From The Corner:
Keep the Christ in Christmas...
Mark Steyn

...but take Him out of Easter:

The pastors at this church in Raleigh, North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday school lessons for preschoolers from "First Look," the publisher of the one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn't a mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight...

"Easter is a special time in churches," the letter from the publisher says. "It's a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we need to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter."

So now the story ends with the Last Supper - and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then go to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively "disturbing" is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity of the mainline churches.

[UPDATE: A reader writes:

In your zeal to assert your manly status over and against the wimpy mainline church, you failed to see that the organization behind the curriculum is not emerging from the mainline church culture. It would better be described as emerging from the middle of American, moderate, evangelicalism. It's the Saddleback, Willow Creek crowd. You missed your mark by about three permutations of American church culture. The only parodic a reductio I can discern from your post is you - as the typical neo-conservative manly man with a subconscious lust for the romance of violence and death. You're perspective is so enamored with the violence of Jesus' death that you can't comprehend that someone would take into account a child's developmental capacity in teaching about Jesus. There appears to be no room for nuance or thoughtful engagement, just caricatures, and not even very accurate or powerful one's. Just old stale, beat up the wimpy mainline, type memes that had some teeth to them 20 years ago, but today irrelevant.

As a Christian I am baffled by what I find on your site. It is so far from the gospel I know in the Bible, so shallow in its engagement with the teachings of Jesus, so unaware of the lived reality of real churches in America, that it makes me grieve.

That's a fair point - the first bit about middle America, that is, not the ensuing neocon manly-man stuff punctuated by randomly placed apostrophes. I'd originally written "a parodic reductio of Wimp Christianity", and then I thought, "Oo er, what if they think I'm saying all Christianity's wimpy?" and I'll spend Easter Day fending off a gazillion e-mails. So I went back and edited it. Shouldn't have done so. But I notice, since the systemic and intentional misrepresentation of my writing by the plaintiffs in the human rights cases in Canada, I'm getting more cautious about handing hostages to fortune. The ol' chilling effect setting in. Wimpo, butch thyself.]

A Brief for Whitey

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 03/21/2008 ET

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright's statements were "controversial," and "divisive," and "racially charged," reflecting a "distorted view of America."

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination -- and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past -- are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds ... ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack's and the Rev. Wright's generations.

What is wrong with Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said -- that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of "The Death of the West," "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."

From The Raleigh Chronicle: Heartbreaking news. A great writer, and he seemed from all accounts to be an equally great person.
Famous Spy Novelist Dies Suddenly

Author Andrew Britton with one of his best-selling novels in Raleigh.

The Raleigh Chronicle 21.MAR.08

DURHAM - Friends, family, and fans mourn the loss of 27 year old spy novelist and military veteran Andrew Britton. Described as "the next Tom Clancy" by some literary critics, his New York Times best-seller books were translated into many languages around the world and his popularity was such that his untimely death was announced on the BBC evening newscast.

According to his family, Andrew was found at his apartment in Durham on Tuesday, after he had apparently passed away from a heart condition that was previously undiagnosed. Britton passed peacably in his sleep, said his mother Annie Nice.

"He just went to sleep and never woke up," she said.

Andrew Britton leaves behind his brother Christopher, his sister Roxanne, his mother Annie Nice, and his girlfriend Valerie, all of whom live in the Raleigh and Durham areas. He also leaves behind many family members in Ireland and Great Britain including his aunt, uncle, grandmother, and two nieces, whom he adored says his family.

A special memorial service will be held at the Unity Church (Longview Center) on Hargett Street next to Moore Square at 2pm on Tuesday March 25th. The family says that there will be a service with a video showing photos, bag-pipes, traditional music, and a celebration of the young man's life.

MILITARY CAREER

Before he was known to readers around the world, Andrew's experiences growing up would later contribute to his writing.

Although he was born in Peterborough, England, Andrew grew up in the United States and graduated from Leesville High School in Raleigh.

Right out of high school, Britton joined the United States Army, serving three years with the 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Devil Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division (mechanized).

"He was so proud to wear the uniform," said his mother. "You could tell that just by looking at him."

During his tour of duty, Britton served at Fort Riley in Kansas and also in Korea. During his military service, Britton developed a camraderie with his fellow soldiers and had unique experiences that helped to contribute to the realism of his books which he would write later, said his mother.

After earning awards for outstanding behavior, Britton was honorably discharged but was on reserve status until 2006.

"He told me he would have gladly gone back [to serve] if they recalled him," said his mother, Ms. Nice.

A STRUGGLING WRITER

Although still a young man, Britton knew he wanted to write books for quite some time.

While growing up, his mother introduced him to such fiction writers as Jack Higgins, who wrote "The Eagle Has Landed." The novel, later made into a movie, was set in World War II and was a spy-thriller where German agents were trying to infiltrate Great Britain.

"After that, you couldn't feed him enough books," said his mother. "That was his first bite."

After his US Army service and before he started attending classes at UNC, Andrew worked blue collar jobs to make ends meet, but never complained and thought of others before himself, says his family. Ms. Nice said that even while her son was making $6.50 an hour at a gas station in Durham, he still sent members of his family checks to help them make ends meet.

SUCCESS IN SPY NOVELS

However, with his love of books and writing, it didn't take long for Andrew to land his first book deal. His first book "The American" was signed in a publishing deal when Andrew was only 21.

The novel about international espionage received good reviews and has now quite literally been printed around the world, translated into Japanese, Arabic, Russian, and other languages. The book was originally a hardback, but has now been published in paperback form as well.

On the heels of that success, Andrew wrote two more books, "The Assassin" and his most recent book "The Invisible." He was working on a fourth novel when he passed away, his family said.

His second book, "The Assassin" was first released in hardback last year and was recently printed in paperback, allowing it to climb all the way into the top 25 books on the New York Times bestseller list. Only a couple of weeks ago, the book was still on the list at number 32.

Critics hailed Andrew as a new face in the espionage-thriller genre, following in the footsteps as such greats as Tom Clancy and even Ian Fleming.

"Like Tom Clancy, [Britton] has produced a thriller that makes current terrorist threats all too real," said the Library Journal in a review of "The Assassin" last year.

"I'm looking forward to more from Britton...he has a knack for incorporating technical detail, from performing makeshift surgery to carrying out a nighttime ambush. And in this age of terrorism, his plots seem to jump straight out of the headlines," said a reviewer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. "He may well give Tom Clancy a run for the money."

His novels thrilled readers with a sense of realism and Andrew took great pains to research details. He wanted to make sure that his novels seemed to jump off the pages into real life for his readers.

"Nothing annoys me more than reading a book that obviously hasn’t been researched at all, especially when the book in question...requires, by its very nature, a thorough understanding of the content," said Andrew in a posted interview on his website.

To gain knowledge for his books, Andrew often traveled to interview people across the globe.

"He loved to read and he loved to travel," said his mother, who said that he especially loved travelling to Ireland where his mother is from and where he still has relatives.

For research on his novels, Andrew also interviewed local law enforcement officers in Raleigh and Wake County, including members of the Wake County Sheriff's Office, who he thanked in one of his forewords. His dedication to his craft made many fans who eagerly awaited his new novels.

