Heaven Forbid - Are Americans Beginning to Think?

It is Darwin Award time again. Hope no one is a relative or a deceased one. (See 1 below.)

Liberals can continue to blame GW for everything under the sun and no doubt Republicans screwed up when they had their chance. That being so, why are so many now disaffected with what they voted for and are considering themselves Conservatives? Could it be American voters are beginning to think for themselves. Heaven forbid! If so, woe unto the politicians who have assumed we continue to be sheep ready to be shorn.(See 2 and 2a below.)

Meanwhile, Sever Plocker is enamoured with Obama's first year accomplishments. I guess Plocker, like Matthews, gets a tingle down or up his leg. (See 2b and 2c below.)

However,Noonan 'slugs' Obama with disconnect! Then there is Krauthammer's thoughts (See 2c below.)

Aaron Lerner seeks clarification from previous Netanyahu speech. (See 3 below.)

Wife of Obama's friend, Bill Ayres, went to Middle East to comfort Hamas.

President Obama are you continuing to be known by your associations like all other beings? (See 4 below.)

Back to that 'populist pinata' thing. Our 'healer' president calls out the Dobermans again! (See 5 below.)

Rabinowitz pilloried Coakley with some courageously stinging editorials when Coakley was hanging the Amirault family. Now Rabinowitz reminds us about Coakley's character. But does character count any more in politics or is it just meaningless words? (See 6 below.)

Dick

1)Yes, it's that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us in this past year of 2009.

Here is the glorious winner:

1. When his 38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach , California would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the
barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.

And now, the honorable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company.. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6 A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer.... $15. (If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?)

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher.

Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID --- to which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away. [A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motorhome parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motorhome near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose in to the motorhome's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.

In the interest of bettering mankind, please share these with friends and family....unless, of course, one of these individuals by chance is a distant relative or long lost friend. In that case, be glad they are distant and hope they remain lost.

Remember.... They walk among us!!! And They Breed !!

2)Eureka, I Am a Conservative!
By Harold Witkov

For the longest time, average Americans were in a political stupor. But not anymore. In the past year, across this great nation of ours, an awakening has started. Individual Americans, by the droves, are experiencing their own political eureka moments and transforming into conservatives.


The famous Greek mathematician of antiquity Archimedes was once requested to determine if a solid gold wreath was indeed solid gold. According to legend, Archimedes, knowing he was not permitted to damage the wreath in any way, was at a loss. However, upon entering a bathtub and noting that the water level rose in accordance to his body mass, Archimedes deduced that he could perform a similar experiment comparing water level variations between the wreath in question and any solid gold material of the same weight. Upon realizing he had found the solution he was so desperately seeking, in what is often referred to as Archimedes' eureka moment of discovery, Archimedes forgot himself and ran home naked through the streets, bellowing, "Eureka! Eureka!" (I've found it! I've found it!)


In certain Eastern religious circles, it is believed that sometimes one must discover who he is by first discovering who he is not. I have no idea if there is anything to this school of thought, but when it comes to the world of politics, I do believe there are times when one must discover where he stands politically by first recognizing what he stands against.


Now that Barack Obama and the Democrats have taken over the presidency and both Houses, more and more Americans are starting to gag from the stench of unfettered liberalism. Horrified by out-of-control spending, a socialist agenda, and weak foreign policy, a growing number of outraged Americans have been doing some major political soul-searching. Intuitively, they sense America has dangerously changed course, and a growing sea of citizens are now on the same page and thinking the same thoughts:


I am against the federal redistribution of wealth.


I am against entitlement politics.


I am against American czars.


I am against apology tours that denigrate the greatness of our country.


I am against tax-and-spend politics.


I am against government takeovers.


I am against amnesty citizenship for those who have entered our country illegally.


I am against the out-of-control printing of money.


I am against legislation designed to do away with free speech (Fairness Doctrine).


I am against big government.


I am against trillion-dollar government stimulus package slush funds.


I am against treating our allies like enemies and our enemies like friends.


I am against politicians who do not let us drill for oil.


I am against politicians who look the other way while Iran and North Korea develop nuclear weapons.


I am against government-run health care.


I am against health care bills that provide abortion funding.


I am against backroom deals by politicians that circumvent transparency and the Constitution.


I am against trillion-dollar deficits.


I am against high taxes.


I am against treating all people to the identical security scrutiny in airports.


I am against bills that provide special exemptions for legislators.


I am against bills that provide special privileges to certain states.


I am against those who would stifle an honest global warming debate.


I am against the federal funding of corrupt organizations like ACORN.


I am against "Miranda rights" for foreign terrorists.


I am against confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed getting a civilian trial in NY.


I am against cap-and-trade legislation and taxing carbon footprints.


I am against the closing of GITMO and the bringing of terrorists to American soil.


I am against letting the U.N. tell us how to live.


I am against a president who does not believe in American exceptionalism.


Should I go on? Is thirty enough? The list need not end.


As Americans watch how -- idea by idea and bill by bill -- Barack Obama and the Democrats are dismantling our nation through their radical liberal left agenda, more and more are realizing:


Not only am I against what Barack Obama is doing to this country, but I stand for the opposite of what he, Pelosi, and Reid stand for.


This is the point in time that these Americans start investigating the opposite of liberalism. They start formulating their own list of what they stand for:


I am for low taxes.


