Israel - Most Dangerous Nation In The World!

Only our feckless State Dept and Obama believe in a two state solution. Even former Sen. Mitchell recently advised against it at this time in history but Obama, our messiah, believes his voice will still the sound of underground nuclear explosions and rocket launches. Chamberlain 2 with some Carter thrown in for good luck.

What is pathetically ironic is that Sec. Clinton, V.P Biden, the current CIA Director and Obama have brought more pressure to bear on Israel than on N Korea and Iran but of course Israel is a friend, a democracy an open society, more approachable and bludgeonable and, as an earlier British poll revealed, the most dangerous nation in the world.

By embracing the unachievable and inane Obama and his mentors have elevated and reinforced the challenge and thus, made it more illusive. Sad indeed.

Posted previously but worth repeating. (See 1 and 1a below.)

And finally, who cares about honest reporting. (See 1b below.)

Sec. Tim Geithner still looking for the Holy Grail? (See 2 below.)

Biden warned us during the campaign that Obama would be tested within 6 months. What he alluded to, but did not say, is that Obama would also be found wanting. Granted China has more leverage over N Korea, but we have leverage with China if we choose to play that card but we are fearful of offending China because they basically own us.

Caroline Glick reminds us of Obama's campaign comments 'words just words!'(See 3, 3a and 3b below.)

Will Israeli's continue to live under the threat of a nuclear attack? Victor Hanson discusses Iran's desire to break Israeli will. (See 4 below.)

Everything gets watered down these days because the liberal media and press tend to go out of their way not to offend. PC'ism drives the news!

We are sinking in maudlin muck!(See 5 below.)

Why should anyone become a bondholder? (See 6 below.)

Poor old Sen. Burris - he just can't avoid being 'waterboarded' by the constant dripping of the home town press. (See 7 below.)

A powerful biography will carry the day and so we have Sotomayor! (See 8 and 8a below.)

Have a great weekend.


Dick


1) Peace isn't Arab goal
By Jeff Jacoby

WHO FAVORS a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

President Obama does, of course, as he made clear in welcoming Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Monday. So does former president George W. Bush, who began advocating Palestinian statehood in 2002 and continued until his final days in office. The Democratic Party's national platform endorses a two-state solution; the Republican platform does, too. The UN Security Council unanimously reaffirmed its support a few days ago, and the European Union is strongly in favor as well.

Pope Benedict XVI called for a Palestinian state during his recent visit to the Holy Land, thereby aligning himself - on this issue, at least - with the editorial boards of The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. And, for that matter, with most Israelis. A new poll shows 58 percent of the Israeli public backing a two-state solution; prominent supporters include Netanyahu's three predecessors - former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Barak - as well as president Shimon Peres.

The consensus, it would seem, is overwhelming. As Henri Guaino, a senior adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, put it on Sunday: "Everyone wants peace. The whole world wants a Palestinian state."

It isn't going to happen.

International consensus or no, the two-state solution is a chimera. Peace will not be achieved by granting sovereignty to the Palestinians, because Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs' goal. Time and time again, a two-state solution has been proposed. Time and time again, the Arabs have turned it down.

In 1936, when Palestine was still under British rule, a royal commission headed by Lord Peel was sent to investigate the steadily worsening Arab violence. After a detailed inquiry, the Peel Commission concluded that "an irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." It recommended a two-state solution - a partition of the land into separate Arab and Jewish states. "Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace," the commission reported. "No other plan does."

But the Arab leaders, more intent on preventing Jewish sovereignty in Palestine than in achieving a state for themselves, rejected the Peel plan out of hand. The foremost Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, actively supported the Nazi regime in Germany. In return, Husseini wrote in his memoirs, Hitler promised him "a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."

In 1947, the Palestinians were again presented with a two-state proposal. Again they spurned it. Like the Peel Commission, the United Nations concluded that only a division of the land into adjacent states, one Arab and one Jewish, could put an end to the conflict. On Nov. 29, 1947, by a vote of 33-13, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine on the basis of population. Had the Arabs accepted the UN decision, the Palestinian state that "the whole world wants" would today be 61 years old. Instead, the Arab League vowed to block Jewish sovereignty by waging "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."

Over and over, the pattern has been repeated. Following its stunning victory in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel offered to exchange the land it had won for permanent peace with its neighbors. From their summit in Khartoum came the Arabs' notorious response: "No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel."

At Camp David in 2000, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians virtually everything they claimed to be seeking - a sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, tens of billions of dollars in "compensation" for the plight of Palestinian refugees. Yasser Arafat refused the offer, and launched the bloodiest wave of terrorism in Israel's history.

To this day, the charters of Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, call for Israel's liquidation. "The whole world" may want peace and a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want something very different. Until that changes, there is no two-state solution.

1a) Israel rebuffs U.S. call for total settlement freeze
By Barak Ravid



Israel will press ahead with housing construction in its West Bank settlements despite a surprisingly blunt demand from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that all such building stop, an Israeli official said Thursday.

The Israeli position could set the stage for a showdown with the U.S. on the day President Barack Obama meets his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, at the White House. Abbas has said the freeze of the Israeli settlements will top his agenda in the talks.

Israel contests that new construction must take place to accommodate for expanding families inside the existing settlements, which the U.S. and much of the world consider an obstacle to peace because they are built on land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
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When asked to respond to Clinton's call for a total settlement freeze, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue. Pressed on whether the phrase normal life meant some construction will take place in existing settlements, Regev said it did.

He noted that Israel has pledged to build no new settlements and to remove
unauthorized Jewish outposts in the West Bank. "The fate of existing settlements will be determined in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians," he said.

Regev's remarks echoed those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has said Israel will continue to allow natural growth in the settlements - a
vague term that refers to construction in existing settlements to accommodate growing families.

The new U.S. administration has been noticeably more explicit in its criticism
of Israeli settlement policy than its predecessor.

The two countries each have new leaders with strikingly different approaches to Israeli-Palestinian relations, with Netanyahu refusing to endorse Palestinian independence, a notion supported by Obama, his predecessor and the previous Israeli government.

Clinton said Wednesday the U.S. wants a halt to all settlement construction - including their natural growth.

In remarks to reporters in Washington, Clinton said Obama told Netanyahu last week when the two met at the White House that the U.S. sees stopping
settlements as key to a peace deal that would see a Palestinian state created alongside Israel.