"Andrew was a rising star on the literary scene and there was talk of making one of his novels into a movie," said a friend of the family. "He had a knack for putting you there and he had a tremendous talent."

A MINIMALIST

Although his novels had brought Andrew fame and monetary success at early age, people who knew him said he was more of a minimalist, choosing to focus on his family and his love of books. Unlike some young adults who find early success, Andrew didn't go overboard with spending and in fact, his family said he was quite the opposite.

"He hardly had any furniture in his apartment," said Ms. Nice. "It was wall to wall books."

His mother added that Andrew liked nothing better than spending the evening with a book or a movie or hanging out with his brother, sister, mother, and his girlfriend with whom he was all quite close.

"He was always a wonderful son," said his mother. "He was never too old, too manly, or too proud to give you a hug and say 'I love you.'"

Although a quiet man, Andrew also had a sense of humor that everyone in his family seemed to enjoy.

"He had a very dry wit, he was always the story teller," said his mother. Once his mother asked him while he was on a deadline if he was too busy for her to bring over some sausage rolls, which he loved. He texted back that he was not busy anymore.

Andrew was also a very good listener, say his friends, which allowed him to collect people's various experiences and interesting details and use them later in his novels.

ANDREW THE MAN

Beyond his literary success, everyone who knew Andrew seems to convey that he was, above all, a conscientious man who was always thinking of others. Friends and family say that he always was very concerned with the well-boing of those around him, sometimes even to a fault, and as a result, he was always thought of highly by everyone.

As a testament to the respect for this young man, many people who knew him were flying in from around the United States and even overseas to be with his family and to attend the memorial service next week. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) even made an announcement on its world-wide newscast that Andrew had passed away, to mourn the loss of the prominent author.

For his immediate family, it was not the loss of Andrew, the world-wide author that hurt them but the passing of the young man behind the novels.

It has been very hard for them to lose Andrew Britton, the young, outstanding gentleman, the quiet warrior who loved those dearly around him.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do," said his mother, about having to tell her other children of Andrew's death.

Although Andrew died at a young age, his family takes solace that they were blessed to know him for 27 years and that he was able to accomplish much during his life.

"He did a lot in his life," said his mother. "He fit a lot in."

For his part, Andrew not only leaves behind his family, friends and fans, but also the characters in his books. Created in Andrew's creative genius, he endowed them with their own existence as they live on in his reader's own imaginations.

"For me, the best part about writing is developing characters; creating life out of thin air. Even if it's just on paper, it's an amazing thing, indescribable, almost," said Andrew in an interview on his website.

"I also enjoy incorporating fiction and real life. I'm always searching for ways to blend fiction and fact, and when it works well, it turns out seamlessly, adding a sense of realism to all aspects of the story. In short, the fiction very nearly becomes fact."

ON THE WEB: Andrew Britton's website
http://www.andrewbrittonbooks.com

PHOTO: Andrew Britton celebrated the paperback debut of one of his books with family and friends just last week in Raleigh. Photo by The Raleigh Chronicle.

PHOTO: Andrew Britton serving as a comat engineer. Photo from Britton family.

From The American Spectator Online:
Obama and His Minister

By Tom Bethell

Published 3/21/2008 1:10:42 AM

Ever since Barack Obama delivered his much praised but inadequate race speech on Tuesday, the editorialists have been telling us how much we need a national dialogue on the subject. Right. It's high time. So here's my contribution: Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks about America were the worst things said about my adopted country since I came here from England in 1962. Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X are not in the same league as this champion of race hatred from Chicago. Imagine if Senator John McCain had for years been a member of a church where a white pastor said that blacks should go back to Africa where they came from. And McCain were to respond: Well, I disagree with his remarks and I reject what he said but I won't disassociate myself from him, because he has been so important to my life. McCain would be out of the race in the blink of an eye. Yet Obama has not felt the need to distance himself from Pastor Wright. The New York Times has praised Obama's speech as a "profile in courage." That is baloney -- reflecting the gross double standard that has prevailed for decades on the subject of race. The underlying problem is that the liberals who still control so much of the debate quietly agree with much of what Wright said. Here's my background on this. I came to America in the first place because I was enamored of New Orleans jazz. The best of the pioneers were almost all black. I wanted to meet these men, some of whom were still living when I first went to New Orleans. I wrote a book about a jazz clarinetist named George Lewis. He was not just black but dark black. There was no white mother or grandmother in his background. One of the things he told me that I never forgot was that the worst discrimination he ever encountered in the city was from the light-skinned "Creoles," or mulattoes, who considered themselves superior to their darker-skinned brethren. If George played at their clubs and wanted a drink of water he was denied a regular glass but was told to drink out of a jam jar. Years later, in about 1995, I mentioned this little discussed aspect of race relations to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He gave me a look of recognition, smiled and said he knew exactly what George Lewis was talking about. One lesson we might like to draw is that people with mixed-race background probably do find it harder to "go beyond" issues of race than those who are either black or white. In my first dozen years in America, I was a conventional liberal. I remember exactly the moment when that began to change. A story in the Times-Picayune described the DeFunis case, which came before the Supreme Court in 1974. Marco DeFunis had sued the University of Washington Law School because their admission policy had promoted less qualified blacks over whites. I knew that this was un-American and contrary to the whole tradition of equality before the law. In the end, the case was declared moot because DeFunis was admitted anyway. Then, in 1978, the Court narrowly ruled in the Allan Bakke case that whites indeed could be discriminated against and equality before the law wasn't really the law after all. Anti-white discrimination has been legal in this country for 30 years now, even though it is politically unpopular and goes down to defeat when voters are given a voice in the matter. THE TRUTH IS THAT the African-American establishment benefits from the current system of affirmative action and racial preferences. They feel ennobled by their victim status. White liberals like this arrangement, too, because the cultivation of victimhood and the arousal of guilt feelings is their stock in trade -- practically their raison d'etre. The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof sought to excuse Pastor Wright's mendacious claims that the U.S. government engineered HIV as a death-dealing weapon against blacks. Maybe 30 percent of blacks believe that, Kristof wrote, in extenuation. Perhaps it's time to expose the lies that black leaders spread within their own communities, and not excuse them. When liberals tell us we need a debate about race what they mean is that they would like to hear no more about Pastor Wright (and indeed he appears to have been packed off to Africa for the duration). Obama indicated in his speech that he understands how some whites are resentful of racial preferences. Indeed they are, and this liberal initiative is the principal cause of race conflict today. But does this really bother Obama? If it does, he should state forthrightly that the time for affirmative action is passed. Alternatively, he should say that blacks still need this legal privilege. In all those Democratic debates, I don't think one journalist asked Obama to disclose his current thinking on this topic. But as recently as 2006, he was foursquare behind racial preferences. Geraldine Ferraro's comment that Obama has been the beneficiary of race even as he masquerades as its victim was on target. Obama's attempt to equate that comment with the outrages of the irreverent Wright was just further chicanery from him. Good for Geraldine for refusing to be equated with the "racist bigot," "spewing hatred" from Chicago. Memo to George Stephanopoulos and Tim Russert: Ask Obama if it's time to abandon racial preferences. And don't let him wriggle free. Tom Sowell has pointed out that Obama's voting record is entirely consistent with support for the "grievance culture" that Pastor Wright appeals to. Obama, in fact, "has been leading as much of a double life as Eliot Spitzer," Sowell added. I JUST READ A MEALY-MOUTHED article by the Washington Post's Dan Balz ("Will the Answer Outlive the Questions?"). He quoted three "Democratic analysts" who point out that Wright's comments could hurt Obama in November. What was significant was that not one of these analysts went on the record. This shows that we do indeed need a debate about race. The real problem is that it's the liberals who don't want to debate it, probably because they know they would lose. Prediction: This Obama episode will once more show how the new technology is transforming political debate. Balz conveyed in his piece that the Washington Post will be good soldiers and won't do anything more than absolutely necessary to upset the race industry, of which the Post is a part. But how could the web and the blogs and e-mail be controlled? That's what bothered Dan Balz. "The danger," he wrote, as though he were already on the Obama team, "is that what might last are the images of his Chicago pastor -- edited and reedited into television ads, YouTube videos and an endless stream of e-mails delivered quietly into the computers of millions of Americans." Delivered right into our homes! The good news is that the mainstream media no longer control the political debate. That indeed is the danger for Obama. Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator.