I am for small government.


I am for a free-market system.


I am for the Constitution.


I am for the Separation of Powers.


I am for fiscal responsibility.


I am for government accountability.


I am for supporting our allies and confronting the tyrants of the world.


I am for states' rights.


I am for a strong military.


Should I go on? This list need not end either.


While all this is taking place, these thinking Americans start switching from watching NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN to watching FOX News. They watch Cavuto, Beck, and Hannity. They start listening to Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio. They read Mark Levin and Sarah Palin. Now open to invigorated conservative ideas, they reinvestigate the American story. They recall how many times the United States rescued the world from tyranny. They dust off the old economics textbook and remember the lessons about free-market systems and laissez-faire. They spend a buck, buy a copy of the constitution, and start appreciating the sacrifices and insights of the Founding Fathers. They come to grips with living concepts like individual liberty, and they embrace the Bill of Rights. Then it happens: A metamorphosis takes place:


Eureka, I am a conservative!


If this has happened to you, do not be shy; you are not alone. Let your non-conservative friends, be they liberals or independents, know that you have had your political eureka moment and are now a conservative. Then get them started. Provide them with a list of what you are against concerning the present administration, followed by what you believe in...or just make a copy of this article and hand it to them.


Just warn them not to read it while they are taking a bath.



2a)Ideological Rationalization of the Senate
By Bruce Walker

Blanche Lincoln is in deep trouble. Harry Reid is, too. Byron Dorgan, facing deep reelection problems, has simply given up his Senate seat. Ben Nelson may well do that in the 2012 election cycle. Mary Landrieu is feeling some heat. All of these senators well ought to be in trouble. Others like Pryor in Arkansas, Tester in Montana, and Conrad in North Dakota should be in big trouble, too, in coming elections.


These Democrat senators simply do not at all represent what the voters of their states believe or want. Some of the ones from red states are called "moderate." Are they, though? Blanche Lincoln is out of step with Arkansans not only on health care -- she is out of step with Arkansans, period. Her lifetime voting record with the American Conservative Union is a paltry 18%. "Moderate" Mary Landrieu has a 23% lifetime voting record with the ACU. The only real moderate Democrat in the Senate is Ben Nelson, whose lifetime rating is 47% with the ACU, and yet he notoriously could be bought by Big Leftism.


Here are some Democrat senators from states which traditionally go Republican in national elections. None of them have a lifetime rating by the American Conservative Union higher than 23%: Baucus (MT), Bayh (IN), Begich (AK), Bennet (CO), Bingaman (NM), Conrad (ND), Dorgan (ND), Hagan (NC), Johnson (SD), Landrieu (LA), Lincoln (AR), McCaskill (MO), Pryor (AR), Reid (NV), Rockefeller (WV), Salazar (CO), Tester (MT), Udall (CO), Udall (NM), Webb (VA), and Warner (VA.) Aside from Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson of Florida and Robert Byrd of West Virginia were marginally less liberal, but none of these 24 Democrat senators from red states have a voting record as conservative as Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, the two most RINO of RINO Republicans.


These Democrat senators are wildly out of sync with the ideological rhythms of their respective states. Gallup conducted a state-by-state poll last summer that broke down the ideology of the voters. In Arkansas, a state that has two Democrat senators with ACU rankings of 18% (Lincoln) and 18% (Pryor), the people identified themselves as 43% conservative, 37% moderate, and only 16% liberal. North Dakota is a state with two Democrat senators, Dorgan (22%) and Conrad (22%), where 45% of the people define themselves as conservative, 37% moderate, and only 17% liberal. Montana also has two Democrats: Baucus with a 14% ACU rating and Tester with 16%. What is the ideological breakdown of Montana? Gallup says 41% conservative, 35% moderate, and only 21% liberal.


Not only did John McCain carry Arkansas, North Dakota, and Montana, but so did Bush in 2004 and 2000. Since 1968, only a few times has the Democrat nominee carried any of those three states in a presidential election. These states represent a number which have "moderate" (really, fairly liberal) senators despite the fact that the people (among whom conservatives strongly outnumber liberals) vote Republican in presidential elections. Among these states with Democrats now helping Obama, the advantage of self-defined conservatives over liberals in each case is very large.


How large, exactly? The following states have Democrat senators, and in each state, the percentage of conservatives is greater than that of liberals by at least 20 percentage points (+33 means that if 47% of the state's voters call themselves conservative, only 14% of the state's voters call themselves liberal). Here they are: Louisiana + 33%, North Dakota + 28%, Arkansas + 27%, South Dakota +26%, Iowa +23%, Delaware +22%, West Virginia +21%, North Carolina +21%, Indiana +21%, New Mexico +21%, Montana +20%, Nebraska +20%, Alaska +20%, Ohio +20%. How many Democrat senators come from these overwhelmingly conservative states? Twenty. If the Democrat senators from these states were Republicans, then the GOP would have a filibuster-proof majority.


Now consider those states in which conservatives outnumber liberals by at least 15 percentage points: Florida +19%, Missouri +19%, Pennsylvania +18%, Wisconsin +17%, Virginia +17%, Colorado +16%, Nevada +16%, and Michigan +15%. Out of the eighteen senators in these nine states, only three are Republicans. If Republicans held only half of those Senate seats, then there would be an additional seven of them in the Senate.