"He wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions," Clinton said. "We think it is in the best interests [of the peace process] that settlement expansion cease. That is our position. That is what we have communicated very clearly. ... And we intend to press that point."

The remarks by Regev on Thursday also indicated that after Clinton explicitly defined natural growth as unacceptable, Israel now appears to be using the term normal life for the same phenomenon.

Earler Wednesday, an Israeli official said that the American administration shows no signs of backing down from its demands that Israel totally freeze settlement growth in the West Bank and open the Gaza border terminals to allow the rebuilding of the Strip.

These conclusions were drawn from talks held in London on Tuesday by Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor and advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with American diplomats, led by U.S. special envoy George Mitchell.

According to the official, the Israeli side claimed in the talks that construction in settlements must be allowed to continue, due to natural growth. They suggested construction be limited to the existing outlines of the settlements, and to define in advance areas in which such construction will be authorized. They also said the demand of Israel to completely freeze the settlement construction was out of order, as the Palestinians have failed to fulfill their part in the first phase of the road map, in particular in combating terrorism.

The American side did not agree to the Israeli suggestions, and in addition to the settlement issue, repeatedly brought up the matter of opening the Gaza terminals to aid and construction materials necessary for rebuilding the Strip.

The same Jerusalem official also said Netanyahu was interested in reestablishing the ministerial committee on illegal outposts, to speed up negotiations with the settlers and allow for the dismantling of 22 outposts constructed after March 2001.

1b) Terror No Obstacle to Peace?

The 'Independent' mysteriously omits years of Palestinian terrorism.


There has been much analysis and a wide variety of opinions expressed in the media following this week's meeting in Washington DC between US President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Independent, however, stands out from the crowd with a glaring omission.

In an article by Donald Macintyre, "Israel goes cold on plan for regional peace deal," a list of "obstacles to peace" includes issues such as settlements, Palestinian infighting, Iran, Syria and Israel's own apparent reluctance to publicly endorse a Palestinian state.

Putting aside the relative importance or otherwise of issues such as settlements being primary stumbling blocks, Macintyre conveniently forgets a very real and potentially the greatest obstacle to peace - Palestinian terror and violence.

How can Macintyre omit the thousands of missiles fired from Gaza at Sderot and surrounding Israeli communities for several years (and before the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip)? Indeed, only the day before Macintyre's piece was published, Sderot endured a Qassam rocket attack on a courtyard adjacent to two private homes. One resident was wounded while several others were treated for shock.



And how can Macintyre forget the brutal campaign of suicide attacks against Israeli buses, cafes and other civilian targets that has claimed the lives of over 1000 Israelis and wounded thousands more since the year 2000? While major attacks have declined recently thanks to Israeli counter measures such as the Security Fence, the incentive for terrorist groups to carry out similar acts of violence has not.


We could also add to the list other potential obstacles to peace, for example, Palestinian intractability on issues such as the right of return, incitement in Palestinian media and the education system that has poisoned Palestinian minds, and the increasing role of Islamic extremism represented by Hamas.


AP: HOPE FROM HAMAS, NOT FROM NETANYAHU

Much media coverage of Netanyahu's meeting with Obama this week tended to concentrate on Netanyahu's refusal to formally endorse the creation of a Palestinian state. Although Netanyahu spoke eagerly about renewing negotiations and expressed support for Palestinian autonomy, the media's coverage implied that his position presented an obstacle to peace.

But as media outlets focus on the negative with Netanyahu, the real obstacle to peace - Hamas - continues to be treated differently. A case-in-point is an Associated Press article published the day after the meeting. The article provides a platform for Hamas leaders to express "moderate" positions, such as a quote from Hamas lawmaker Yehiye Moussa saying, the group is "not demanding to destroy Israel."

While writer Karen Laub is clear that Hamas is not about to change its ideology, which precludes any recognition of Israel, she notes that Hamas has begun "raising the possibility they would someday accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel."

So while Netanyahu's call for Palestinian autonomy is treated as insufficient and anti-peace, Hamas's rhetorical, though not ideological or practical, shift from total rejectionism is presented as a cause for hope.

"PASSED OUT"?

Bilin is home of the West Bank's longest continuous run of manufactured dissent and grandstanding for the cameras.

So it's no surprise that the Associated Press would have you believe that this man holding a key aloft directly in front of a photographer Bernat Armangue simply "passed out" from tear gas at a Nakba demonstration this week.



IDF "ABUSES": A CASE STUDY OF MSM COVERAGE

The Columbia Journalism Review has published a fascinating case study of how the Israeli and Western news services handled the debunked allegations of IDF abuses in Gaza. The CJR traces how Danny Zamir's transcripts of the soldiers' unverified stories made their way first into Ha'aretz, Ma'ariv and Israel's Channel 10, and from there, into the Western mainstream media.





2) The Indispensable Geithner
By J.C. Arenas

Timothy Geithner was portrayed as the indispensable man, but now no matter how much the media continue to flack for him, he's still kissing the floor.


The Treasury Secretary aimed to cure the ills of the financial system by extracting toxic assets from bank balance sheets, replenishing the banks' capital resources, and bolstering the housing market to prevent further foreclosures so normal lending could resume.


Let us take a look at what he has "accomplished" thus far.


First, following a controversial vetting process and uninspiring beginning of his tenure, the Treasury Secretary finally struck fools gold after he utilized remnants of Henry Paulson's plans and created the Public-Private Investment Program to remove banks' toxic assets. The Dow rose, calls for his resignation ceased, and Newsweek immediately declared "Geithner Hits His Stride".

But the plan has been delayed because he hasn't garnered the support he had hoped for from the private entities needed in order to represent the private part of the program.


Second, Geithner has been erratic about exactly how much more capital he has at his disposal to infuse the banks while arguing at the same time they were solvent and fully capitalized.

The Potemkin model stress tests produced "largely encouraging results", but forget the fact that the banks are still undercapitalized and insolvent -- by billions of dollars -- and regulators are closing them at their fastest rate in years.

Did you get that? The banks need a lot more money, but they're doing well, when they're not. Got it?

Third, his plan to help refinance mortgages was -- in his words -- supposed to "show results quickly", but the plan was considered futile two months after its initiation. The mortgage companies have complained that the program is too complicated to set up and homeowners have had difficulty getting in touch with lenders or qualifying for the program. Ultimately, the criteria had to be expanded to include unemployed and upside-down homeowners to strengthen the program, and we're still being urged to "be patient."