From The Washington Post:
The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- The beauty of a speech is that you don't just give the answers, you provide your own questions. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So said Barack Obama, in his Philadelphia speech about his pastor, friend, mentor and spiritual adviser of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

An interesting, if belated, admission. But the more important question is: which "controversial" remarks?

Wright's assertion from the pulpit that the U.S. government invented the HIV virus "as a means of genocide against people of color"? Wright's claim that America was morally responsible for 9/11 -- "chickens coming home to roost" -- because of, among other crimes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Obama says he missed church that day. Had he never heard about it?)

What about the charge that the U.S. government (of Franklin Roosevelt, mind you) knew about Pearl Harbor, but lied about it? Or that the government gives drugs to black people, presumably to enslave and imprison them?

Obama condemns such statements as wrong and divisive, then frames the next question: "There will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?"

But that is not the question. The question is why didn't he leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction.

His defense rests on two central propositions: (a) moral equivalence, and (b) white guilt.

(a) Moral equivalence. Sure, says Obama, there's Wright, but at the other "end of the spectrum" there's Geraldine Ferraro, opponents of affirmative action and his own white grandmother, "who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." But did she shout them in a crowded theater to incite, enrage and poison others?

"I can no more disown (Wright) than I can my white grandmother." What exactly was grandma's offense? Jesse Jackson himself once admitted to the fear he feels from the footsteps of black men on the street. And Harry Truman was known to use epithets for blacks and Jews in private, yet is revered for desegregating the armed forces and recognizing the first Jewish state since Jesus' time. He never spread racial hatred. Nor did grandma.

Yet Obama compares her to Wright. Does he not see the moral difference between the occasional private expression of the prejudices of one's time and the use of a public stage to spread racial lies and race hatred?

(b) White guilt. Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then proceeds to do precisely that. And what lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.

This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt, while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.

But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign.

Then answer this, senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?

The New Dhimmi Times

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
FrontPageMagazine.com

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Totalitarians have an uncanny appreciation for the subversive effect of foreign propagandists. The Nazis had Lord Haw-Haw, Imperial Japan its Tokyo Rose, the Soviets the World Council of Churches (among many others) and the North Vietnamese Jane Fonda. Now, our time’s totalitarian ideologues – the Islamofascists – have the New York Times.

This may not seem to be exactly a news flash. After all, the Times has been rendering invaluable service to the enemy’s information operations and military campaigns for years. To cite but a few examples: In December 2005, the paper disclosed a highly classified program for monitoring suspected terrorists’ communications on this war’s global battlefield. In June 2006, it revealed another enormously sensitive surveillance effort concerning movement of funds around the world. And practically every day, what passes for its news pages and editorials run down the Nation’s leadership, military and progress in defeating our foes.

The New York Times marked a deplorable new milestone this weekend, however – a true nadir in collaborating with the enemy in the War of Ideas. Its Sunday magazine featured an article by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman entitled “Why Shariah? Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law. Could they be right?” According to the Times’ Mr. Feldman, the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

The disinforming character of this essay is evident to the trained eye from the opening paragraph. Feldman depicts sympathetically the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who “gave a nuanced, scholarly lecture” recently in London. Dr. Williams we are told offered “the tentative suggestion…that, subject to the agreement of all parties and the strict requirement of protecting equal rights for women, it might be a good idea to consider allowing Islamic and Orthodox Jewish courts to handle marriage and divorce.” Then, it seems through no fault of his own, “all hell broke loose” on the poor, thoughtful clergyman.

Actually, what the head of the Church of England declared on the BBC was that it was “unavoidable” that Shariah law – a theo-political-legal code that the Islamofascists seek to impose on Muslims and non-Muslims alike in all of its barbaric, intolerant, totalitarian and misogynistic glory – will be observed in the United Kingdom. The man now derided as “the Grand Mufti of Canterbury” was exhibiting the classic symptoms of an unbeliever who chooses to submit to the rule of Islam, rather than accept the other choice under Shariah, namely being put to death. The former is known as a dhimmi.

In an article that can only be described charitably as selective in its rendering of the facts, Feldman paints a portrait of Shariah that would earn admiration from the inventor of the Big Lie, Adolf Hitler. In fact, the text could have been written by the Muslim Brotherhood – an Islamofascist movement that is, by its own documents, charged with “destroying [the United States] from within” and “by its own hands.” Actually, it is no exaggeration to say that the Times’ Magazine has provided a six-page advertisement for the Brotherhood, effectively portraying it as a force for democracy and the rule of law that would make Thomas Jefferson swoon.

The Harvard professor, who helped write the new Iraqi constitution with its requirement that all laws must conform to Shariah, seems open to the Islamofascists’ determination to have the same apply elsewhere. He concludes with this rhapsody: “…With all its risks and dangers, the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law while coming to terms with contemporary circumstances is bold and noble – and may represent a path to just and legitimate government in much of the Muslim world.”

Let’s call this what it is: a paean to dhimmitude. The people who are actually going to have to “come to terms with contemporary circumstances” are not the Islamists. They are hewing to the immutable traditions of Shariah going back to the 9^th century, as interpreted by the consensus of the faith’s “authorities,” the only figures allowed to speak for Islam.

It is the cruelest of delusions to contend that such Shariah law will produce “just and legitimate governments” anywhere. Feldman struggles to explain why it isn’t so in two of the four places ruled by Shariah today – Iran and Saudi Arabia; he doesn’t even try to do so with respect to Sudan or Gaza, let alone the nightmare that formerly was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

Sunday’s New York Times article could be chalked up to another travesty by a paper that has long since lost its way, but for one fact: It comes at a moment when the Islamofascists are poised to make a potentially decisive breakthrough. Unless action is taken swiftly, they will achieve a strategic penetration of Wall Street in the form of “Shariah-Compliant Finance” (SCF). Confusion, let alone deliberate disinformation, about the true nature of Shariah, constitutes an invitation to disaster.

