’s “native” ties than his campaign would have you believe.

And if not Clintonistas, then who?

Recall that the campaign was forced to jettison two of its top Iowa officials last December after they forwarded an e-mail that falsely suggested Obama – whose middle name is Hussein – is really Muslim.

As to race, well – it was Bill Clinton who in South Carolina tried to marginalize Obama as “the black candidate.”

Obama’s campaign, not surprisingly, accused Team Hillary of “shameful, offensive fear-mongering” and “divisive politics.”

To which Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams suggested that Sen. Clinton was the real injured party: “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed,” she said.

No denial there, either.

Williams added: “Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.”

True enough – as far as it goes.

But when Bill or Hillary Clinton – or George W. Bush, for that matter – don “native garb,” they’re participating in a time-honored, and wholly harmless, pander. The photos at best look bizarre, and the pols’ mild embarrassment generally is evident.

Obama, however, doesn’t come across in this particular picture as someone who’s in it for the votes.

He is, after all, black. The robes are unambiguously African – and thus the message is clear.

It defies credulity that the e-mail was anything other than an effort to exacerbate racial tensions on the eve of key primaries in racially diverse states – to turn other voters against Barack Obama on the basis of race alone.

And the Clinton camp’s non-denial denials leave little doubt as to who ultimately is responsible for it.

That would be “HRC” herself.

She needs to get this mess cleaned up, and fast.

Well, it’s not a smear. (How can an actually photograph of a real event be a smear?)

And there’s no mystery where the photograph came from. Since we posted it here, after having seen mention of it at Free Republic.

And since the photo was immediately adjudged to be a fake by the resident photoshop “experts” at Free Republic, we were the first to suggest that is was indeed credible.

Moreover, both Matt Drudge and the Hillary campaign follow this site — and indeed, have used material from here before.

For starters, clearly somebody meant to suggest that anti-Clinton media outlets are deliberately suppressing evidence that there’s more to Obama’s “native” ties than his campaign would have you believe.

And if not Clintonistas, then who?

No. I meant to emphasize how our watchdog media protects all Democrats — not just Mr. Obama.

For whether Mr. Obama has more “native ties” or not, the photo would certainly not help his image or his campaign.

Furthermore, it also raises doubts about his judgment for reasons I have listed in the original thread.

From her lovesick slaveys at the Associated Press:

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., talks about the decor in the rear of her campaign plane, where the media is seated, while the plane is sitting on the tarmac at Boston Logan International Airport in Boston, Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008.

Isn’t she adorable?

Though maybe “adorable” isn’t the word I want.

From her latest bizarre rant speech, via CNN and YouTube:

Hillary Clinton Mocks Barack Obama During Campaign Rally

Hillary at her most shrillary.

From CBS News:

In-Laws’ Political Dispute Ends In Stabbing

UPPER PROVIDENCE, Pa. (CBS 3) ― The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office is investigating a politically motivated stabbing that left one in-law hospitalized and another in prison.

Authorities said brother-in-laws Jose Ortiz and Sean Shurelds were involved in a verbal altercation over Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton when the argument escalated into a stabbing inside their family home on Honey Locust Court in Upper Providence.

Authorities said Ortiz, a registered Republican and Clinton supporter, allegedly stabbed Shurelds, an Obama supporter, in the stomach. Ortiz told police Shurelds began to choke him, so he grabbed a knife and stabbed him.

Shurelds was flown to an area hospital and was listed in critical condition. He is expected to recover from his wounds.

Ortiz, 28, was jailed on $20,000 bail. He is facing charges of felony, aggravated assault, and other related offenses.

“It is a very serious charge, we see people fight over many things; some of them very frivolous, some of them serious, the fact of the matter is that this is the kind of argument that takes place in households across the region, across the state, across the country, but it never turns violent like this,” Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Veti Ferman said.

According to Pennsylvania Voting Rights, if convicted of a felony crime, he will not be able to vote in the upcoming election.

Mr. Ortiz should look at the bright side.

If either of the Democrats win they will probably push through a federal law mandating that all felons be allowed to vote along with all illegal aliens.

Of course if he really is a registered Republican (which I somehow doubt), he might still be excluded.

From those keepers of the public trust at the Associated Press:

Obama photo causes stir

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A photograph circulating in the Internet of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama dressed in traditional local garments during a visit to Kenya in 2006 is causing a dustup in the presidential campaign over what constitutes a smear.

The Associated Press photograph portrays Obama wearing a white turban and a wraparound white robe presented to him by elders in Wajir, in northeastern Kenya. Obama’s estranged late father was Kenyan and Obama visited the country in 2006, attracting thousands of well-wishers.

The gossip and news Web site The Drudge Report posted the photograph Monday and said it was being circulated by “Clinton staffers” and quoted an e-mail from an unidentified campaign aide. Drudge did not include proof of the e-mail in the report.

“I just want to make it very clear that we were not aware of it, the campaign didn’t sanction it and don’t know anything about it,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a teleconference with reporters. “None of us have seen the e-mail in question. If anybody has independent reporting that they’ve done on it I would welcome it.”

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe immediately accused Clinton’s campaign of “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”

Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Susan Rice, said the circulation of the photograph was divisive and suggests “that the customs and cultures of other parts of the world are worthy of ridicule or condemnation.”

Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams said the Obama campaign’s reaction was inflaming passions and distracting voters.

“Enough,” Williams said in a statement. “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.

“This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry.”

In a teleconference with reporters, retired Air Force Gen. Scott Gration, an Obama adviser who accompanied the Illinois senator to Kenya two years ago, said the senator was there to learn how tribes were organizing themselves.

“And in the course of this, Senator Obama was given an outfit and as the guest that he was, the great guest, he took this outfit and they encouraged him to try some of it on,” Gration said. “It was a thing that we all do.”

In December, two Clinton Iowa volunteers resigned after forwarding a hoax e-mail that falsely said Obama is a Muslim possibly intent on destroying the United States. Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and says he has never been a Muslim, but false rumors about Islamic ties are circulating on the Internet.

Hmmmm.

The Associated Press photograph portrays Obama wearing a white turban and a wraparound white robe presented to him by elders in Wajir, in northeastern Kenya.

And they also wrote the original caption for the photo (bolded):

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, is dressed as a Somali Elder by Sheikh Mahmed Hassan, left, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya, near the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia in this file photo from Aug. 27, 2006. The garb was presented to Obama by elders in Wajir. Obama’s estranged late father was Kenyan and Obama visited the country in 2006, attracting thousands of well-wishers.

So this was an Associated Press photograph. And for a year and half we never saw it.

How very interesting.

What else is our watchdog media hiding from us?