So much for those quick results. Geithner further declares that "we're changing the things people couldn't change for decades.

Right, all this "change" yet lending still remains "severely depressed".

Only ignorance towards the failure of the Treasury Secretary to even instill some level of confidence that he can restore the viability of our financial system, would allow us to arrive at Politico's latest conclusion, " Timothy Geithner Gains New Strength".

The media can't detail anything that Geithner has actually done that could refute an assertion of failure up to this point, so they've retreated to style over substance -- the insignificance of his temperament and ideology. The "equanimity under fire" he has displayed would be celebrated if he were a relief pitcher for the Nationals, and his "life is about choices" mantra would suit a Hugh Prather calendar, but who cares?


Let us not forget that 60 Senators looked past a multitude of serious transgressions and confirmed Geithner because he was deemed "uniquely qualified" to handle the challenges of this recession attributable to the nation's deteriorating banking system. Despite the facts to the contrary, we're still subjected to the same nonsense. As a financial services industry spokesman told Politico:


Geithner's real ace in the hole [is] "He's one of a small, select group of people who could even be treasury secretary right now. If not him, who else?"


The initial problem was that we didn't look at all of the options. It was somehow pre-determined that it was Geithner or bust.

Rather than learn from that mistake, we are expected to further our obstinacy and ride him until his wheels fall off.


How could we believe in the delusion that an ineffective Geithner has miraculously managed to "hit his stride" or "gain strength" while the nation's struggling economy has been further weakened by pejorative measures?


Welcome to the new Orwellian America.


The media's inclination to celebrate the incongruence should remind us that they will go to any extreme to depict the glass that is the Obama Administration as forever half full and the principal figures will be praised even as they succeed in failing.


Forgotten is the fact that Geithner's failures imperil our future.

3) Column One: Israel and the Axis of Evil
By Caroline Glick

North Korea is half a world away from Israel. Yet the nuclear test it
conducted on Monday has the Israeli defense establishment up in arms and its
Iranian nemesis smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Understanding why this is the
case is key to understanding the danger posed by what someone once
impolitely referred to as the Axis of Evil.

Less than two years ago, on September 6, 2007, the IAF destroyed a North
Korean-built plutonium production facility at Kibar, Syria. The destroyed
installation was a virtual clone of North Korea's Yongbyon plutonium
production facility.

This past March the Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported that Iranian
defector Ali Reza Asghari, who before his March 2007 defection to the US
served as a general in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and as deputy defense
minister, divulged that Iran paid for the North Korean facility. Teheran
viewed the installation in Syria as an extension of its own nuclear program.
According to Israeli estimates, Teheran spent between $1 billion and $2b.
for the project.

It can be assumed that Iranian personnel were present in North Korea during
Monday's test. Over the past several years, Iranian nuclear officials have
been on hand for all of North Korea's major tests including its first
nuclear test and its intercontinental ballistic missile test in 2006.

Moreover, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think that North Korea conducted
some level of coordination with Iran regarding the timing of its nuclear
bomb and ballistic missile tests this week. It is hard to imagine that it is
mere coincidence that North Korea's actions came just a week after Iran
tested its solid fuel Sejil-2 missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers.

Aside from their chronological proximity, the main reason it makes sense to
assume that Iran and North Korea coordinated their tests is because North
Korea has played a central role in Iran's missile program. Although Western
observers claim that Iran's Sejil-2 is based on Chinese technology
transferred to Iran through Pakistan, the fact is that Iran owes much of its
ballistic missile capacity to North Korea. The Shihab-3 missile, for
instance, which forms the backbone of Iran's strategic arm threatening
Israel and its Arab neighbors, is simply an Iranian adaptation of North
Korea's Nodong missile technology. Since at least the early 1990s, North
Korea has been only too happy to proliferate that technology to whoever
wants it. Like Iran, Syria owes much of its own massive missile arsenal to
North Korean proliferation.

Responding Monday to North Korea's nuclear test, US President Barack Obama
said, "North Korea's behavior increases tensions and undermines stability in
Northeast Asia."

While true, North Korea's intimate ties with Iran and Syria show that North
Korea's nuclear program, with its warhead, missile and technological
components, is not a distant threat, limited in scope to faraway East Asia.
It is a multilateral program shared on various levels with Iran and Syria.
Consequently, it endangers not just the likes of Japan and South Korea, but
all nations whose territory and interests are within range of Iranian and
Syrian missiles.

Beyond its impact on Iran's technological and hardware capabilities, North
Korea's nuclear program has had a singular influence on Iran's political
strategy for advancing its nuclear program diplomatically. North Korea has
been a trailblazer in its utilization of a mix of diplomatic aggression and
seeming accommodation to alternately intimidate and persuade its enemies to
take no action against its nuclear program. Iran has followed Pyongyang's
model assiduously. Moreover, Iran has used the international - and
particularly the American - response to various North Korean provocations
over the years to determine how to position itself at any given moment in
order to advance its nuclear program.

For instance, when the US reacted to North Korea's 2006 nuclear and ICBM
tests by reinstating the six-party talks in the hopes of appeasing
Pyongyang, Iran learned that by exhibiting an interest in engaging the US on
its uranium enrichment program it could gain valuable time. Just as North
Korea was able to dissipate Washington's resolve to act against it while
buying time to advance its program still further through the six-party
talks, so Iran, by seemingly agreeing to a framework for discussing its
uranium enrichment program, has been able to keep the US and Europe at bay
for the past several years.

THE OBAMA administration's impotent response to Pyongyang's ICBM test last
month and its similarly stuttering reaction to North Korea's nuclear test on
Monday have shown Teheran that it no longer needs to even pretend to have an
interest in negotiating aspects of its nuclear program with Washington or
its European counterparts. Whereas appearing interested in reaching an
accommodation with Washington made sense during the Bush presidency, when
hawks and doves were competing for the president's ear, today, with the
Obama administration populated solely by doves, Iran, like North Korea,
believes it has nothing to gain by pretending to care about accommodating
Washington.

This point was brought home clearly by both Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's immediate verbal response to the North Korean nuclear test on
Monday and by Iran's provocative launch of warships in the Gulf of Aden the
same day. As Ahmadinejad said, as far the Iranian regime is concerned,
"Iran's nuclear issue is over."