After all, the calamitous credit crisis is vaporizing such pillars of American capitalism as Bear Sterns. Other investment houses and commercial banks are desperate for cash. Islamist Sovereign Wealth Funds (more accurately described as Dictators Slush Funds) and other champions of SCF are offering to recycle trillions of dollars here – if only Wall Street will allow Muslim Brothers and other Islamofascists to call the shots, dictating who gets capital and credit on the basis of Shariah adherence. Archbishop Williams judged Shariah law unavoidable in Britain in part because the UK has already embraced Shariah-Compliant Finance.

If we fall for this deadly Trojan horse and the seditious Shariah agenda that animates it, the New Dhimmi Times and Professor Feldman will deserve no small portion of the blame.

---

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the founder, president, and CEO of The Center for Security Policy. During the Reagan administration, Gaffney was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, and a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). He is a columnist for The Washington Times, Jewish World Review, and Townhall.com and has also contributed to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.

From The Weekly Standard:
The Wright Stand
Judgment, character and Barack Obama.
By Peter Wehner

Several years ago my wife and children attended a Presbyterian church in Washington, D.C. We liked and respected the senior pastor, we had close friends in the congregation, and we felt spiritually nourished by the congregants and the worship. Two of our children were baptized there.

Not long after the attacks of September 11, my wife and I heard two different visitors — one in remarks during a church service, the other while teaching an adult Sunday-school class — that were derogatory of and inflammatory toward Israel.

Upon hearing the words of these two people — which I found both shocking and disquieting — I immediately raised concerns with the senior pastor. He tried to reassure me and then put me in touch with an associate pastor who was in charge of a ministry to Palestinian Christians (one I had been previously unaware of). I engaged in conversations and written correspondence with the associate pastor and the head of the board of elders over this issue; in the process, I discovered that our church hosted an annual conference which featured only speakers who were highly critical of the state of Israel. For the first time it became clear to me that the church we attended was deeply biased against the Jewish state. When what we deemed to be adequate counter steps were not taken, we left the church, in good measure because of this matter and how it was handled.

I thought of this episode in our lives in the aftermath of learning about the bigoted and vicious anti-American statements by Barack Obama’s pastor, friend, and spiritual adviser, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. of United Trinity Church of Christ.

I don’t for a moment believe that Senator Obama shares Wright’s manifold and manifest hatreds. What bothers me — particularly as one who has had good things to say about Obama in the past — is why Obama apparently never raised any concerns with Wright about his rhetoric or the black liberation theology being practiced at United Trinity. This was the obvious and appropriate thing to do.

Reverend Wright clearly preaches from a particular cast of mind, one with which Obama was surely familiar. If Obama isn’t willing to voice his concerns and objections with Wright and stand up for his country as it is being slandered by his pastor, what can we expect from Obama when he is asked to stand up against some of the world’s worst dictators?

The options aren’t particularly good for Senator Obama. He either agreed with the views and core beliefs of Reverend Wright, which would essentially disqualify him as a serious candidate for the presidency; or he didn’t agree with Wright but for decades sat passively by and accepted Wright’s teaching and rants. Didn’t Obama consider, even once, pulling Wright aside and pointing out — as any true friend would, in a civil but forceful way — that hailstones of hate simply have no place in a church and that the “social gospel” is not synonymous with preaching bigotry and anti-Americanism?

Beyond that, Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday, for all the praise it has garnered in many quarters, created additional doubts about Obama’s candor and his willingness to speak up and speak out against a charismatic, forceful, and pernicious figure.

ABC News reports that earlier this month Obama, at a community meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio, said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” Obama went on to say, “[Wright] has said some things that are considered controversial because he’s considered that part of his social gospel; so he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that.”

Last Friday, as Senator Obama was making the round on cable TV trying to explain Wright’s remarks that were being replayed over and over again, Obama indicated that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-American until last week. But in his Philadelphia speech two days ago, Senator Obama seemed to change his explanation:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely — just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country.

This is where things begin to get sticky for Obama. In half-a-month we’ve gone from Wright and his church being essentially non-controversial; to Obama implying that the venomous statements by Wright came as news to him; to admitting that he was in the pews when Wright spoke as a “an occasionally fierce critic” of American domestic and foreign policy. Those remarks were so fierce that even Obama, himself an orthodox liberal who has scorched the Bush administration, was clearly made uncomfortable by what Wright said.

It also begs the question: What exactly did Wright say that Obama strongly disagreed with? Was Wright in fact presenting a “profoundly distorted view of this country”? The odds are a good deal better than even that he was. But Obama has yet to answer those questions — and he probably won’t, at least with any specificity, unless he’s forced to do so. This story, which seemingly changes in every re-telling, is beginning to resemble nothing so much as Bill Clinton’s evolving explanation about his draft notice. It was then that most of America was introduced to “Slick Willie.”

Senator Obama’s speech on Tuesday was a brilliant effort to deflect attention away from what remains the core issue: what did Obama hear, when did he hear it, and what did he do about it? The answers, as best we can tell at this stage, is that Obama heard some very harsh things said from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ; that Obama heard them said a long time ago and probably repeatedly; and that he did little or nothing about it. This from a man who tells us at almost every stop along the campaign trail that he has the “judgment to lead.”

One always wants to be careful about making sweeping conclusions about any individual, particularly one as interesting and compelling as Senator Obama. All of us, in replaying our lives, would change certain things. We would all hope to show more integrity, more courage, more honor. Nevertheless, in a presidential campaign we have to judge based on the available evidence. And given his deep and long-standing association with Reverend Wright, it is fair to ask whether Senator Obama — a gifted writer and speaker and a man of obvious intelligence and appeal — has the appropriate judgment and character to lead this nation. Spending 20 years at Trinity United Church of Christ under the leadership of Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about Barack Obama — but it may well tell us enough.

— Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

From The New York Post:
SHOCK AND AWFUL
By RALPH PETERS

March 20, 2008 -- ON the fifth anniversary of our cam paign to remove Saddam Hussein's monstrous regime from power, it's hard not to despair - not because of the situation in Iraq, which has improved remarkably, but because so few American politicians in either party appear to have drawn the right lessons from our experience.

For the record, I still believe that deposing Saddam was justified and useful. He was a Hitler, and he was our enemy. But I'm still reeling from the snotty incompetence with which the Bush administration acted. Above all, I'm ashamed that I trusted President Bush and his circle to have a plan for the day after Baghdad fell.

All of our other failures in Iraq stemmed from this fundamental neglect of a basic requirement: Our soldiers and Marines reached Baghdad without orders or strategic guidance. We became the dog that caught the fire truck. The tragedy is that it didn't have to be that way: One thing our military knows how to do is plan.

But the relevant staffs were prevented from doing so. Ideologues and avaricious friends of the administration wanted the war for their own reasons, and they didn't intend to alarm Congress with high cost estimates. So they trusted the perfumed tales of a convicted criminal, Ahmad Chalabi, rather than the professional views of the last honorable generals then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had not yet removed.

Even on the purely military side, the White House put its faith in hopeless gimmicks, such as "Shock and Awe," convincing itself that ground troops were an afterthought. Of course, it was the old-fashioned grunts, tankers, gunners and supply sergeants who had to get us to Baghdad.

Iraq just didn't have to be this hard. We made it immeasurably more difficult by trying to make war on the cheap, then turning the war's aftermath into a looting orgy for well-connected contractors.