How many Republicans come from liberal states? None, really. The Gallup Poll showed that in every single state of the union, conservatives outnumber Democrats. More to the point, though, in the eleven least conservative states -- Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, California, Washington, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maryland -- there are no Republican senators at all. How many Democrat senators hail from the eleven most conservative states? Five, including four with very liberal voting records.


Conservatives constitute the huge majority of America according to the Battleground Poll, and yet conservatives are a weak minority in the Senate. Liberal Democrats hold Senate seats which, if ideology counted, should be conservative Republican seats. The radicalism of Obama and the sheep of Harry Reid is causing the ideological rationalization of the Senate. Lincoln, Reid and Dorgan may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.

2b)Obama’s year in office: American president’s performance much better than his critics claim
By Sever Plocker

At the end of January, Barack Obama will be completing a year in office. It haseen a disappointing year, not for him, but rather for the masses who cheered him on at public squares nationwide.



Objectively speaking, Obama achieved quite a bit. He is very close to passing in Congress innovative (even if imperfect) social legislation:
All US citizens will be required, by law, to acquire health insurance and those who cannot afford it will be subsidized by the government. He also executed a budgetary incentive program at a scope unseen since the 1930s.


Obama also presented a far-reaching reform in monitoring and regulating financial markets, and even before it was implemented he demanded that the crazy bonuses to top banking officials be limited and taxed. He boosted the Fed chairman and personally curbed Wall Street’s returning greed. Meanwhile, he presented a presidential pledge to curb greenhouse gas emissions at the global climate control conference in Copenhagen.


Obama laid cornerstones for a new approach on the foreign affairs and security front as well. He pledged to gradually pull out US troops from Iraq and shift them to active combat against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. He presented the doctrine of democracy and human rights to hundreds of millions in the Arab world through words that were neither patronizing nor flattering.


Elsewhere, he forced Israel’s Likud government to commit to the two-state solution and to temporarily freeze settlement construction. He improved America’s ties with Europe, boosted the international coalition against the nuclearizing Iran, made clear his determination to reinforce the war on terror, and presided over assassinations of terror activists.


The public sourness towards Obama after a year in office has to do with the fact that the president is delivering on most of his pledges, while not delivering on things he did not promise (yet others thought or wanted to think that he did promise.)


Deeply in love with America
Obama did not promise universal health insurance, full employment at once, withdrawal from Afghanistan, a warm embrace to the Iranian regime, dialogue with Hamas, an electric car to every worker, public executions of bankers, and full nationalization of the financial establishment.



Mostly, Obama did not promise to be an anti-American president in the ideological sense of the term, as was interpreted by the many haters of the American model. The opposite is true: Obama is deeply in love with America and therefore he so much wanted to become its first black president. His beloved American is big, strong, inclusive, and serves as the global policeman of freedom.


Despite this, and perhaps because of this, Obama’s approval rating is dropping. The conservatives still view him as a latent leftist, while the leftists already view him as a latent conservative. The former attribute socialist tendencies to him, while the latter feel he betrayed their principles.


Hence, his practical achievements do not satisfy his critics. Journalists and bloggers analyze his weaknesses as a leader who no longer sweeps the masses. They say he is all about compromise, hesitation, manipulation, and detachment. Pollsters break down the public into categories based on the level of disappointment with him.


Barack Obama in January 2010 is indeed different than Barack Obama in 2009. He learned to conduct himself modestly. He became closely familiar with the material limitations of the politics around his presidency and internalized the realism of his job. He matured and toughened up. There is evil in the world, he said recently, and we must face it with deeds rather than words; “we”, that is, America.


Personally, Obama did not disappoint me. Free of his flowery rhetoric, he now effectively realizes the message of a typical centrist party with a slight leftist tendency: Just like Livni’s Kadima, just like Rabin’s Labor, and sometimes even just like Netanyahu’s Likud.


2c)Slug the Obama Story 'Disconnect' Obama and the public are on different pages, if not different in books.
By PEGGY NOONAN

The first thing I learned in journalism is that every story has a name. At WEEI News Radio in Boston, the editor would label each story with one word, called a "slug," and assign a writer to write it for air. This week's devastating earthquake would be slugged "Haiti." A story about a gruesome murder might be "Nightmare."

We're at the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, and the slug, the word that captures its essence, is "Disconnect."

This is, still, a surprising word to use about the canny operatives who so perfectly judged the public mood in 2008. But they haven't connected since.

There is a disconnect, a detachment, a distance between the president's preoccupations and the concerns of the people. There's a disconnect between his policy proposals and the people's sense, as expressed in polls, of what the immediate problems are.

I'm not referring to what is being called the president's rhetorical disconnect. In this criticism, he is not emotional enough when he speaks, he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, he is aloof, like a lab technician observing the movements within a petri dish called America. It may be true that this doesn't help him, but so what? In a successful presidency, his cool demeanor would be called an interesting facet, not a problem. And we don't really need presidents to move us, when you think about it. We need them to lead, and in the right direction.

Nor am I referring to an iconic disconnect. In this criticism, the president refuses to or is unable to act as a paternal figure. "A president is a father," say these critics. "He must comfort us." But, actually, your father is your father. Voters didn't hire Mr. Obama to play the old dad in the MGM movie. In any case he always seemed like the bright older brother, not the father. At the end of the day you, being a grown-up, don't need him to be your daddy, do you?