There is no reason to talk anymore. Just as Obama made clear that he intends
to do nothing in response to North Korea's nuclear test, so Iran believes
that the president will do nothing to impede its nuclear program.

Of course it is not simply the administration's policy toward North Korea
that is signaling to Iran that it has no reason to be concerned that the US
will challenge its nuclear aspirations. The US's general Middle East policy,
which conditions US action against Iran's nuclear weapons program on the
prior implementation of an impossible-to-achieve Israel-Palestinian peace
agreement makes it obvious to Teheran that the US will take no action
whatsoever to prevent it from following in North Korea's footsteps and
becoming a nuclear power.

During his press briefing with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last
Monday, Obama said the US would reassess its commitment to appeasing Iran at
year's end. And early this week it was reported that Obama has instructed
the Defense Department to prepare plans for attacking Iran. Moreover, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, has made several
recent statements warning of the danger a nuclear-armed Iran will pose to
global security - and by extension, to US national security.

On the surface, all of this seems to indicate that the Obama administration
may be willing to actually do something to prevent Iran from becoming a
nuclear power. Unfortunately, though, due to the timeline Obama has set, it
is clear that before he will be ready to lift a finger against Iran, the
mullocracy will have already become a nuclear power.

Israel assesses that Iran will have a sufficient quantity of enriched
uranium to make a nuclear bomb by the end of the year. The US believes that
it could take until mid-2010. At his press briefing last week Obama said
that if the negotiations are deemed a failure, the next step for the US will
be to expand international sanctions against Iran. It can be assumed that
here, too, Obama will allow this policy to continue for at least six months
before he will be willing to reconsider it. By that point, in all
likelihood, Iran will already be in possession of a nuclear arsenal.

Beyond Obama's timeline, over the past week, two other developments made it
apparent that regardless of what Iran does, the Obama administration will
not revise its policy of placing its Middle East emphasis on weakening
Israel rather than on stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. First,
last Friday, Yediot Aharonot reported that at a recent lecture in
Washington, US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who is responsible for training
Palestinian military forces in Jordan, indicated that if Israel does not
surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and
his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300
million could begin killing Israelis.

Assuming the veracity of Yediot's report, even more unsettling than Dayton's
certainty that within a short period of time these US-trained forces could
commence murdering Israelis, is his seeming equanimity in the face of the
known consequences of his actions. The prospect of US-trained Palestinian
military forces slaughtering Jews does not cause Dayton to have a second
thought about the wisdom of the US's commitment to building and training a
Palestinian army.

Dayton's statement laid bare the disturbing fact that even though the
administration is fully aware of the costs of its approach to the
Palestinian conflict with Israel, it is still unwilling to reconsider it.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an
additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as
Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy.

FOUR DAYS after Dayton's remarks were published, senior American and Israeli
officials met in London. The reported purpose of the high-level meeting was
to discuss how Israel will abide by the administration's demand that it
prohibit all construction inside Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

What was most notable about the meeting was its timing. By holding the
meeting the day after North Korea tested its bomb and after Iran's
announcement that it rejects the US's offer to negotiate about its nuclear
program, the administration demonstrated that regardless of what Iran does,
Washington's commitment to putting the screws on Israel is not subject to
change.

All of this of course is music to the mullahs' ears. Between America's
impotence against their North Korean allies and its unshakable commitment to
keeping Israel on the hot seat, the Iranians know that they have no reason
to worry about Uncle Sam.

As for Israel, it is a good thing that the IDF has scheduled the largest
civil defense drill in the country's history for next week. Between North
Korea's nuclear test, Iran's brazen bellicosity and America's betrayal, it
is clear that the government can do nothing to impact Washington's policies
toward Iran. No destruction of Jewish communities will convince Obama to act
against Iran.

Today Israel stands alone against the mullahs and their bomb. And this, like
the US's decision to stand down against the Axis of Evil, is not subject to
change.

3a) US wants tough response to North Kore


The Obama administration on Wednesday sought more international support for its tough stance on North Korea as US officials revealed plans for a presidential meeting with Russian leaders on the matter in July and pressed for a cohesive front later this week during a meeting of Far East defense ministers.

The White House national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, said Wednesday night that US President Barack Obama will discuss North Korea's recent atomic test and other belligerent actions during a summit in Moscow with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev.

"We will be in close consultation with our friends," Jones said during a speech delivered to the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based foreign policy group.

As Jones spoke, Defense Secretary Robert Gates took on the delicate task of reassuring Asian allies of US support without further provoking the communist government. Gates flew to Singapore on Wednesday for meetings with foreign ministers aimed at firming up a unified response to the North Korean atomic test.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used tough language that contrasted with statements from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs that dismissed North Korean "saber-rattling."

"North Korea has made a choice," Clinton said. "It has chosen to violate the specific language of the UN Security Council Resolution 1718. It has ignored the international community. It has abrogated the obligations it entered into through the six-party talks. And it continues to act in a provocative and belligerent manner toward its neighbors. There are consequences to such actions."

Jones, in his first speech as head of Obama's National Security Council, echoed those sentiments but added that North Korea's greatest threat comes from spreading its nuclear technology "to other countries and potentially to terror organizations and non-state actors."

The government in Pyongyang still has "a long way to go" to weaponize its nuclear material, Jones said.

"Nothing that the North Koreans did surprised us. We knew they were going to do this," he said. "The question is, what do you do to bring about a change in behavior in North Korea?"

A key to the answer, Jones said, will be US efforts to consult with Russia and China to develop a consensus on how best to deal with the issue so that it will send a signal to other nuclear-armed nations - such as Iran.

Along those lines, Gates plans similar discussions with defense ministers and military officials from South Korea, Japan and other Far East nations. The talks had already been planned, but US officials said North Korea's bomb and missile tests and heated rhetoric would now dominate the discussions.

Nicholas Szechenyi, a northeast Asia policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Gates would likely focus on the security agreement and other programs to stem nuclear proliferation while in Singapore. But Szechenyi said many steps by Washington to hobble Pyongyang likely would not be taken any time soon.

Szechenyi said joint US-South Korea maritime exercises would probably not happen immediately. "You want to respond to North Korea but not provoke them," he said.

South Korea had resisted joining the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a network of nations seeking to stop ships from transporting materials used in nuclear bombs. It joined the coalition after Monday's bomb test - a move that North Korea described Wednesday as akin to a declaration of war.