The fundamental requirement to provide security for the population - a troop-intensive endeavor - went ignored, while grandiose reconstruction projects drained the pockets of American taxpayers, only to come to nothing. Our troops and their battlefield leaders did all they could under Rumsfeld's yes-man generals, but every other branch of our government ducked. The "interagency effort" was a joke.

Back home, Congress indulged in cheap partisanship. The State Department concentrated on building the world's largest and most-expensive embassy - a project worthy of Saddam himself - and let the spectacularly incompetent Ambassador L. Paul Bremer wreck what little hope of maintaining peace remained.

The administration's solution to worsening conditions was to send more compliant generals, to continue listening to think-tank "experts" who had never served in uniform, to keep cutting fat checks for contractors and to let our troops bleed between photo ops.

None of us should mistake the fundamental truth: The only reason our efforts in Iraq have not failed completely has been the sustained valor and commitment of those in uniform. Our military was the only government entity that did its job. Its thanks have been betrayal by the political opposition at home, a rash of movies portraying our troops as psychotics and crocodile tears from protesters who secretly delight in US casualties.

In 2007, after four bloody years of denial, a desperate administration finally got serious about military requirements, sending the additional troops (now weary) who should have been deployed in 2003. With the wretched Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld headed out the door, the president also permitted a serious soldier, Gen. David Petraeus, to take charge in Iraq.

We got lucky, too. Our global enemies in al Qaeda alienated Iraq's Sunni Arabs in record time, indulging in grotesque forms of oppression and terror even Saddam and his sons had never dared to inflict. Those who recently had sided with al Qaeda against us found that we were their only hope to be rid of al Qaeda. The Sunni-Arab flip in Iraq has been a great strategic victory that resounds throughout the Muslim world.

The troop surge also had a powerful psychological effect, convincing enemies, fence-sitters and local allies alike that we weren't quitting - despite the results of the US midterm elections. And the Iraqi people were just sick of the violence. By 2007, most had gotten the worst bile out of their systems and wanted normal lives.

Even the often chaotic, corruption-addled Iraqi legislature managed to pass more major bills in 2007 than the US Congress sent to the president's desk.

The situation in Iraq is improving, as I've seen with my own eyes. Despite our cavalcade of errors, there's hope (no audacity required) for a reasonable outcome: an Iraq that treats its citizens decently and that neither harbors terrorists nor menaces its neighbors.

We'll need to sustain a longer commitment than would have been the case had the administration's know-it-alls not regarded our best generals as fools back in 2003. The administration's disgraceful treatment of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki was paradigmatic of its arrogance.

Meanwhile, those who held power over our military and misused it so disgracefully will never suffer as our military casualties and their families will for the rest of their lives. At most, those privileged men will experience disappointing sales of their self-serving memoirs. Cowards sent heroes to die.

I cannot help repeating the heartbreaking truth that it didn't have to be this hard, this bloody, or this expensive. This is what happens when war is made by amateurs. Has anyone in Washington learned that lesson?

It's a lesson that the left, as well as the right, needs to take to heart. While the Bush administration deserves every lash it gets, domestic opponents of the war have been hypocritical, dishonest and destructive. As this column long has maintained, had President Bill Clinton sent our troops to depose Saddam Hussein, Democrats would have celebrated him as the greatest liberator since Abraham Lincoln.

The problem for the left wasn't really what was done, but who did it. And hatred of Bush actually empowered him - the administration had no incentive to reach out to those who wouldn't reach back, so it just did as it pleased. Today's "antiwar" left also contains plenty of politicians who backed interventions in the Balkans and Somalia, who would be glad to send American troops to Darfur today and who voted for war in Iraq.

Both parties are quick to employ our military. It's the only foreign-policy tool we have that works. Neither party is a peace party - each just wants to pick its own wars. The hypocrisy in Washington is as astonishing as the dishonesty about security needs.

Through it all, amazingly, our young men and women in uniform continue to serve honorably and skillfully, holding together not just Iraq but a fractured world. We whine and bicker. They re-enlist and go back to Iraq and Afghanistan. Where they're targets of scorn for our elitist media.

Given all our mistakes and partisan agendas, it's amazing Iraq is going as well as it is today. The improved conditions in Baghdad and most of the provinces verge on the miraculous, given the situation a year ago. But we've paid a needlessly high price.

As for President Bush, let's face it: He's been our most-inept wartime leader since James Madison fled the White House, leaving his wife behind to save what she could before the British troops arrived with torches.

That said, Bush has displayed one single worthy characteristic (one he shares, oddly enough, with Madison): He won't surrender.

As horribly as Bush performed for our first four years in Iraq, it's still possible to do worse. Both of the Democratic Party's presidential aspirants believe that the answer is to flee, handing the terrorists we've defeated a strategic victory, inviting a genocidal civil war, further destabilizing the Middle East, and sending the message to the world that Americans lack the courage and staying power of our enemies.

Declaring failure isn't the correct re sponse to failure narrowly avoided. Both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would kill a struggling convalescent. Bush's shambles would become the next administration's catastrophe. As president, Obama or Clinton would finish with far more blood on his or her hands than President Bush has on his.

Was deposing Saddam Hussein a good idea? Yes. I still believe that. It was an act of vision and virtue. It's only a shame we didn't do it competently.

From The Wall Street Journal:
David Mamet's Revision
By Daniel Henninger

March 20, 2008

The American playwright David Mamet wrote a piece for the Village Voice last week titled, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal.'¹" Mr. Mamet, whose characters famously use the f-word as a rhythmic device (I think of it now as the "Mamet-word"), didn't himself mince words on his transition. He was riding with his wife one day, listening to National Public Radio: "I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: 'Shut the [Mamet-word] up.'" Been known to happen.

Toward the end of the essay, he names names: "I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."

This of course is an outrage against polite American wisdom. Isn't Paul Krugman supposed to be our greatest living philosopher? One would have thought that David Mamet saying bye-bye to liberalism would have launched sputterings everywhere. But not a word.

As I think Groucho Marx once said, either no one reads the Village Voice anymore or my watch has stopped.

That one of the language's greatest living playwrights would say this in our hyperventilated political times was news worth noting in most of the English-speaking world. Commentaries appeared the past week in England, Canada and Australia. But there's been nary a peep about Mr. Mamet going over the wall in what some call the Mainstream Media.

Matt Drudge put news of the Mamet essay at the top of his Web site the day it appeared, so it was hard not to notice. Yesterday the Los Angeles Times printed an op-ed piece on it by the crime novelist Andrew Klavan, welcoming Mr. Mamet. For the most part, though, this is being treated in liberal drawing rooms like a favorite uncle gone suddenly dotty. A reporter for the Times of London put the apostasy to actor Kevin Spacey, now appearing there in Mr. Mamet's "Speed the Plough." "I didn't pay it much attention," said Mr. Spacey.

Which raises the question: If a liberal falls in the liberal forest and no one says they heard it, can you say it didn't happen? Mr. Mamet must feel like the guy in a mob movie who knows the hit is coming but has to sweat through to the bullet.