You want a competent chief executive with a deep and shrewd sense of the people. Americans want him to be on the same page as they are. But he's on a different page, and he may in fact be reading a different book. Thus the latest Quinnipiac poll, which puts his approval/disapproval at a descending 45% to 45%. Pure hunch: The approval number is probably slightly high because people don't want to disapprove of their new president—the stakes are so high!—and don't like telling pollsters they disapprove of him.

The real story is that his rhetorical and iconic detachment are harped on because they reflect a deeper disconnect, the truly problematic one, and that is over policy. It doesn't really matter how he sounds. It matters, in a time of crisis, what he does. That's where the lack of connection comes in.

More Peggy NoonanRead Peggy Noonan's previous columns
Click here to order her new book, Patriotic Grace
.
The people are here, and he is there. The popularity of his health care plan is very low, at 35% support. Someone on television the other day noted it is as low as George Bush's popularity ratings in 2008.

Yet—and this is the key part—the president does not seem to see or hear. He does not respond. He is not supple, able to hear reservations and see opposition and change tack. He has a grim determination to bull this thing through. He negotiates each day with Congress, not with the people. But the people hate Congress! Has he not noticed?

The people have come alive on the issue of spending—it's too high, it threatens us! He spends more. Everywhere I go, I hear talk of "hidden taxes" and a certainty that state and federal levies will go up, putting a squeeze on a middle and upper middle classes that have been squeezed like oranges and are beginning to see themselves as tired old rinds. Mr. Obama seems at best disconnected from this anxiety.

The disconnect harms him politically, but more important it suggests a deepening gulf between the people and their government, which only adds to growling, chafing national discontent. It also put the president in the position, only one year in, only 12 months into a brand-new glistening presidency, of seeming like the same old same old. There's something tired in all this disconnect, something old-fashioned, something sclerotic and 1970's about it.

And of course the public is reacting. All politicians are canaries in coal mines, they're always the first to feel the political atmosphere. It was significant when the Democrats lost the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey two months ago. It is significant that a handful of House and Senate Democrats have decided not to run this year. And it is deeply significant that a Republican state senator in Massachusetts, Scott Brown, may topple the Democratic nominee to fill Ted Kennedy's former seat, Martha Coakley. In a way, the Republicans have already won—it's a real race, it's close, and in "Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts"!

Mr. Brown's whole story right now is not about disconnect but connect. Massachusetts has an 8.8% unemployment rate, and graduates of the commonwealth's great universities can't find work. An old Boston Republican hand said of the race, "It's 100% percent about policies—health care, taxes, what's the plan on the economy?" Mr. Brown charges that Ms. Coakley's support for cap and trade and health care will amount to $2 trillion in taxes in the next five years.

Ms. Coakley has the advantage—Massachusetts is the heart of blue-state America—but in a way her advantage is her curse. Because she is the candidate of a party that for 40 years has been used to winning, reigning and winning again, she looks like the same old same old, a standard old-line liberal, the frontwoman for a machine, a yes woman for the Obama-Pelosi era.

It is interesting that Ms. Coakley, too, has been told by pundits the past week that her problem is that she's not emotional enough. She should show passion and fire! She should cry like Hillary!

This comes not only from pundits but normal people, and if you contemplate the meaning it is, weirdly: You're not good enough at manipulating us! We want more theatrics!

Both national parties are trying to pour in money and resources, but the most obnoxious intrusion must have been the fund-raising letter this week from New York's Sen. Charles Schumer, who tried to rouse the troops by calling Mr. Brown a "far-right teabagger." Does that kind of thing even work anymore? Doesn't name calling put off anyone not already predisposed to agree with it?

In a time when the people of Massachusetts have real concerns about their ability to make a living, stuff like the Schumer letter is just more evidence of a party's disconnect.

Politics is about policy. It's not about who's emotional and who cries or makes you cry. It's not about big political parties and the victories they need in order to rule. It's not about going on some ideological toot, which is what the health-care bill is, hoping the people will someday see and appreciate your higher wisdom.

In a way, Mr. Obama's disconnection is a sign of the times. We are living in the age of breakup, with so many of the ties that held us together loosening and fraying. If the president wants to lead toward something better, he should try listening. If you can't connect through the words you speak, at least you can do it through your ability to hear.

2c)The Fall of Obama
By Charles Krauthammer

What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent -- and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year.

A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health care reform.

A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on earth. Today the thrill is gone, the doubts growing -- even among erstwhile believers.

Liberals try to attribute Obama's political decline to matters of style. He's too cool, detached, uninvolved. He's not tough, angry or aggressive enough with opponents. He's contracted out too much of his agenda to Congress.

These stylistic and tactical complaints may be true, but they miss the major point: The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left.

It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy.

Then began the descent -- when, more amazingly still, Obama devoted himself to turning these statist visions into legislative reality. First energy, with cap-and-trade, an unprecedented federal intrusion into American industry and commerce. It got through the House, with its Democratic majority and Supreme Soviet-style rules. But it will never get out of the Senate.

Then, the keystone: a health care revolution in which the federal government will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, Obamacare turns the health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move dictated by government regulators. The public option was a sideshow. As many on the right have long been arguing, and as the more astute on the left (such as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki) understand, Obamacare is government health care by proxy, single-payer through a facade of nominally "private" insurers.