US military officials said Wednesday there are signs of activity at North Korea's partially disabled nuclear reactor complex that could indicate work to restart the facility and resume production of nuclear fuel.

One official said steam has been detected at the complex. Like other activity detected at the site, the steam alone is inconclusive, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the methods of collecting information about North Korean activity are sensitive.

Any move to restart the plant would be a major setback for international efforts to get North Korea to disarm. North Korea has about 8,000 spent fuel rods which, if reprocessed, could allow it to harvest 6-8 kilogramsof plutonium - enough to make at least one nuclear weapon, experts said.

North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for at least a half-dozen weapons, but experts say it still has not mastered the miniaturization technology required to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile.

3b) Three Lessons from Pyongyang's Test
By Greg Sheridan

NORTH Korea's nuclear test and missile launchings offer sad and perhaps startling lessons. Lesson No.1: So far, the Barack Obama charm and kindness offensive has had no positive results in any conflict anywhere in the world.

Obama may believe he can change the world with a smile, a willingness to consult, extravagant official humility and a dose of undeniable charm. He is indeed not George W. Bush. Guess what? It makes not one tiny jot of difference to North Korea's Kim Jong-il or, indeed, to any of the world's dictators, terrorists, nuclear rogues or other bad guys.

Soft power is not going to solve North Korea.

Lesson No.2: China is overestimated as a geo-strategic partner and as a central player in any solution to the problems North Korea presents. China is the one nation in the world that could bring Kim's regime to an end without the use of force. China provides the food, fuel and consumer goods that keep North Korea, barely, functioning.

Beijing issued a mild rebuke to Pyongyang for its latest test, a rebuke notably milder in language than some it has issued in the past.

But China continues to keep North Korea going.

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Why? Because the status quo suits China. There is no evidence Beijing is worried by the humanitarian plight of North Korea's half-starved population. When a big international conference on North Korean human rights was held in Melbourne recently, US, Japanese and South Korean diplomats attended. No Chinese diplomat was there.

If South and North Korea reunited on the model of East and West Germany the whole peninsula would become a democracy. And despite the bizarre fashion a few years ago for analysts at the Australian National University to pronounce the US-South Korean military alliance on its deathbed, a reunited Korea would almost certainly remain an ally of the US. Although China doesn't like the trickle of refugees it gets from North Korea now, it would hate sharing a 1400km border with a bold, prosperous, rich ally of the US. The refugee flow would then be the other way.

Far better to have a Stalinist buffer state, so long as it does not become so erratic as to directly endanger Chinese security.

Beijing has reaped many other benefits from North Korea. The long saga of the six-party talks has done nothing to dissuade North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons.

But the six-party talks have conferred splendid benefits on Beijing. They not only afforded Beijing great prestige from hosting them, they also offered Beijing a superb diplomatic lever with Washington. The US State Department bent over backwards not to annoy the Chinese in case it led to them going slow on the six-party talks. Now Kim's tests have shown us, whether the Chinese were acting in good faith or not, they have achieved absolutely nothing that we want on North Korea.

Lesson No.3: Nothing will deter the North Koreans from keeping and developing their nukes. Both hawks and doves should realise this.

Former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy, representing the doves, in his book Meltdown presents the eight years of Bush as a long parade of missed opportunities when the North Koreans, who longed to give up their weapons, were insulted, rejected and frustrated by Washington.

In truth Bush alternately tried hard and soft policies with Pyongyang, but nothing worked for long. That the North Koreans used whatever Bush did as an excuse for going their ownway does not mean they would have gone any other way had he acted differently.

Former Bush official John Bolton argues a kind of mirror reverse of Chinoy's position: that if only Bush had been tougher he would have forced the North Koreans to crumble. But there is no evidence for this. Bolton is so hawkish in his calls for regime change in Pyongyang that he teeters on the brink of calling for military action against at least its nuclear facilities, but sensibly he always shies at this final hurdle.

Military action against North Korea would be utter folly.

Seoul, is barely 30km from the border. Across the border is a range of gentle hills. In those hills North Korea has nestled thousands of artillery pieces. The North could cause untold devastation in Seoul in the first hours of any conflict.

What, then, is to be done? The problem cannot be ignored. The North Koreans have an appalling record of nuclear and missile proliferation, specifically to Syria and Iran.

Nor can we be sure the North will never use its nukes. Part of the frustration the international community has with North Korea comes from a failure to understand its bizarre internal political culture.

Stalinist dictatorships are best considered as national equivalents of the narcissistic personality in psychology. They are completely self-obsessed. North Korea's interlocutors keep trying to devise a system of incentives and disincentives. But the North Koreans make entirely different calculations. Their paradigm is utterly foreign. This is a classic weakness of realism as an analytical tool in foreign policy. Realism holds that states act on the basis of their interests rather than their ideologies. This is wrong throughout history but especially wrong of regimes such as Kim's. Kim will act in his own interests, but his evaluation of his interests may bear no resemblance to our evaluation.

Nonetheless, some things can be done. One is to make maximum effort to prevent North Korea from proliferating nuclear material and technology. South Korea this week signed up to the Proliferation Security Initiative. Obama's enthusiastic embrace of the PSI is a good sign. The PSI allows member nations to intercept any North Korean cargo suspected of being related to nuclear proliferation. It was widely regarded as one of Bush's most assertive and bellicose actions, routinely deplored in the Third World.

That Obama pursues it shows there is little to separate him from Bush on Korean policy.

Investment in missile defence is another precaution dictated by North Korea's nuclear delinquency and here Obama foolishly is pulling back from Bush's position. Missile defence, ineffective against large numbers of missiles, does have a good chance of working against a couple of missiles launched by a rogue regime.

Broad trade and financial sanctions should be maintained against North Korea to retard its nuclear efforts. We should continue to reassure Pyongyang that no one plans any military action against it.

Korean culture, which the North has warped with its Stalinist cult of personality, is inherently very intense. I had the pleasure of meeting the previous president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun. He did strike me as an unlikely guy to be president, but certainly he was a rational actor. Last week he committed suicide.



4) Israel's Cuban Missile Crisis - All the Time
By Victor Davis Hanson

Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars on trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?

A lot of reasons have been offered by various experts.

Upon developing a nuclear weapon, states win instant prestige and attention beyond what they otherwise might have earned. Take away its bomb and North Korea would be in the news about as much as Chad.