There is a more benign explanation for the silence of American punditry's liberal lambs. They have their hands full with Barack and Hillary. No playwright since blood-soaked Greece would have tried to script the furies let loose by the struggle between these two senators.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose mad lines no one would think to write -- "God damn America!" -- has returned to haunt the holy candidacy of Barack Obama. In turn, Sen. Obama has been forced to give a speech reanimating racial ghosts back to the nation's founding -- a Constitution "stained by this nation's original sin of slavery." This is primal stuff. Meanwhile the Democratic elders, in their role as Super Delegates, must wrestle with knowing that this foul poison was set by factions loyal to Hillary Clinton, whose own personal loyalties are . . . well, you don't need me to get into all that.

With blood on the party's temple floor, who has time to give a flying [Mamet-word] about what this guy thinks? (Also, his essay appeared the day after the Spitzer melodrama began its short, but unforgettable, New York run.)

Still a thought: If David Mamet says he can't take it anymore, can others be far behind? Were I a Democratic Party strategist, out on the frontier of voter sentiment, my thought would be: This is not good for Democrats. David Mamet's mind is a tuning fork of regular-guy sentiment. He's the one who wrote "Glengarry Glen Ross." He says he's been a reliable liberal all his life. All of a sudden, the party sounds off-key. What if other guys are starting to think this? What if, after Barack's charisma gets stripped away, all you're left with is "universal health care" and Hillary's blind ambition? Come November, you could be [Mamet-worded].

Hollywood does a good job of policing the public political activities and statements of its workforce. Step out of its left line, the man comes and take you away. It helps the policers that Hollywood's writers have little script autonomy. They do as told and get used to it. Playwrights, by contrast, have total control over what their scripts say. This, one suspects, affects the two trades' habits of thinking.

In a remarkable coincidence with the Mamet essay, the playwright Tom Stoppard just published a piece in the Sunday Times of London² ripping the 1968 student demonstrations there, in Paris, and elsewhere. Admitting he was thought by the left even then to be "politically dubious," Mr. Stoppard says he "was embarrassed by the slogans and postures of rebellion in a society which, in London as in Paris . . . seemed to me to be the least worst system into which one might have been born -- the open liberal democracy whose very essence was the toleration of dissent."

Mr. Mamet in his (often hilarious) goodbye-to-liberalism essay credits the famed American newspaper editor William Allen White with the idea that government should basically stay out of the way of people trying to work out ways to get along and get ahead. Tom Stoppard ends with the same, central point: "The idea of the autonomy of the individual is echoed, I realize, all over the place in my writing."

Many Democrats know that individual autonomy is the moving spirit of our times. The Web is its relentless, daily metaphor. This notion is embedded in the thought of the writers David Mamet has been reading of late. Left-liberalism breeds many autonomous spirits -- but only in their private lives. The party's ethos is as it was in 1930 -- dark forces arrayed to thwart the delivery of benevolence to fragile masses. For the latest standard version, see the end of Mr. Obama's Tuesday speech on "the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze."

Unless the Democrats figure out a way to back down big brother, the years ahead likely will bring more Mamet drop-outs. Belief in autonomy may even reach Hollywood.

From Libertas:

What Hollywood’s Candidate Has Taught Me About Race

— Dirty Harry @ 3:18 pm

Earlier this morning I wrote this about Mel Gibson: “Hey, if Obama’s gonna stick by his whitey-hating, lunatic preacher, I don’t want to hear a thing about Mel.”

A reader responded: “What a stupid, offensive thing to say. Whom exactly are you directing your comments to? I’m Jewish. And liberal. And I don’t care for either of their bullshit evasions. Or yours, for that matter.”

You know what? I don’t want to hear it. No liberal who supports Barack Obama will ever lecture me on race again. And no liberal filmmaker who supports Barack Obama deserves to be taken seriously when it comes to matters of race, prejudice, or tolerance.

If Barack Obama is the new Martin Luther King — the new arbiter of all things racial — here’s what I learned from Senator Throw-Grandma-Under-The-Bus yesterday:

• It’s okay to belong to a church that preaches racism.
• It’s okay to belong to a church that preaches anti-Semitism.
• It’s okay to belong to a church that preaches hate.
• It’s okay to belong to a church run by a race-baiting demagogue.
• It’s okay to belong to a church that sells DVDs spreading hate.
• It’s okay to belong to a church that preaches divisiveness
• It’s okay to belong to a church that bestows lifetime achievement awards on those who have spent a lifetime spreading hate, racism, and anti-Semitism.
• It’s okay to belong to a church where the pastor speaks in vulgarities about political opponents.

Why should I be embarrased to forgive Mel Gibson? Why? Mel Gibson took ownership of his words, profusely apologized both publicly and in private, and hasn’t repeated the mistake. Reverend Wright has been spewing his hate for years, he’s never apologized, and yet Obama’s heard it all now (like he didn’t know before) and still won’t leave the church.

Think about this for a second: there was a church making money from DVDs spreading anti-white, anti-Israel, and anti-American hate. And who’s a member of that church even though he knows those DVDs are being sold — a church that’s still home to a hate-spewing, racist demagogue? A United States Senator named Barack Obama — a possible nominee for the presidency.

Obama and his supporters have lost any and all moral authority when it comes to matters of race. Obama makes excuses for and stands by what decent people know is indefensible. Decent people don’t vote for those who tolerate the indefensible. And judging by Obama’s across-the-board collapse in the polls, decent people are starting to wake up.

THROW GRANDMA UNDER THE BUS
by Ann Coulter
March 19, 2008

Obama gave a nice speech, except for everything he said about race. He apparently believes we're not talking enough about race. This is like hearing Britney Spears say we're not talking enough about pop-tarts with substance-abuse problems.

By now, the country has spent more time talking about race than John Kerry has talked about Vietnam, John McCain has talked about being a POW, John Edwards has talked about his dead son, and Al Franken has talked about his USO tours.

But the "post-racial candidate" thinks we need to talk yet more about race. How much more? I had had my fill by around 1974. How long must we all marinate in the angry resentment of black people?

As an authentic post-racial American, I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said -- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I think we'd notice that he's crazier than Ward Churchill and David Duke's love child. (Indeed, both Churchill and the Rev. Wright referred to the attacks of 9/11 as the chickens coming "home to roost.")

Imagine a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God."

Imagine a white pastor calling Condoleezza Rice, "Condoskeezza Rice."

Imagine a white pastor saying: "No, no, no, God damn America -- that's in the Bible for killing innocent people! God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human! God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme!"

We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, "Isn't that cute?" As a post-racial American, I do not believe "the legacy of slavery" gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.

Obama tried to justify Wright's deranged rants by explaining that "legalized discrimination" is the "reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up." He said that a "lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families."

That may accurately describe the libretto of "Porgy and Bess," but it has no connection to reality. By Rev. Wright's own account, he was 12 years old and was attending an integrated school in Philadelphia when Brown v. Board of Education was announced, ending "separate but equal" schooling.

Meanwhile, at least since the Supreme Court's decision in University of California v. Bakke in 1978 -- and obviously long before that, or there wouldn't have been a case or controversy for the court to consider -- it has been legal for the government to discriminate against whites on the basis of their race.

Consequently, any white person 30 years old or younger has lived, since the day he was born, in an America where it is legal to discriminate against white people. In many cases it's not just legal, but mandatory, for example, in education, in hiring and in Academy Award nominations.

So for half of Rev. Wright's 66 years, discrimination against blacks was legal -- though he never experienced it personally because it existed in a part of the country where he did not live. For the second half of Wright's life, discrimination against whites was legal throughout the land.