At first, health care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.

The health care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge.

3)Weekly Commentary: The troubling single dimensional approach of PM Netanyahu’s
Bar Ilan address
By Dr. Aaron Lerner

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his team frequently cite his 14 June
2009 speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University as his
definitive policy statement.

So, in search of a better understanding of what Mr. Netanyahu ‘s goals are,
I went back to review at the text he invested so much effort to prepare.

So here’s what he says about Judea and Samaria:

“Judea and Samaria – the places where Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, David and
Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived – are not alien to us. This is the
land of our forefathers.”

And so?

Will this connection have any weight in policy making?

Will policy reflect, for example, our tremendous national connection to the
Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron?

Consider this critical passage from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s presentation:

“I have come tonight to give expression to that unity, and to the principles
of peace and security on which there is broad agreement within Israeli
society. These are the principles that guide our policy, a policy that must
take into account the international situation that has recently developed.
We must recognize this reality and at the same time stand firmly on those
principles essential for Israel.”

Get it?

There may be other principles out there. But “the principles that guide
our policy” are “the principles of peace and security”.

And to add to this “a policy that must take into account the international
situation that has recently developed..” - a broad hint that the pressure
is great.

And how are we to deal with this pressure?

“We must recognize this reality and at the same time stand firmly on those
principles essential for Israel.”

And what principles are essential to Israel besides “the principles of peace
and security”?

Here is Mr. Netanyahu’s list of “the remaining important issues that will be
discussed as part of a final peace settlement”

#1 “defensible borders”

#2 “ Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, must remain undivided”

Taken to an extreme, if Israel had gizmos that made the ’67 lines
“defensible borders”, a complete withdrawal from Judea and Samaria – with
the exception of eastern Jerusalem – would be consistent with this policy
address.

Oops.

Here is hoping for a clarification.

4)Ayres' wife heads to Middle East with group to collaborate with Hamas
By Caroline B. Glick


Last month 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist, antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas terrorist organization.

But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic fundraiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcome by Egyptian authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and barbed wire as they demonstrated outside the US and French embassies and the UN Development Program's headquarters. Others were barred from leaving their hotels. Those who managed to escape their hotels and the bullpens outside the foreign embassies were barred from staging night protests in solidarity with Hamas on the Nile. In the end, as the militant Israeli pro-Palestinian activist Amira Hass chronicled in Ha'aretz last week, all but one hundred of them were barred from travelling to Gaza.

The lucky few allowed into Gaza included neither Evans nor her friends, former Weather Underground terror leaders Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayres. But they bore no grudge against Egypt. The Egyptians were mere puppets of the real culprit: Israel. As Evans said, "It's obvious that the only reason for [Egypt's treatment of the demonstrators] is to make Israel happy. Israel is behind the refusal [to allow the demonstrators into Gaza] - what other excuse could there be?"

Dohrn, the woman has called for a "revolutionary war" to destroy the US, felt that the Egyptian authorities' behavior was nothing but an unfortunate diversion from their mission. As she wrote in a blog post from Cairo, "We find ourselves unwillingly in Cairo, drawn into clashes with authorities and one another on side issues, when what we most want is to keep our eyes on the Palestinian people."

Unfortunately for the lucky 100 who were permitted to enter Hamastan, the diversions didn't end at the Egyptians border. Hamas immediately placed them under siege. The Palestinian champions had planned to enjoy home hospitality from friends in Gaza. But once there they were prohibited from leaving the Hamas-owned Commodore Hotel and from having any contact with local Gazans without a Hamas escort.

Rather than being permitted to judge the situation in Gaza for themselves, they were carted onto Hamas buses and taken on "devastation tours" of what their Hamas tour guides claimed was damage caused by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead.

And then these international protesters were forced to participate in a Hamas-organized march to Erez Crossing. As Hass tells it, in "a slap to many feminist organizers and participants," no Palestinian women were allowed to participate in the march which, "turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators."

But they didn't really mind. Reacting to her effective imprisonment in the Hamas-owned hotel, one of the demonstrators, and American woman named Poya Pakzad cooed on her blog that the Commodore Hotel was "the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at, in my life." Pakzad did complain however about what she acknowledged was the "farce" devastation tour she was taken on. She claimed that her Hamas guides were ignorant. In her studied view, they understated the number of Palestinians rendered homeless by the IDF counter-terror offensive last year by some 60 percent.





Pakzad is something of a Hass groupie. She wrote that on the bus to Gaza, still smarting from the rough treatment the group received from the Egyptian authorities, Hass "made me realize why I came in the first place: to break the siege!"

Hass's participation in the pro-Hamas propaganda trip is a bit surprising. In November 2008 Hass was forced to flee from Gaza to Israel after Hamas threatened to kill her. At the time, Hass appealed to the Israeli military — which she has spent the better part of her career bashing - and asked to be allowed to enter Israel from Gaza after sailing illegally to Gaza from Cyprus on a ferry boat chartered by the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit.

Hass's behavior is actually more revealing than surprising. The truth is that Hass, like her fellow demonstrators were willing to be used as media props by Hamas precisely because it isn't the Palestinians' welfare that concerns them. If they cared about the Palestinians they would be demonstrating against Hamas, which prohibited local women from participating in their march to the Israeli border, and which barred non-Hamas members from speaking with them. It would offend their sensitivities that Hamas goons beat women for not covering themselves from head to toe in Islamic potato sacks. It would bother them that Hamas executes its political opponents by among other things throwing them off the roofs of apartment buildings.