Nuclear weapons also can change the nature of conventional warfare.

Israel's Arab neighbors have not waged a full-scale traditional war against Israel since 1973 - in part because there is no longer a nuclear-patron Soviet Union around to threaten the use of nukes should Israel strike too strongly back against its aggressors.

But give Iran a bomb or two and it will be able to guarantee Hezbollah and Hamas - or a coalition of Muslim states - a secure fallback position if they attack Israel and lose.

Then there is inter-Islamic rivalry. If Iran gets a bomb, it will send a message that the Persian Shiites, not the Sunni Arabs, are the true effective defenders of the faith against the Zionist entity.

Tehran will also remind these monarchies and dictatorships that Iran is an ascending revolutionary power that appeals to the Muslim masses across geographical boundaries.

Some even insist that Iran is apocalyptic -- and that it seeks the bomb largely to stage a glorious mass suicide in a nuclear exchange with Israel in which millions go to their deaths, convinced they have at least earned a place in Paradise by killing half the world's Jews for Islam.

All these are the conventional explanations of why an energy-rich Iran is operating thousands of centrifuges.

Yet, the real reason may be otherwise.

More likely, Iran wishes to break Israel's will - not necessarily by a nuclear strike. Instead, periodic threats from a nuclear theocracy, it may recognize, would do well enough.

Once armed with the bomb, Iran will likely increase the frequency of its now-familiar denial of the Holocaust. In between such well-publicized lunacy, some Iranians like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will periodically threaten to wipe Israel off the map - or promise Armageddon if Israel retaliates against Hamas or Hezbollah.

The net effect would be for half the world's Jews to hear constantly two messages - there was no Holocaust, but there might well be one soon. It would be analogous to the American public reliving the threats of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 - every day.

A recent poll revealed that a fourth of Israel's population quite understandably might emigrate if Iran gets the bomb. And it seems likely that within a decade or two, a nuclear Iran could so demoralize the Israelis by such psychological intimidation that it could unravel Israel demographically without dropping a bomb.

Countries around the world would continue to sit idly by as they profit from lucrative trade with oil-rich Iran - now and then warning the Israelis not to be the preemptive aggressor and "start" a war.

Already, the Obama administration - through pro-Palestinian Middle East affairs nominations like Charles Freeman and Samantha Power, its pledge to help rebuild Gaza, its outreach to Syria and Iran, and its irritation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu - seems to be telling Israel that it is increasingly on its own.

Given demographic realities in the Middle East, if a large minority of Israelis emigrates, then the end of the Jewish state becomes possible without Iran ever dropping the bomb that it now so eagerly wishes to acquire.

5) The Media, Islam & Political Correctness
By Cathy Young

Last week's arrest of four men in the Bronx, New York on charges of plotting to bomb two synagogues and shoot down a military aircraft with a missile has revived an ongoing debate about the connection between Islam and terrorism and the twin pitfalls of religious bigotry and willfully blind political correctness.

The New York Times has been assailed by conservative critics such as Dallas Morning News columnist and blogger Rod Dreher for downplaying a troubling aspect of the case: all the suspects are Muslims. (They had converted to Islam while in prison for drug offenses, theft and other crimes.) The first Times report on May 20 mentioned this fact only in passing - despite a statement by New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly's at a press conference that the four had talked frankly about wanting to "commit jihad."

The next day, the Times ran a story on the secret FBI recordings in which the men discussed their hatred of Jews and their intent to kill U.S. soldiers in retaliation for killings of "Muslim brothers and sisters in Muslim countries." The article's lead paragraph focused on the men's criminal backgrounds; not until the fourth paragraph was there a reference to their jihadist motivation (they shouted "Allah Akbar!" as they brought their newly acquired stash of weapons to their warehouse).

In a particularly odd passage, the article noted that "law enforcement officials initially said the four men were Muslims, but their religious backgrounds remained uncertain Thursday" and that three had previously identified as Christian in prison records. This, despite ample evidence in the same article that the plot, set in motion with the help of an FBI informant, was motivated by Islamic fanaticism.

By contrast, the opening line of the New York Post story on the arrests referred to "four homegrown Muslim terrorists on a mission from hell" - inflammatory, to be sure, but arguably far more accurate.

Is the suspects' religion relevant? Given that they were driven by religion-based extremism and hate, common sense certainly suggests that it is.

To some on the left, any mention of Islamic extremism is a bigoted right-wing scare tactic. On his blog, Nation magazine columnist Robert Dreyfuss dismisses the New York terror plot as "bogus" and asserts that every alleged plot by Muslim terrorists on U.S. soil after the World Trade Center attack has been "nonsense" cooked up by the FBI: "Since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell." (Tell that to the victims of Mohammed Taheri-azar, who plowed a Jeep into a crowd of students at the University of North Carolina in 2006 and later told authorities that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.") And while most of the plots uncovered by the authorities seem to have been the work of inept losers, one does not have to be a genius to inflict a lot of damage. If the September 11 hijackers had been caught, how many people would have scoffed at the plot to fly hijacked planes into buildings as absurdly improbable?

Yet anti-Muslim hysteria on the right is no myth, either. In February 2007, when a teenager named Sulejmen Talovic went on a shooting rampage at a Salt Lake City, Utah shopping mall, killing five people, some right-wing websites excoriated the media for ignoring the "Muslim connection" - the shooter's background as a Bosnian Muslim immigrant. Never mind that there was nothing to suggest that Talovic was a Muslim zealot or that religion had anything to do with his actions. (Shooting sprees by troubled young men of other religious backgrounds are not exactly unknown.)

And in 2005, a posse of conservative bloggers led by columnist Michelle Malkin relentlessly flogged the notion that the suicide of a disturbed young man who blew himself up with a homemade bomb on the Oklahoma University campus was actually a botched terrorist act by a Muslim convert. Their "evidence" included the fact that he had a Pakistani roommate and lived close to a mosque.

The "Muslims under the bed" rhetoric promotes hatred and paranoia. The vast majority of American Muslims are not radicals. But, leaving aside debates about whether there is something in the Muslim religion that inherently and uniquely lends itself to a violent, extremist interpretation, the reality is that an extremist and violent strain is present in modern-day Islam to a far greater extent than in other major religions.

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center two years ago found that about 13% of American Muslims - and a quarter of those under 30 - felt that suicide bombings in defense of Islam were justified in at least some cases. The poll also found that in some ways, native-born African-American Muslims are more radicalized than immigrants. Radical Islamism may be an attractive ideology for those who feel disenfranchised.