Discrimination has become so openly accepted that -- in a speech meant to tamp down his association with a black racist -- Obama felt perfectly comfortable throwing his white grandmother under the bus. He used her as the white racist counterpart to his black racist "old uncle," Rev. Wright.

First of all, Wright is not Obama's uncle. The only reason we indulge crazy uncles is that everyone understands that people don't choose their relatives the way they choose, for example, their pastors and mentors. No one quarrels with the idea that you can't be expected to publicly denounce your blood relatives.

But Wright is not a relative of Obama's at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright's racist invective to his actual grandmother, who "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama's grandmother -- who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school -- has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.

Unlike his "old uncle" -- who is not his uncle -- Obama had no excuses for his grandmother. Obama's grandmother never felt the lash of discrimination! Crazy grandma doesn't get the same pass as the crazy uncle; she's white. Denounce the racist!

Fine. Can we move on now?

No, of course, not. It never ends. To be fair, Obama hinted that we might have one way out: If we elect him president, then maybe, just maybe, we can stop talking about race.

COPYRIGHT 2008 ANN COULTER

From The Weekly Standard:
Obama the Ditherer
Answering the question no one asked.
by Dean Barnett

03/19/2008 12:00:00 AM

A LITTLE OVER a year ago, I read and reviewed Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father. It was an odd Obama who leapt from those pages. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Obama slouched from the pages of his own book.

In his autobiography, Obama came across as an extremely passive figure. By Obama's own telling, things just happened to him. Obama's study of his own life didn't bother tracing how he transformed himself from a self-described Hawaiian "pothead" to Harvard Law School student to managing editor of Harvard's Law Review. Obama didn't see fit to give himself any action scenes in his own book.

I found this a little disconcerting. Memoir writing typically isn't a game for the shy or the modest. This holds doubly so when the memoirist is barely out of his 20's as Obama was when he wrote Dreams from My Father. Since Obama wasn't yet a politician when he published the book, I figured the apparent passivity said something about Obama's nature.

After watching Obama's generally maladroit handling of the Jeremiah Wright matter, it's safe to conclude that he is indeed a lot more passive than the typical politician. The clock began ticking on this scandal thirteen months ago when Rolling Stone published an article on the Meshuganeh Minister. Obama resolutely did nothing. He didn't leave the church, nor did he make a statement that would put the matter to bed long before the voting began. He apparently had the audacity to believe that hoping the matter would disappear was tantamount to a plan. The statements he made that attempted to dismiss the affair (like the infamous "crazy uncle" comment) were doomed and in a way pathetic. It says something about Obama that forthrightly dealing with the problem was apparently his least preferred option.

As the scandal intensified over the last couple of weeks, Obama remained resolutely indecisive. Initially, he split hairs about whether he was in the pews for Reverend Wright's greatest hits. Then he lashed out at "voices of division."

After days of dithering, Obama took a belated tour of the cable news networks last Friday. As the talk refused to dispel, Obama finally wound up where he did yesterday--giving a "major address" on the matter. For those looking for indications of what kind of resolution and rapid response the Obama administration might show at a time of crisis, the handling of the Reverend Wright affair provides a teachable moment.

THE QUESTION of the day is how Obama fared with his major address. Many are hailing his call for racial reconciliation. Some analysts, including conservatives like Charles Murray, found it "flat-out brilliant" and thought it captured "a lot of nuance about race in American." For the twin purposes of brevity and avoiding arguing over meaningless topics, I'll stipulate that Obama gave a lovely statement on racial matters.

In doing so, Obama brilliantly answered a question that virtually no one is asking. With the country's attitude floating somewhere between grave concern and panic over the economy, Barack Obama has positioned himself as the candidate of racial reconciliation. With the body politic bitterly divided over the war in Iraq, Barack Obama has adopted racial reconciliation as his signature issue.

While answering a question that no one is asking, Obama dodged the question that everyone is asking, namely how exactly did a healing figure like Obama spend 20 years listening to the hateful ramblings of a man like Jeremiah Wright. In dodging that question, Obama showed an unbecoming slipperiness. At one point, Obama intoned:

It has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

Note how the passage above suggests that Jeremiah Wright let loose his incendiary language during the past couple of weeks at the same time that Geraldine Ferraro was engaging in her unpleasant foolishness. Of course, Wright has been "incendiary" for the entire two decades that he and Barack Obama have enjoyed such a close relationship.

I know I said earlier that I would stipulate that Obama had delivered a brilliant albeit irrelevant address, but I have to offer one caveat--his delivery was oddly flat. There were virtually no applause lines. Obama spoke in an odd monotone for much of the speech. His normal cadences, which are so brilliant and inspiring to so many people, were absent. It seemed like Obama had no interest in standing before a crowd giving that particular speech.

Understandably enough. Barack Obama is an exceptionally intelligent man and an extremely gifted politician, but he seems to understand that his relationship with Jeremiah Wright is one circle that can't easily be squared. Jeremiah Wright is a man who less than a week after 9/11 gave a sermon that sadistically rejoiced how America's chickens had come home to roost. Five days earlier, Americans (of all colors, incidentally) had leapt from the World Trade Center to escape the flames. The fact is, Barack Obama opted to remain in this minister's company for more than six years after that sermon until partially distancing himself just last week in the heat of a presidential race. As gifted a speaker and writer as Obama is, there's still no way he can make such a circumstance palatable to most Americans.

What the analysts who are gushing over Obama's sentiments regarding race relations are missing is not only did Obama fail to accomplish the mission he needed to, he didn't even really try. He made no attempt to explain his relationship with Wright and why he hung around a man who habitually offered such hateful rhetoric. Obama instead offered a non-sequitur on race relations.

While that non-sequitur surely distracted the scores of Obama sycophants in the media, conservative 527 groups will be lining up to run commercials juxtaposing Obama declaring that Reverend Wright "has been like family to me" with Wright offering one of his trademark greatest hits like "God Damn America." Obama could have tried to defuse those attacks, but instead chose once again to try to hide the ball.

Obama's relationship with Wright warranted a serious treatment. The voting public deserved as much. It says something about the candidate and his willingness to take on the tough issues that he declined to take on the challenge.

Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Mikhail Gorbachev during his visit to the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi

From The Corner:
Gorbachev at the Tomb of St. Francis
Peter Robinson

Whenever Ronald Reagan would mention his suspicion that Mikhail Gorbachev was a secret believer, everyone on the White House staff would scoff, thinking the president naive. When I had the opportunity to speak to Gorbachev a couple of years ago, however, I found myself concluding that Reagan had been onto something after all. Why, I asked, had Gorbachev refrained from putting down the revolution of 1989, just as Khrushchev had put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Brezhnev had put down the Prague Spring of 1968? "Because of something I shared with Ronald Reagan," Gorbachev replied. "Christian morality."

Now the last leader of the Soviet Union has spent half an hour on his knees at the tomb of St. Francis. From the London Telegraph:

Mikhail Gorbachev...has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.

"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added...."It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb," said Mr Gorbachev.

"We deem it the central revelation of Western experience," William F. Buckley wrote in 1960, "that man cannot ineradicably stain himself, for the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep....Even out of the depths of despair, we take heart in the knowledge that it cannot matter how deep we fall, for there is always hope."