The demonstrators did not come to Gaza to demonstrate their support for the Palestinians but their hatred for Israel and for their own Western governments which refuse to join Hamas in its war against Israel. As one of the organizers told Hass as she sat corralled by Egyptian riot police outside the UNDP offices in Cairo, "In our presence here, we are saying that we are not casting the blame on Egypt. The responsibility for the shameless and obscene Israeli siege on Gaza rests squarely with our own countries."

By happily collaborating with Hamas in its propaganda extravaganza, these demonstrators demonstrated that the rights of Palestinians are not their concern. Their concern is waging war against their own societies and against Israel. They are more than happy to have their pictures taken with the likes of Hamas terror master Ismail Haniyeh. And while they will never acknowledge that his organization's terror war against Israel is illegal and immoral, or care that Hamas's founding charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Jewry, they will demonstrate from today 'til doomsday against their governments' recognition of Israel.

In this, the Free Gaza movement members are but a chip off the old psychopathic block of nearly a century of far-left Western activists whose hatred for their own countries motivated them to hide the crimes of mass murderers from Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh to Daniel Ortega and Saddam Hussein. As Jamie Glazov chronicles in his recently published book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror, their attraction to mass murderers - from Stalin to Osama bin Laden, and their concomitant hatred of their own societies "is a secular religion."

These fanatics are usually dismissed as fringe elements. But the truth is that during the late-20th century, the distance between these true believers and the centers of state power has not been very great. Glazov notes, "The tragedy�is that the Left has shaped much of the cultural and political consciousness of our time. The Left's agenda mattered immensely during the Vietnam War: even former North Vietnamese officials have admitted that the antiwar movement in American can take credit for communism's victory in South Vietnam and, therefore, for the tragic bloodbath that followed."

Likewise, today these radical movements' extremism today has not marginalized them politically. Since it was formed in 2002, Code Pink has openly sided with US enemies against the US and its allies. Evans and its other leaders have met with Hamas leaders in Gaza and Syria. They have visited with Hizbullah in Lebanon. They have met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York and Teheran. They have supplied Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq, and before the US-led invasion in 2003, they organized a solidarity-with-Saddam Hussein mission to Baghdad. And this month, fresh from Egypt and Gaza, Code Pink launched an advertising campaign on the Muslim Brotherhood's English website.

At home in the US, as documented by websites like Big Government and Atlas Shrugs, Code Pink's members have launched psychological warfare operations against US soldiers outside of military bases with the aim of persuading them to desert. They have taunted and frightened children of US servicemen. They have harassed Bush administration officials, their family members and Republican Party leaders.

In Israel, counterparts to Code Pink like Uri Avineri's Gush Shalom acted as human shields to protect Yassir Arafat and his fellow terrorists from IDF forces during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Anarchists Against the Fence stage violent riots against IDF forces every week. Four Mothers successfully compelled the Barak government to surrender south Lebanon to Hizbullah.

Traditionally, the far left's ability to shape national policy in Israel and the US alike has owed largely to the sympathetic coverage they have garnered from fellow-travelling media outlets. In the US the anti-war movement probably would have failed in its mission of transferring South Vietnam to Communist control if the New York Times and CBS News hadn't supported their efforts. So too, the Barak government would likely not have withdrawn the IDF from south Lebanon if Four Mothers hadn't been ardently supported by state-owned Israel Radio.

While both the Israeli and American media continue to promote the agendas of far left groups, by among other things, not reporting their open ties to terrorist organizations, today some of these groups have direct access to the halls of power.

Code Pink for instance is welcome at the Obama White House. Its leader Evans was an official fundraiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Evans visited the White House after travelling to Gaza last June. While there she met with Hamas leaders who gave her a letter for Obama. Evans met Obama himself at a donor dinner in San Francisco last October where while standing in front of cameras, she gave Obama documents she received in Afghanistan where she met with Taliban officials.

Then too, among the board members of the Free Gaza movement is former US senator James Abourezk. Abourezk is reputedly close to Obama and according to knowledgeable sources has been a key figure in shaping Obama's policy towards Israel.

Then too, like Evans, Dohrn and her husband Ayres are also friendly with the President of the United States. Dohrn and Ayres have been Obama's political patrons since he launched his first campaign for the Illinois state Senate in 1996. In White House visitors' logs, Ayres is listed as having twice visited the building since Obama's inauguration.

Israeli authorities tend to treat groups like Code Pink and its Israeli allies as nothing more than nuisances. Since unlike Egypt and these self proclaimed human rights champions themselves, Israel actually does care about human rights, it would never occur to anyone to treat these demonstrators as Egypt did. At the same time, the Egyptian authorities' actions were clearly informed their understanding that with their ties to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran, Code Pink and its friends are active collaborators with the jihad war machine.

With their open ties to our jihadist enemies on the one hand, and their direct line to the White House on the other, Israel ignores them at our peril.