To ignore or downplay these alarming facts is myopic. If the mainstream media continue to do so out of misguided sensitivity, it will only undermine their credibility when it comes to battling real bigotry.

Cathy Young writes a weekly column for RealClearPolitics and is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine.

6) Stiffing GM's Creditors Will Backfire
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

The Law: Sure as the sun rises, the U.S. government's manhandling of GM and Chrysler bondholders will ripple outward, striking not only companies and their creditors but the very basis for U.S. power and prosperity.

Historians pinpoint the beginnings of U.S. power at 1811, with the liquidation of the First Bank of the United States, founded by Alexander Hamilton. Amid the winds of the War of 1812, First Bank ignored political pressure and insisted that even British bondholders, from the nation the U.S. was preparing to fight, be paid in full. The debt was paid because that was the law.

This single act reverberated for years. Word got back to Europe that the word of this fledgling country was good, even with enemies. As a result, European capital to finance the great steamships, railroads and other engines of American growth flowed.

"The return of their funds became an important chapter in American finance because it showed that the government was willing to do business on an impartial basis, and that would influence future British investments for decades to come," wrote Charles R. Geisst in his 1979 "Wall Street: A History."

Scroll to 2009. What's good for General Motors is no longer what's good for America. GM and Chrysler faced restructuring in a last-ditch bid to avoid bankruptcy. But unlike 1811's British lenders, their bondholders have been treated like enemies.

In setting terms of the restructuring as a result of its $30 billion bailout, the U.S. government saw to it that the United Auto Workers got more than their share, shredding the claims of bondholders who normally have first priority.

Chrysler bondholders got 29 cents on the dollar and were pilloried as "vultures" by the very government sworn to uphold the law. And for their $27 billion investment, GM's 1,200 bondholders, many of them small stakeholders, got an equity stake of just 9%.

By contrast, the UAW, whose only claim is the $20 billion the automaker owes in gold-plated employee benefits, got 20%, with the government ending up with the rest.

"They cut into line," said Kenton Boettcher of California-based Main Street Bondholders, 90% of whose members rejected the restructuring offer Wednesday. "I lose completely. I can't even write it off as an investment loss. It was a predetermined, prestructured bankruptcy," he told IBD.

"If 'secured creditor' no longer has meaning, who's going to make an investment by buying a corporate bond?" asked Richard Mourdock, Indiana state treasurer, who's suing Chrysler on behalf of Indiana's state pension holders.

Already fewer investors want to lend money to companies with exposure to unions or government bailouts. A new Garman Research study titled "Priority Lost" determined that corporate bonds already are losing value based on the bondholder slap-around.

"Creditors to major U.S. automakers are discovering that absolute priority may, or may not, apply to their holdings," the study said. If the slighting of bondholders is not an aberration, "this could mark a new period of uncertainty."

"This is much bigger than Chrysler," added Mourdock. "If the words 'secured creditor' have no meaning, investors are going to ask if the words 'good faith and credit' of the U.S. still have meaning.

"Americans depend on bonds purchased by people outside the U.S. right now. If the Chinese investors buying our debt see American bondholders treated this way, is it a long stretch to imagine foreign creditors won't be either?"

Word is spreading. "I think the punishment for mugging bondholders will be a reduced trust of foreigners in the U.S. legal system and an increase of the interest that foreigners will request for investing in U.S. instruments," said Ottavio Lavaggi, an Italian bondholder who sued deadbeat Argentina over its $100 billion sovereign bond default in 2001. "There is no free lunch, and robbing bondholders . . . will have consequences."

If so, this could be a turning point. In "A History of Credit and Power in the Western World," Scott B. MacDonald and Albert L. Gastmann warned of a direct correlation between credit and power. "The combination of new muscle in industrial manufacturing . . . and finance clearly elevated the military and economic power of the United States, pushing it to the apex of the global credit system," they wrote.

Is succoring the UAW worth throwing all that away?

7) New reason Burris must quit

Back in February, when snow covered Chicago, we urged Sen. Roland Burris to resign.

He should not have accepted the Senate appointment from soon-to-be-impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, we wrote, and the way in which he fudged the facts of his negotiations with the Blagojevich camp -- failing to come clean about whole conversations and any mention of money -- stripped him of credibility.

Now it's May, but only the weather has changed. The release this week of a recorded phone conversation last fall between Burris and Blagojevich's brother, Robert, only reinforces our view: Burris really should step down.

Not that he will, obviously, which leaves Illinois with a senator and a half.

The covert recording by federal agents leaves the clear impression that Burris was willing to make or arrange for campaign contributions to Blagojevich in return for continued consideration for the Senate seat. He worried how that might look. Maybe, he suggested, he could get his law partner, Tim Wright, to do the fund-raiser and cover himself that way.

On Wednesday, Burris tried to explain away our suspicions, saying he hung up the phone after talking with Robert Blagojevich and realized, "I can't even do that."

But the substance of the conversation is less important than the fact that Burris in the past has been less than candid about it. It looks to us like yet another omission from the ever-changing story he told the state Senate under oath about how he got the U.S. Senate job.

Here it is the end of May, and we fear another snow job.

8) Banking on Biography
By Jennifer Rubin


Jan Greenburg Crawford writes about the White House’s decision-making process:

As the first Hispanic nominee, with a compelling life story and rich judicial experience, Sotomayor would be hardest for Republicans to oppose, they argued, and therefore easiest for Obama to get confirmed.

Indeed, some Republican senators, while publicly vowing a fight, privately conceded the difficulties they will face in opposing the first Hispanic nominee.

Those calculations could have given her the edge over Wood, who would be more of a fight, political advisers warned, in light of her paper trail of speeches and appeals court opinions.

Obama’s advisers also were aware of a political reality on the Left, sources said. Sotomayor has the added bonus of placating his base, which has grown increasingly angry over some of Obama’s recent positions on terrorism.

[. . .]

With Sotomayor’s experience and personal story, one top adviser said, “there was no question where the arrow pointed.”

Jonathan Turley comes right out and says it: she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

These observations from non-conservatives are noteworthy for a few reasons. First, Sotomayor — who has made identity politics her life’s work — has now reached the top of her profession, as an identity politics champion and a bone tossed to leftist interest groups. How nice! Well, except if you agree with Turley that legal smarts should be the primary consideration for the Court.