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Tyler Hansbrough (50) leads a team that shares similarities with a North Carolina national champion.

From The New York Times:
This Year’s Tar Heels Fit the Mold of a Champion
By VIV BERNSTEIN

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Sean May, Raymond Felton and others from the 2005 North Carolina basketball team are occasional visitors to the Dean E. Smith Center, where their place in the history of the basketball program is secured by the N.C.A.A. championship banner that hangs in the rafters.

“They don’t say anything to us,” Tyler Hansbrough said Sunday after leading the Tar Heels to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title. “We see the banner every day when we practice, and Coach is always stressing it. We really don’t know how it feels because we haven’t accomplished that. But we can just tell in their eyes when they come back it’s something special for all of them.”

Hansbrough said he returned to North Carolina this season for his junior year rather than turn pro in part because he wanted to feel that, too. So far, he has led the Tar Heels to the No. 1 ranking as well as the top overall seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament. North Carolina opens Friday in Raleigh, N.C., just down the road from its Chapel Hill campus, against Mount St. Mary’s, which defeated Coppin State, 69-60, in Tuesday night’s opening-round game.

If this team is anything like the 2005 squad, it could be another memorable run for the Tar Heels and Coach Roy Williams.

“I think there are a lot of similarities,” Clemson Coach Oliver Purnell said Sunday after the Tigers lost to North Carolina in the A.C.C. final. “They’re built for a title run, I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

And that starts with Hansbrough, who averages 23 points and 10.4 rebounds and has already been named by two publications as the national player of the year. He is the inside presence that May provided in 2005, when he averaged 22.3 points and 17.2 rebounds in the tournament and was named the Final Four’s most outstanding player.

“With Tyler and myself, we were pretty much — especially when the tournament started for our team — the main focus of our teams,” May, who plays in the N.B.A. alongside Felton with the Charlotte Bobcats, said in a telephone interview.

Not that May would ever have been given Hansbrough’s nickname, Psycho T.

“Every time I talk to somebody about Tyler, I say I think he might have a screw loose somewhere,” said May, who is out for the season after having knee surgery. “The guy plays with so much passion. It’s unbelievable.”

May sees even more similarities between the teams, from point guards like Felton (2005) and Ty Lawson (2008) to shooters like Rashad McCants (2005) and Wayne Ellington (2008), and role players like Jackie Manuel (2005) and Marcus Ginyard (2008).

The teams also had sixth men who came into games and had an impact: Marvin Williams (2005) and Danny Green (2008).

“We play the same style, we believe in the same things,” Roy Williams said. “But that team in ’05, when it got into the tournament, really clamped down defensively.

“So I’m hoping that this team will decide to do that as well.”

If Williams was trying to send a message to his current team, he need not worry. Quentin Thomas, a senior guard who is the only holdover from the 2005 championship squad, said he saw another similarity.

“Just the hard work and the passion,” Thomas said. “I see that as far as the 2005 team and this team, the unselfishness of both teams. We have a lot of similarities.”

And just as in 2005, a title run will need to go through Charlotte. The 2005 team played its first- and second-round games here; the 2008 team will start in Raleigh and, if it advances, play the regional semifinals and final in Charlotte. Williams plays down the significance of the home crowd.

“I’ve never had a crowd win a game,” he said.

But May says it will be an advantage for the Tar Heels, who know they will have a significant following. Every little bit counts, though these Tar Heels may not need it.

“These guys have an unbelievable swagger about them,” May said. “As a player you love to see that. There’s a difference between cockiness and arrogance. But these guys are just confident in their abilities.

“I see the same characteristics in the team that we had.”

From The Washington Post:
On Wright, What Took Obama So Long?
By Richard Cohen

Some questions: Why did Barack Obama take so long to "reject outright" the harshly critical statements about America made by his minister, Jeremiah Wright, not to mention the praise the same minister lavished on Louis Farrakhan just last November?

How is it possible that Obama did not know about these remarks when he is a member of Wright's congregation and so close to the man that he likens him to "an old uncle"?

How is it possible that a campaign apparatus that sniffed out Geraldine Ferraro's offensive statement to a local California newspaper (The Daily Breeze, 12th paragraph) did not know that Wright's statements condemning America were all over the Internet and had been cited March 6 by the (reputable) anti-Obama columnist Ronald Kessler? The sermon was also available on YouTube.

In other words, how is it possible that a man who has made judgment the centerpiece of his entire presidential campaign has shown so little of it in this matter?

One possible answer to these questions is that Obama has learned to rely on a sycophantic media that hears any criticism of him as either (1) racist, (2) vaguely racist or (3) doing the bidding of Hillary and Bill Clinton. You only have to turn your attention to the interview Obama granted MSNBC's fawning Keith Olbermann for an example. Obama was asked whether he had known that Wright had suggested substituting the phrase "God damn America" for "God bless America."

"You know, frankly, I didn't," Obama said. "I wasn't in church during the time when the statements were made."

But had you heard about them? Did your crack campaign staff alert you? And what about Wright's honoring Farrakhan? Had you heard about that? Did you feel any obligation to denounce those remarks -- not Farrakhan, as you had done, but Wright himself? Don't you consider yourself a public figure that others look to for leadership? Do you think you failed them here?

Olbermann asked none of those questions.

In a certain sense, I am sympathetic toward Obama. When he said of Wright, "Because of his life experience, (he) continues to have a lot of anger and frustration, and will express that in ways that are very different from me and my generation," anyone who knows anything about the black experience in America has to nod his head.

The 66-year-old Wright was born when blacks were still being lynched, when Jim Crow ruled the South -- and when raw bigotry prevailed virtually everywhere else. He knows a different America than the one familiar to most whites. I can also understand why Farrakhan has a following in black America. He may be a gutter anti-Semite, but he stands up to whites, and within parts of the African-American community, he is admired for, among other things, rehabilitating criminals.

So for Obama, Wright posed a dilemma. The minister is well-known and respected and, clearly, adored by Obama. His language of resentment, even of hate, has a certain context to Obama. It does not shock. I understand, really I do.

But a presidential candidate is not a mere church member and operates in a different context. We examine everything about him for the slightest clue about character. On Wright, Obama has shown a worrisome tic. He has done so also with his relationship with Tony Rezko, the shadowy Chicago political figure. Obama last week submitted to a grilling on this matter by the staff of The Chicago Tribune and was given a clean bill of health. I accept it. But that hardly changes the fact that Obama should never have done business with Rezko in the first place. He concedes that now, but it was still a failure of judgment.

After I wrote in January about Wright's praise for Farrakhan, I was pilloried by Obama supporters who accused me of all manner of things, including insanity. But when I asked some of them what they would have done if their minister had extolled David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan official, or Rabbi Meir Kahane, the late anti-Arab racist, they either rejected the question entirely or simply didn't answer. Don't they think that everyone, particularly a public figure, has an obligation to denounce bigotry, as well as those who praise the bigots themselves?

As I wrote in that first column, the manifest abilities and stunning political talents of Barack Obama still recommend him to the presidency. But he has been less than forthright or responsible about Wright. This does not disqualify him for the White House, but it does suggest that if the vaunted red phone rings at 3 a.m., there might be times when he will simply not answer.