5)Taking on the Banks: Obama's New Populist Pitch
By Michael Scherer

So how is the White House hoping to avert an electoral catastrophe in November? One clue can be found coded in the attack ads now chewing up the airwaves in New England. "Who is Scott Brown really?" an ominous voiceover asks about the Republican candidate vying for Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat. The ad's answer comes in a quick montage of conservative Republicans, past and present — George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell — followed by a populist pitch. "He'll block tougher oversight of Wall Street, give more tax breaks to the wealthiest," the breathy announcer continues.

The ad is paid for by the Senate campaign of Democrat Martha Coakley, but its regular-guy-against-the-rich strategy was developed months ago by top White House aides, who know their party faces a perilous election this fall. This same strategy was much in evidence at the White House Thursday, when President Obama proposed a new tax on large banks to compensate for losses suffered by taxpayers in bailouts of the financial industry that began in the final months of the Bush Administration. "We want our money back, and we are going to get it," the President said, using unusually informal language to identify with the great mass of American taxpayers. Massachusetts Democrat Coakley took that as a cue to release a statement putting her opponent on the spot: "Now is the time for Scott Brown to tell us what side he's on, and who he wants to fight for," it read.
(See how Americans are spending now.)


For the strategy to work, the President, his aides and Democratic candidates such as Coakley will have to accomplish two difficult tasks. First, they must convince voters that their outrage over the state of the country ought to be directed against Republicans rather than against the party that has controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for the past year. Then, they must successfully sell the idea that the GOP is the party of the wealthy and powerful — a classic Democratic theme. "There are two entities in this country who are working very hard to defeat health reform," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told TIME on Wednesday. "The insurers and the Republican Party." At present, however, polls show that a majority of Americans oppose the current health-reform effort, which Democrats appear close to passing with the support of the drug industry and several other major segments of the medical establishment, including the hospitals association and the major lobbying organization for doctors.

David Axelrod, Obama's top political adviser, explained the overarching Democratic campaign message during a recent interview with the National Journal. "[If] they want to stand with the insurance industry on health care and protect the status quo, then let them defend that in an election," he said. "If they want to stand with the banks and the financial industries and protect the status quo, then let them explain that in an election."
(See pictures of TIME's Wall Street covers.)


Last November, a polling firm with close ties to the White House, Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner Research, released a memo warning of the punishment that could await Democrats at the polls in 2010 if unemployment remains high and no steps are taken to deal with voter concerns about the deficit. The memo also cited polling showing many voters may be sympathetic to populist appeals. When asked to choose from a list what makes them most upset, 40% of respondents chose the phrase "big banks and Wall Street getting handouts while nothing is done for working Americans" as either their first or second choice. By contrast, the phrase "not enough is being done to create jobs" was chosen by only 16% of voters.

As it stands, there is little reason for Democrats to be optimistic about 2010. On Thursday, the widely-respected political handicapper Charlie Cook explained that current polls suggest Republicans will enjoy a net gain of 20-30 House seats this fall. But he added a cautionary note: "It is important to note that while one party has never won all of the competitive races in any given election cycle (currently Republicans would need to win all 50 competitive seats to win 218 seats in the House), the likelihood of one or two dozen potentially competitive Democratic seats entering the danger zone at some point in this cycle is high."

Underscoring the point, both Cook and Stuart Rothenberg, another independent handicapper, on Thursday reclassified the special election in Massachusetts between Coakley and Brown as a "toss-up," a major surprise given that they're running for a seat long held by Ted Kennedy. But the White House has more than a crucial Senate vote riding on the outcome: Tuesday's election will be the first crucial test of the effectiveness of their entire 2010 campaign plan.


6).Martha Coakley's Convictions: The role played by the U.S. Senate candidate in a notorious sex case raises questions about her judgment
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

The story of the Amiraults of Massachusetts, and of the prosecution that had turned
the lives of this thriving American family to dust, was well known to the world by the year 2001. It was well known, especially, to District Attorney Martha Coakley, who had by then arrived to take a final, conspicuous, role in a case so notorious as to assure that the Amiraults' name would be known around the globe.

The Amiraults were a busy, confident trio, grateful in the way of people who have found success after a life of hardship. Violet had reared her son Gerald and daughter Cheryl with help from welfare, and then set out to educate herself. The result was the triumph of her life—the Fells Acres school—whose every detail Violet scrutinized relentlessly. Not for nothing was the pre-school deemed by far the best in the area, with a long waiting list for admission.

All of it would end in 1984, with accusations of sexual assault and an ever-growing list of parents signing their children on to the case. Newspaper and television reports blared a sensational story about a female school principal, in her 60s, who had daily terrorized and sexually assaulted the pupils in her care, using sharp objects as her weapon. So too had Violet's daughter Cheryl, a 28-year old teacher at the school.

But from the beginning, prosecutors cast Gerald as chief predator—his gender qualifying him, in their view, as the best choice for the role. It was that role, the man in the family, that would determine his sentence, his treatment, and, to the end, his prosecution-inspired image as a pervert too dangerous to go free.

The accusations against the Amiraults might well rank as the most astounding ever to be credited in an American courtroom, but for the fact that roughly the same charges were brought by eager prosecutors chasing a similar headline—making cases all across the country in the 1980s. Those which the Amiraults' prosecutors brought had nevertheless, unforgettable features: so much testimony, so madly preposterous, and so solemnly put forth by the state. The testimony had been extracted from children, cajoled and led by tireless interrogators.