Second, for a constitutional “scholar,” the president seems notably unmoved by legal scholarship. Biography and politics triumph over all. We have hit a new low in Supreme Court selection when a pick’s Nancy Drew reading is worthy of mention in the presidential announcement. (Really, who cares?) The announcement statement is remarkable and, in some sense, shocking in its reliance on long passages entitled ”An American Story” and “Commitment to Community.” (Compare this to the announcement of John Roberts’s nomination, which discretely and briefly mentions some personal data points.) These details shouldn’t matter, but to the president they are virtually all that matters.

Dana Milbank put it bluntly:

In selecting Sotomayor, Obama opted for biography over brain. As a legal mind, Sotomayor is described in portraits as competent, but no Louis Brandeis. Nor is Sotomayor, often described as an abrasive jurist, likely to be the next Earl Warren. But her bio is quite a hit. In Spanish, her surname can be translated as “big thicket” — and that’s just where Republicans could find themselves if they oppose this up-from-poverty Latina.

He’s right, of course. And it is — or should be — breathtaking.

Third, because the president prizes politics and biography above all else he assumes conservatives do as well and therefore his nominee will have an easy time. But is this right? Are conservatives less inclined to vigorously contest someone who is offered up as an exemplar of identity politics and who doubts her own impartiality? Are they not excited about opposing a judge whose commitment to affirmative action goes so far as to engage in legal gamesmanship that results in denying firefighter Frank Ricci an appeal on the merits of his claim? Well, as they say, perhaps the president was misinformed.

Whatever this is, it sure isn’t post-racial politics. And I suspect it won’t be an easy confirmation.

8a) OPENING ARGUMENT:Identity Politics And Sotomayor
The judge's thinking is representative of the Democratic Party's powerful identity-politics wing.
By Stuart Taylor





"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001

The above assertion and the rest of a remarkable speech to a Hispanic group by Sotomayor -- widely touted as a possible Obama nominee to the Supreme Court -- has drawn very little attention in the mainstream media since it was quoted deep inside The New York Times on May 15.

It deserves more scrutiny, because apart from Sotomayor's Supreme Court prospects, her thinking is representative of the Democratic Party's powerful identity-politics wing.

Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere "aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others." And she suggested that "inherent physiological or cultural differences" may help explain why "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.

Indeed, unless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

Imagine the reaction if someone had unearthed in 2005 a speech in which then-Judge Samuel Alito had asserted, for example: "I would hope that a white male with the richness of his traditional American values would reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn't lived that life" -- and had proceeded to speak of "inherent physiological or cultural differences."

I have been hoping that despite our deep divisions, President Obama would coax his party, and the country, to think of Americans more as united by allegiance to democratic ideals and the rule of law and less as competing ethnic and racial groups driven by grievances that are rooted more in our troubled history than in today's reality.

I also hope that Obama will use this Supreme Court appointment to re-inforce the message of his 2004 Democratic convention speech: "There's not a black America, and white America, and Latino America, and Asian America; there's the United States of America."

But in this regard, the president's emphasis on selective "empathy" for preferred racial and other groups as "the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges" is not encouraging, as I explained in a May 15 post on National Journal's The Ninth Justice blog.

As for Sotomayor's speech, fragmentary quotations admittedly cannot capture every qualification and nuance. She also stressed that although "men lawyers... need to work on" their "attitudes," many have already reached "great moments of enlightenment." She noted that she tries to be impartial. And she did not overtly suggest that judges should play identity politics.

I place the earlier quotations in more-detailed context here so that readers can assess Sotomayor's meaning for themselves.

"Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum [of the federal District Court in New York]... believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons... we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning....

"Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others....

"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.... I am... not so sure that I agree with the statement. First... there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

The full text of the speech, as published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, is available on The New York Times website. (It says that the speech was in 2002; I've read elsewhere that it was October 2001.)

To some extent, Sotomayor's point was an unexceptionable description of the fact that no matter how judges try to be impartial, their decisions are shaped in part by their personal backgrounds and values, especially when the law is unclear. As she detailed, for example, some studies suggest that female judges tend to have different voting patterns than males on issues including sex discrimination.

I also share Sotomayor's view that presidents should seek more ethnic and gender diversity on the bench, so that members of historically excluded groups can see people like themselves in important positions and because collegial bodies tend to act more wisely when informed by a diversity of experiences.


Do we want a new justice who comes close to stereotyping white males as (on average) inferior beings?

It follows that the Supreme Court might well be a wiser body -- other things being equal -- if the next justice is a Hispanic woman of outstanding judgment and capability. But do we want a new justice who comes close to stereotyping white males as (on average) inferior beings? And who seems to speak with more passion about her ethnicity and gender than about the ideal of impartiality?

Compare Sotomayor's celebration of "how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul" and reflections "on being a Latina voice on the bench" with Judge Learned Hand's eulogy for Justice Benjamin Cardozo in 1938.

"The wise man is the detached man," Hand wrote. "Our convictions, our outlook, the whole makeup of our thinking, which we cannot help bringing to the decision of every question, is the creature of our past; and into our past have been woven all sorts of frustrated ambitions with their envies, and of hopes of preferment with their corruptions, which, long since forgotten, determine our conclusions. A wise man is one exempt from the handicap of such a past; he is a runner stripped for the race; he can weigh the conflicting factors of his problem without always finding himself in one scale or the other."

Some see such talk as tiresome dead-white-male stuff, from a time when almost all judges were white males -- although, in Cardozo's case, descended from Portuguese Jews. I see it as the essence of what judges should strive to be.

I do not claim that the very different worldview displayed in Sotomayor's speech infuses her hundreds of judicial opinions and votes rendered over more than a decade on the Appeals Court. But only a few of her cases have involved the kind of politically incendiary issues that make the Supreme Court a storm center.

In one of her few explosive cases, Sotomayor voted (without writing an opinion) to join two colleagues in upholding what I see as raw racial discrimination by New Haven, Conn. The city denied promotions to the firefighters who did best on a test of job-related skills because none was black. (See my column, "New Haven's Injustice Shouldn't Disappear.")

The Supreme Court is widely expected to reverse that decision in June. And even if a devotee of identity politics fills retiring Justice David Souter's seat, she will not have enough votes to encourage greater use of such racial preferences. Not yet.