Gerald, it was alleged, had plunged a wide-blade butcher knife into the rectum of a 4-year-old boy, which he then had trouble removing. When a teacher in the school saw him in action with the knife, she asked him what he was doing, and then told him not to do it again, a child said. On this testimony, Gerald was convicted of a rape which had, miraculously, left no mark or other injury. Violet had tied a boy to a tree in front of the school one bright afternoon, in full view of everyone, and had assaulted him anally with a stick, and then with "a magic wand." She would be convicted of these charges. Cheryl had cut the leg off a squirrel.

Other than such testimony, the prosecutors had no shred of physical or other proof that could remotely pass as evidence of abuse. But they did have the power of their challenge to jurors: Convict the Amiraults to make sure the battle against child abuse went forward. Convict, so as not to reject the children who had bravely come forward with charges.

Gerald was sent to prison for 30 to 40 years, his mother and sister sentenced to eight to 20 years. The prosecutors celebrated what they called, at the time "a model, multidisciplinary prosecution." Gerald's wife, Patricia, and their three children—the family unfailingly devoted to him—went on with their lives. They spoke to him nightly and cherished such hope as they could find, that he would be restored to them.

Hope arrived in 1995, when Judge Robert Barton ordered a new trial for the women. Violet, now 72, and Cheryl had been imprisoned eight years. This toughest of judges, appalled as he came to know the facts of the case, ordered the women released at once. Judge Barton—known as Black Bart for the long sentences he gave criminals—did not thereafter trouble to conceal his contempt for the prosecutors. They would, he warned, do all in their power to hold on to Gerald, a prediction to prove altogether accurate.

No less outraged, Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein presided over a widely publicized hearings into the case resulting in findings that all the children's testimony was tainted. He said that "Every trick in the book had been used to get the children to say what the investigators wanted." The Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly—which had never in its 27 year history taken an editorial position on a case—published a scathing one directed at the prosecutors "who seemed unwilling to admit they might have sent innocent people to jail for crimes that had never occurred."

It was clear, when Martha Coakley took over as the new Middlesex County district attorney in 1999, that public opinion was running sharply against the prosecutors in the case. Violet Amirault was now gone. Ill and penniless after her release, she had been hounded to the end by prosecutors who succeeded in getting the Supreme Judicial Court to void the women's reversals of conviction. She lay waiting all the last days of her life, suitcase packed, for the expected court order to send her back to prison. Violet would die of cancer before any order came in September 1997.

That left Cheryl alone, facing rearrest. In the face of the increasing furor surrounding the case, Ms. Coakley agreed to revise and revoke her sentence to time served—but certain things had to be clear, she told the press. Cheryl's case, and that of Gerald, she explained, had nothing to do with one another—a startling proposition given the horrific abuse charges, identical in nature, of which all three of the Amiraults had been convicted.

No matter: When women were involved in such cases, the district attorney explained, it was usually because of the presence of "a primary male offender." According to Ms. Coakley's scenario, it was Gerald who had dragged his mother and sister along. Every statement she made now about Gerald reflected the same view, and the determination that he never go free. No one better exemplified the mindset and will of the prosecutors who originally had brought this case.

Before agreeing to revise Cheryl's sentence to time served, Ms. Coakley asked the Amiraults' attorney, James Sultan, to pledge—in exchange—that he would stop representing Gerald and undertake no further legal action on his behalf. She had evidently concluded that with Sultan gone—Sultan, whose mastery of the case was complete—any further effort by Gerald to win freedom would be doomed. Mr. Sultan, of course, refused.

In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor's Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a commutation of Gerald's sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the "extraordinary if not bizarre allegations" on which they had been convicted.

Editorials in every major and minor paper in the state applauded the Board's findings. District Attorney Coakley was not idle either, and quickly set about organizing the parents and children in the case, bringing them to meetings with Acting Gov. Jane Swift, to persuade her to reject the board's ruling. Ms. Coakley also worked the press, setting up a special interview so that the now adult accusers could tell reporters, once more, of the tortures they had suffered at the hands of the Amiraults, and of their panic at the prospect of Gerald going free.

On Feb. 20, 2002, six months after the Board of Pardons issued its findings, the governor denied Gerald's commutation.

Gerald Amirault spent nearly two years more in prison before being granted parole in 2004. He would be released, with conditions not quite approximating that of a free man. He was declared a level three sex offender—among the consequences of his refusal, like that of his mother and sister, to "take responsibility" by confessing his crimes. He is required to wear, at all times, an electronic tracking device; to report, in a notebook, each time he leaves the house and returns; to obey a curfew confining him to his home between 11:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. He may not travel at all through certain areas (presumably those where his alleged victims live). He can, under these circumstances, find no regular employment.

The Amirault family is nonetheless grateful that they are together again.

Attorney General Martha Coakley—who had proven so dedicated a representative of the system that had brought the Amirault family to ruin, and who had fought so relentlessly to preserve their case—has recently expressed her view of this episode. Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was "formidable" and that she was entirely convinced "those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants."

What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley's concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.

If the sound of ghostly laughter is heard in Massachusetts these days as this campaign rolls on, with Martha Coakley self-portrayed as the guardian of justice and civil liberties, there is good reason.

Ms. Rabinowitz, a member of the Journal's editorial board, is the author of "No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusations, False Witness And Other Terrors Our Times" (Free Press, 2003).